Dad

I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, and it may not even matter, because it was always sincere, but my dad had a way of planting things in his future that he could look forward to. This is something he did both in good times and bad. This practice continued during chemotherapy when his expression of joyful anticipation had never been more apparent to me. As he formulated a plan to go skiing in Colorado with me, Dorin, Dave, Quinn, Ezra, and Levi, my dad sent us emails and text messages when he got the go-ahead from his oncologist to take the trip. He used words like “Yay!” and sentences punctuated with multiple exclamation marks. Not the language I had grown accustomed to from him. It put a smile on my face.

You know what’s stirring? Listening to the beginning of Mahler’s 5th Symphony with your terminally ill father, alternating between watching him listen to the funeral march and diverting my eyes from such a personal moment. What’s he thinking? What’s he feeling?

Dad and I were very different from each other: he could be stoic whereas I have often worn my heart on my sleeve. We found common ground in our love of music. We were both avid explorers. Dad’s interests spanned every genre and his discoveries of new music, either on his own or through his kids, brought him the kind of thrills most of us only experience in our teens.

Dad introduced me to The Beatles and the blues. I took my dad to his first Dylan concert. Dad played me Sam Cooke and B.B. King, always singing along…a little out of tune. I brought my Zeppelin tapes along for drives in the car. Dad turned up the volume. Dad played Gorecki Symphony 3 for me. I cried like no other art has ever made me cry. Only a month ago my parents took a road trip that included a stop in Nashville where my dad felt right at home singing along to the country tunes at Tootsies.

I think music was a safe place for us both to be ourselves: excited, angry, joyful, or deeply sad. As an angry teenager I often played my music loud in my bedroom — some of it as angry as I could be. I don’t recall getting into any trouble for this. I do recall a gift of a very fine pair of headphones.

I’ve been reflecting on the things I’ve learned from my father. I suspect that many of his lessons will reveal themselves to me in their own time. When I’m ready for them, I suppose. The other night, as I watered our first-ever vegetable garden, and thought about how great it is, despite some of the plants not working out, I realized a couple of things:

First, I missed my wife and daughters during a challenging time, and I looked forward to gardening with them.

It also occurred to me that I didn’t really care that some of the plants wouldn’t bear any fruit. Perspective is something easily reached in relation to the little things in life when we are immersed in difficulty.

My dad lived this way.

I remember shortly after I got my driver’s license I had a minor car accident. I drove home shaken up and parked my mother’s car in the garage and closed the garage door, ashamed of what I’d done.

When I told my father about what had happened he wanted to know that I was okay and then looked at the car curiously, without any concern about the damage. He was very natural in his ability to assess the relative importance of things. He would repeat this approach in all the subsequent car accidents of my youth. None of which were my fault.

Over the last few days, one of the things that has caused me the most pain has been thinking about my daughters and the finality of their relationship with my dad. I hope I can honour his memory by embracing life and exploring the world with my family.