The last time my parents were in Flagstaff it just so happened to be the time my Letter From Home was in the paper edition of Flag Live. Although I’d sent hyperlinks of my essays to them, my dad held the paper and marveled that my essay was in print.
“They gave you the whole page,” he remarked while folding it under his arm. I was waiting for him to say it was about time I used my journalism degree. But he didn’t—instead, he kept reminding me the rest of that day that I had a whole page for my ideas in the newspaper.
He sounded proud. I waited for the other shoe to drop.
Isn’t that the way of so many relationships? I am guilty of putting my own insecurities on others as though they think as poorly of me as I do. This is especially true when I think of my parents; the people I think I know the most but who I actually know the least.
These last six months reminded me how little I really do know my parents. My father was an affable guy and always had stories to tell. I would sometimes lose patience when he would go into great detail about his friend who owned rabbits that he named “lunch” and “dinner.” I never understood how whatever it was that we were talking about would make him think of these random people and their lives. I used to try to ask him what made him think about a particular story, but he would shrug and say he just thought it was funny.
I craved a closer connection to my father for many years, but he wasn’t keen to talk about the past. I didn’t know much about his childhood or how he became an engineer except for the bare minimum. When my father found out about his brain tumor, it felt like a rush to get out all of his own stories he never told me. For example, I knew he had an apprenticeship for over seven years before he moved into his engineering career. When I was visiting him this past January, he took me into the garage and showed me all of the things he made when he was a tool and die apprentice, including heavy metal objects and his own wooden toolbox. He told me about each object he made and how exacting his boss was, remembering stories from when he was only 18 years old.
It was my father’s uncle who helped him get his apprenticeship. In the garage, he marveled that his uncle saw something in him and helped him so much right out of high school. I could almost hear him questioning why his uncle thought he deserved a chance. But as the night grew later, we shuffled off to bed and that part of the story remains untold.
Over the next few months, he would tell me about favorite trips that he and my mother had taken and some of their earlier hijinks that I was too young to know about or remember. My parents had some pretty grand adventures that involved driving around the country with little to no money and still having a blast. He would end each story by telling me that he had no regrets. I asked him if there was anything he wished he could have done and after thinking for a moment he said, “paddle boarding.”
That was not the answer I expected. But it was his answer, and I took it at face value.
I juxtaposed my father’s seemingly random stories through most of my life with his own stories he told me recently. Stories are connection of course, and I as a writer, should have known all along that this was what he was trying to do—connect. I had a suspicion a few years ago that I was missing some integral piece of my dad, and the answer has finally come to me after he’s no longer here to confirm.
We had some shared stories that were funny, and I’ve been reaching back to those more, lately. Like the time we got ice cream cones at Baskin Robbins when I was little. I licked the ice cream scoop right off the cone and onto the sidewalk. Without missing a beat, my dad picked up the ice cream, put it back on my cone, and said, “good as new!” Another involved sneaking out for ice cream after my mom had gone to bed—we told her that story together. I always thought I would tell my father on his death bed the real story of what happened with his beloved Corvette and my “accident” with the car, but he told me he actually didn’t want to know. At that point, I knew he was tired and there’s only so much laughing to be done at the end of his life.
I am grateful I got to spend my dad’s last week with him and I’m especially grateful he was able to share a few more stories with me. We also got to watch our favorite History Channel shows. After an episode of The Curse of Oak Island, he laughed in mock outrage wondering “how the hell they could make eight seasons of a show with only a coin and a button discovered.”
After my father died, I looked at his watch list on his television and learned how dedicated he was to a good story. Everything from “Outlander” to “Yellowstone” to unexpected documentaries. Like my father, I don’t think I have many regrets either, except that I wish I had more patience throughout my life to understand how each of these stories made up the person he was.
My father’s last request of me was that I not post an obituary for him on social media. Granted, Dad, but I think you’d be happy to know that you got your own page in our newspaper.
