Shoulders: An Epitaph

It’s interesting how we use elusive words to describe death. We use adjectives that dance around the finality – “passed away”, “gone”, “not here”, “moved on” – as if avoiding the bluntness of it somehow makes it more bearable.

It doesn’t.

I received word last Friday that my father died. There are so many emotions and memories boiling on the stove right now and I can’t even process it because the pot’s too hot. My father is dead, and as much as I should accept the comfort being offered right now, it’s more like something I tolerate out of a sense of…something. Duty, maybe?

Hell if I know.

What I do know is this is a moment that makes me swallow hard. He’s gone (there’s that elusive verbiage again) and I feel a mixture of guilt, wishing that I’d spent more time, returned more calls, kept more promises. Knowing fully the shame of poor choices and taking the man for granted. Feeling anger at the know-it-all teenage me who was such an ass at times to this good and decent man. Stinging from the humility of hindsight as I look back at how hard he worked, how thoroughly he sacrificed time and body and self to give his children a better life than what he had. Feeling so profoundly small, wondering how I could ever measure up to the man with my own daughter.

It is not my intent to, in my grief, build the man up as perfect, for that would be false. Our relationship ran the gamut, from the distance of generational misunderstanding to times of drunken barroom buddies to deeply moving moments that stand so clear in my memory. I was fortunate enough to get to know the man, warts and all…especially after mom died nearly ten years ago. And his sweet humanity will be the enduring legacy that resides within my aching heart.

I was a damn fool to not see it or appreciate it in my youth, but that man tried so hard to connect with me. When I suddenly developed an interest in football, I tried out for the local Pop Warner team and ended up in the starting lineup. Neither mom nor dad knew or cared a thing about football, but they did care about me. So mom read the World Book Encyclopedia article on football (I can still see the bright crisp pictures of Ohio State on those glossy pages). She explained as best she could what the point of the game was to my dad, but he wasn’t overly concerned about the details. He just wanted to support his son in whatever way he could.

And do you know what that truck drivin’ son-of-a-gun did? He somehow managed to see every single game I played for three years running. Every single game. He cheered me in the wins. He consoled me in the losses (and there were a LOT in those first two years). He stood by me, proudly.

When I stumbled into a radio career, he was awestruck. I got my first fulltime job while I was still in high school, working the night shift. My main on-air duties were to run the control board during Atlanta Braves games and play the commercials during the local breaks. After watching me do this one night, he would listen to the games at home (even though he didn’t care a hoot about baseball) and grin because that was his son playing the commercials during the game.

In the years to come dad would always have my back, even through the self-imposed destruction I put myself (and my family) through. A weaker or less engaged man would have given up on me, but not my old man. Oh and if calling him my “old man” seems disrespectful, trust me when I say that isn’t the case. It was a term he himself used – as in, I may be your old man but I can still take you out – it was self-deprecating but used by both of us with sincere affection. And by God, that’s exactly what he was – my old man. In 2008, he was busy dealing with mom being bedridden from a series of strokes. The man had to bathe her, change her, and pour Ensure into a feeding tube so she could get some nourishment – a job he did gladly. And in the middle of all that, while I’m fighting some demons and kicking myself for having to tell him about it while he’s going through his own version of Hell, you know what he tells me as I dance around trying to find the words?

“Son, you can tell me anything. My shoulders are strong enough for the both of us.”

Tell me you don’t have tears in your eyes after reading that and I’ll tell you you’re a damned liar.

As I survey the finality of my dad’s death, I find myself having to come to grips with the realization that there are platitudes I’ll receive that I just don’t believe in. But I’ll do my best to accept them with the spirit intended. I’ll be grateful that people give a damn. Honestly, I don’t know if he’s “in a better place”. I don’t know if he and mom are “together in eternity” because I just don’t know. No one does. I don’t know where he is but I achingly know where he isn’t. And as I struggle to process this loss I’ll beg for some comfort and I’ll cry and curse and wish I could just tell him, “I love you, Pop” one more time.

The gut-wrenching reality is that wouldn’t be nearly enough. I selfishly want more time, and my sorrow comes in recognizing those moments squandered, those times when a lonely man needed me and I looked away. In the years ahead, I have to find some way of living with that. I have to find a way to the reality that he lived life on his terms and I couldn’t change that. The hell of it is, I would do the same damn thing.

For now, I just trudge on. What else am I going to do? But I’ll tell you something. I sure could use those strong shoulders to cry on right now.