December 3rd, 2021. Almost December 4th. Right around midnight. He had been in a car accident earlier in the day and his heart couldn’t take it. He was 75 years old.
He was probably the only person who read this blog every time I posted. He was a glutton for boring punishment.
Although it’s been two-and-a-half months, I still am having issues processing it. It’s like his death isn’t real. It’s like I cannot imagine that I will never see him again, or talk to him again. No more twenty-second phone conversations with him when I would call him and my mom.
He had a stroke a few years back and talking on the phone wasn’t something he enjoyed after that. He had trouble hearing and he was hard to understand on the phone. If he answered the phone, he’d ask how I was, tell me briefly about any local people who he thought I would know who had died (he didn’t seem to realize that I haven’t lived back in Montana for almost 30 years and I really didn’t know that many people back then… I almost never knew or remembered any of the deceased he mentioned ), and pass me off to my mom.
I have so many questions for him that will never be answered… questions that I didn’t even know existed until now… questions that I would probably never ask if he were alive, but now that he’s gone, I want to ask.
Was he happy with his life? Did the good times outweigh the bad? Was he satisfied with how everything turned out for him? What, if anything, did he wish had gone differently? I don’t think there would have ever been the perfect time to ask him any of those questions, but if I knew that the last time I talked to him was going to be the last time I talked to him, I may have found the courage to ask. He was the husband to my mother and the father to my brother and sister. He was the grandfather to my sons and my nieces and nephews. He was my dad. Was his role in our family one he basked in, or did he view it as more of an obligation? He was my dad, and I will always love him. My hope is that he was happy with his life when he died. I want for that so much…
Was he proud of me?
That’s a big one right there. And like most of the other questions that I have, I’m not sure I really want to know the answer.
I still have the card/money holder that he gave me at my college graduation. He wasn’t much for writing notes or letters, but he wrote a nice note inside my graduation card.
“Congratulations
Rich, you are the first in our family with a degree. Be proud and know that I’m proud of you. You didn’t do bad coming from a couple of poor farm-raised parents, eh? Now life really starts. It’s all up to you from now on. Be happy and enjoy!
Love, Dad”
That was thirty years ago. Was he just as proud after thirty years of choices that have led me to where I am now?
Dad would always brag to me about my brother. My brother has busted his ass for years to become successful running his own business, and he did it without a college degree. Dad was proud of him, without a doubt.
Dad was proud of my sister, too, the way she took classes while working a full-time job and raising kids to get the certifications necessary to advance in her career.
Then there’s me and my four-year degree, changing jobs every few years, never really making that good of a wage, never really advancing. Several years ago, I remember my dad saying to me:
“You should really learn a trade. You’ll never have trouble finding a good job if you know a trade.”
That kind of makes me think that the pride he had for me when I graduated from college was shaded a bit by the fact that I couldn’t get a really good paying job. That kind of makes me think that he might have been disappointed…
Questions I will never really have the answers to are all that I can think of when I think of my dad now. Questions that I may not want to know the truthful answers to…
At some point, my dad being gone is going to hit me… I think? I hope it does, to be quite frank. I’d really like to have a meltdown and sob uncontrollably for a bit… and then say goodbye once and for all. Then I hope I would just be left with the memories, and I hope I could focus mostly on all of the great ones.
Right now, I’m just hoping that there was some kid that called back home to small town Montana a couple of months ago, and that kid got his or her dad on the phone. The dad asks how the kid is doing, the kid says “fine” and the dad proceeds to talk about the locals that the dad thinks the kid knows who have died. I hope my dad was mentioned… and I hope the kid remembered him…