My relationship with Dad had always been bittersweet. He came from the World War II generation and was not demonstrative about feelings. His love for me was seldom expressed in words. Instead, he taught me to fish. He helped me make projects for Cub Scouts. He tried to make me stronger when I was a little kid, consoling me with the thought that life was a struggle and would get harder as I got older, so I better get over it. He taught me how to drive, encouraged me as I took my first steps as a writer and worked his life long to make sure my brothers and I got to college. (He was forced out of 10th grade and into the Depression Era job market when his parents split.)
My father worked his life long for a lot of things. He worked to be a good husband, something his family had not seen for at least three generations before him. During D-Day, he stayed awake for three solid days, working to service and repair wave after wave after wave of Allied planes as they provided air cover for the advancing troops at Normandy. He got breakfast in bed for 20 years every June 6 — a small compensation for the fact that years after the war he would awake from dreams filled with the scream of falling bombs. He worked in the garden in our backyard, growing corn, potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes and other vegetables out of the good Washington soil, in a continuing sense of dedication to Victory Gardens.
As a boy my sweetest memories are of sitting on the dock at Silver Lake next to my Dad, waiting for the bobber to dip beneath the surface. I was a snooty teenage brat. But the truth also is, I loved my old man and longed to be closer to him. And not more than a month before my uncle's phone call, for the first time in his life, my father, fully rejoicing over my engagement to Jan, hugged me and told me quietly that he loved me. I wept that day. I'd waited my whole life to hear those words, and he had struggled his whole life to say them. It was one of the most profoundly healing moments of both our lives.
A month and a half later, he was dead. Apart from faith, it might have seemed that healing was a cruel practical joke. But it was not, any more than the Crucifixion was. It had just gone into the ground and died, like seeds in November. It would take a while for the seed to blossom and bear fruit.
That is perhaps why it was next spring, as we worked in the garden, that my Mom turned to me and said, “I was in the bedroom the other day, very upset and wondering if I'd done the right thing in letting the funeral home take care of your father's ashes. I finally said aloud, 'I hope you don't mind what I've done, Pat. I just didn't know what else to do.'
“Just then, Mark, the music box your father gave me started playing. You have to open that music box for it to play, but it just sat there — closed — playing the theme from 'Dr. Zhivago.' I tell you, it made the hair stand up on my neck, but it also made me feel so peaceful.”
Dad, pray for us.
