I lost my Father, but found my Dad

53 years after he died, I finally met him for the first time.

Death is uncomfortable. No doubt for the person experiencing it, but also for those around watching it happen. My father dropped dead, literally, outside a restaurant in 1966. A heart weakened years before by Rheumatic Fever, had finally stopped working and all efforts to get it started again failed. He was 49.

By the time the rest of my family arrived back home, the word had gotten out. Aunts and uncles, next-door neighbors and people who were virtual strangers to me, were moving throughout the house like wraiths through a cemetery. Mute and efficient, placing platters of food on the table, patting my shoulder, all the while tending to my mother, who seemed lost somewhere between the place where my father had gone and the cruel reality of a world without him.

I was 13. Large enough to be a man but lacking in any kind of real understanding of what had just happened and what impact it would have on the rest of my life. I was also angry.

At my father (for not seeing it coming and stopping it). At God, for being asleep at the wheel and letting shit like that happen.

But mostly, I think, at myself, for having spent most of those 13 years in an awkward dance with the man, and never knowing who he really was. Never asking the…