Today, my father has been out of my life half as long as he was in it.
Every year July 13 is a somber day for me. It marks the last time I saw my dad alive. Esophageal cancer robbed him of becoming an old man. It's been 12 years and not a day goes by that I don't think about him.
My pops and I had the best relationship a father and son can have. He was my best friend for as long as I can remember. And for as long as I can remember, I had a healthy fear and respect for him too. That balance is a rare thing. In my experience, most parents either favor one side or the other. They're too aligned with authority or too into being a friend. But James Bright III figured out how to thread that needle.
Truth is, for a long time I didn't feel his presence after he died. I'd talk to him and do things that would make me more or less feel close to him, but never really felt like he was there. I've always been envious of people who can still sense their loved ones after their gone. A naturally skeptical person, I just figured they were succumbing to their own power of suggestion. In a strange emotional dichotomy I felt both pity and jealousy toward these people. On one hand, they hadn't accepted the fate of their deceased loved on. On the other, some semblance of that lost family member's existence carried on in their life.
It's maddening to balance those emotions.
But then something happened that changed my entire perspective on life. July 10, 2019 I became a dad. At the time of my son's birth I remember thinking how sad I felt that my boy would never meet his grandfather. I grew up with stories about my biological grandfather and how amazing he was from my dad. He died before I was born too. He was actually the same age as my father when he died.
There's a weird sort of poetry there. My dad would teach me things his father taught him. My grandfather was a college professor and journalist. Connection were established and there were lines drawn through time between us.
But now I faced the same sort of challenge. Time went by, and my son grew from new born, to infant, to toddler. The latter of which brought a whole new host of challenges and some unexpected solutions. Like most, I have no memory of my parents from my days as a newborn. But I do have some from when I was a little kid. And they have served me well.
More often than not over the last year, when I am faced with a parental challenge I default to 'What would my dad do,' and the answer comes to me. All of sudden this connection, this feeling of a lost loved one still being in your life was created. Unbeknownst to me, my father taught me how to be the kind of dad I want to be. He taught me how to raise my children and without realizing it until a few months ago, I have acquired an encyclopedia of information about fatherhood to draw from.
And that's where I realized the connection between my father and my son. My dad used what he learned from his father, but he was better than him. I hope I am better than my dad and I hope my son is better than me. That's the immortality of being that comes with parenthood. Our actions as parents echo through our descendants long after we are gone, and we are a part of their lives without them even knowing it.
So my father hasn't lived in my life for half as long as he did, but as it turns out, he's still been very much a part of it.