Happy Birthday, Dad

My father passed away twenty-four years ago last month, just shy of his sixty-fifth birthday. Yesterday, he would have been eighty-nine.

Not many people in my life anymore remember him. He passed before I had my two kids. It was before I met my wife. Only a few of my friends ever met him. There are a few, though, and they are cherished... not because they knew him, but because they are people that have been by my side and had my back for decades.

My father shaped my life in many ways, and in many others, left it very unshaped. He spent most of his life as a teacher; college, high school and junior high school (for you Millennials, that's what we used to call the place you think of as middle school). He taught math and science... ranging from basic math to advanced math, although he claimed anyone that understood calculus was at least a little insane... as well as a variety of sciences, earth science and paleontology being the ones he liked the most.

He was also VERY political. And for more than the last decade, we disagreed about a lot, politically. However, despite the debates, we continued to love each other. I talked to him every week. We would argue for a while, then tell each other, "I love you," and hang up to go about our lives again.

Being a teacher's kid can be rough sometimes. My father was well known, although I never attended a school at which he taught. I think every teacher I had knew him. Some loved him... some hated him... but they ALL knew how to get in touch with him. Directly. Easily. Comfortably.

Since he has passed away, there are things that bother me... he never got to give my wife a hug and know what an amazing woman I married. He never had the chance to bounce a grandbaby on his knee and laugh with their joy. He didn't get to look on as my oldest son had his Eagle Scout rank pinned on his uniform (the younger will too... I think).

He would have liked my boys. They would have liked him, too. He would have spoiled them... and meant it. He would have given them the unconditional love of a grandparent. He would have told them stories of my youth I'd hoped to have kept hidden.

In other ways, he is VERY much with me. In my latest book, Lies and Omissions, the main character's father has the two diseases that vied for the rights to take my father. Many of the conversations between Nick and Nolan Tower are reflective of the conversations between my father and I as he watched his oncoming death rush ever closer, knowing that it wasn't going to wait.

I both hate and cherish those conversations. Sitting down to talk about a person's impending death with them is hard. He had accepted it, and knew that there was work to be done and limited time to do it. I knew he was right, but the acceptance of it was harder to come by.

Because of those conversations, I'm at peace... and aside from the initial mourning, I have been since he passed. There was nothing left unsaid. At least nothing from then.

I still miss him. Some days, especially when I'm hanging out with my kids, I mourn that he didn't have a relationship with them. That they didn't hear his jokes straight from him. That they don't have him telling them that they can do whatever it is they have their heart set on doing.

While he was still alive, I was a freelance photographer. Pretty much everyone said that I should get a job with a "good company." In my family, that means a big company where I could be a faceless cog. My dad was the opposite. "Do it. It's what you want. It's in you." That was usually followed by telling me it would be a massive amount of work, and then a critique of what I could do differently. He was generally right, though.

After he passed away, when I was dealing with his stuff, I came across a briefcase. In it were letters. Old students. I should mention that my dad was kind of a hard-ass. He believed that students NEEDED to be failed if their work indicated failure. He gave kids failing grades, and was called to the carpet for it.

"Failing children damages their future ability," was the response he got more than once from a school principal.

"Then they should do the work," he would respond.

He backed it up. My whole life, students called the house for him to talk through problems. He stayed after school to help kids through difficult subjects. If THEY asked for help, HE would give it. Often, in subjects or classes he wasn't teaching.

But the briefcase.

It contained a bunch of letters... dozens. All shared a common theme. "Thank you." Many said, "Thank you for failing me. Had you not forced me to do the work, I wouldn't know how to do the work now." Some of the writers were in college as they wrote. Others were past that and living in the world.

That might be the biggest lesson he taught me. Do the work or expect to fail. And, there is always someone a little better... but if you put in the work, you can move up a notch... and another.

I didn't write when my dad was alive. But I know that had I decided to be a writer, he would have been supportive. I also know that had he proofed anything I read, he would have picked it apart ruthlessly. With love, for sure. But ruthlessly. If he thought there was a way to make it better, he would have said so... then told me to let it fly.

The few of my friends that knew my dad tell stories about him. And I would bet that some of those students tell stories about him to their kids. He may be the hero or the boogeyman. Or both at once.

But to me, he was just my dad.