Chapter 2

The past flickered back. It had taken years let those memories fade, for me to not reflect upon them daily. Seeing him made that year, so long ago, re-emerge as though the intervening decade had never existed. I had made it back to my apartment when the entirety of our interactions collapsed back down upon me.

“Son, please remember this, if nothing else.”

I heard my father’s voice ringing out in my head, surfacing with strength that had not existed for quite some time. He had told me to live with no regrets – that to really appreciate the gifts of life, I needed to take a few risks and believe that, no matter what happened, I could learn from the experience. It was, of course, as cliché sounding then as it is right now, but I kept that piece of advice with me, out of love and respect to its contributor, my father. The first time he said those words, I just logged them in, put them aside, let them sit. Then, the pressing fact that my father was dying took priority.

That piece of advice, as time has passed, has revealed its relevancy. Reflecting on the intervening years, I can now pinpoint why I may have made so many mistakes in my own life. Yet, an irony continually presses itself upon me; in striving to preserve the memory of my father, to keep a personal promise I had made to him, I must ignore the advice he struggled to tell me before he passed away.

My father gave me those words of guidance the last time I saw him. It was one of those things where, in the waning moments of his own life, he felt the need to pass along the crucial pieces of wisdom he felt he had learned. The frailty of his voice accentuated the enormous effort needed for him to utter that single sentence. Each slow, drawn out syllable threatened to fade before it was even completed, overcome by the whispering breeze blowing against the nearby window. The words slipped through me; I could see his life draining with each new sound he pushed out, and I only wished to stop him from speeding up the inevitable. But he pressed on until he had had his say. Stubborn till the end, it only impressed in my mind how much he had come to mean to me, and how little I had actually shared with him. I sat in his room for hours after he fell asleep, staring at nothing, processing only my father’s shallow and labored breaths. It was then and there that I promised myself that I would become everything I imagined my father wanted me to be.

My father had spent his entire life making sure that those around him were taken care of – that his family never lacked those things which had been so rare in his own childhood. His intentions translated into a lot of stuff – you know, computers, tutors, music lessons – all the stuff which would give me and my sister the greatest advantages the world could offer. This also meant he was never really around when I was young, working long hours to provide the lifestyle he felt we deserved. Though my mom went out of her way to compensate for his absence, I still felt it. The moments that defined my childhood – those moments of personal triumph and accomplishment – were missed for work, with the sincere promise that next time there wouldn’t be a conflict. But, at every new milestone, when I looked towards the seat next to my mother, I once again found an empty place.

From this absence, a divide grew up between us. I understood the intent of his hardworking nature, and for the most part, understood the method he had chosen. My father was following by example. His own father had shown his love in a similar way, working hard to give my father opportunities that had not been available for his generation. But my grandfather had set a precedent for the relationship of men in our family. The love we had for one another was implicitly understood; assurance of this love did not require verbal or physical intimacy. We were family. You accepted that the love and support were there, however little it might be expressed.

As much as I could rationalize it, I still felt unsatisfied, wanting more than he was offering. I wanted him to act as though I had a place in his life. I didn’t want to be a responsibility that he was required to care for, but someone he cared enough to spend time getting to know. I wanted the father/son time that my friends talked about – the evening baseball games or weekend projects, the boys-only camp outs or the one-on-one basketball games at the park. I wanted the father “buddy” of television sitcoms and Hollywood movies. I wanted Bill Cosby or Mike Brady.

In the end, my father regretted the choices he had made in raising us, feeling as though he failed to be the best father he could have been. Too often, I think, I provided the fuel for that line of thinking. Though I had always been shy and solemn, by high school I had actively shut out him out of my life. If he couldn’t make time for me, then I sure as hell wasn’t making room for him. Each event he missed only supported my anger, my bitterness. By my junior year of high school, I had stopped most of my hobbies - playing tennis, studying the piano - and spent most of my free time in my bedroom, reading or writing while my radio drowned out the world. Since my father had shown his love and interest in my hobbies by buying me the best equipment, I tried to hurt him by letting those things go to waste.

It was bullshit, really, but I believed it at the time. I look back now and see how self-indulgent it was, how self-absorbed I was. I refused to see the limitations my own father had in expressing himself, as well as how inflexible I was with my own expectations. It was a long road out of that mindset, but, in the end, my father and I had come to an unspoken understanding. I accepted his tidbits of advice, allowing him to provide the emotional support he had failed to provide when I was young, and he accepted took my softened heart as a sign that I didn’t harbor any residual resentment for my missed youth with him.

My dad’s death came at a moment in my life when I had too many decisions to make, too many “possibilities” calling out to be explored. I was a rising senior in college, about to, as I thought of it, embark on the path that would shape the rest of my life. Before dad’s cancer diagnosis, I was certain about so many things, and more certain that those things met with my father’s approval. I resented my need for it, but I still found it comforting to have; though I never actively sought out my dad for advice, gaining his implicit approval of my choices provided me with a sense of confidence in my decisions. I hated disappointing people, especially my parents, and it felt like my chances of succeeding were exponentially improved if other people, and my parents, thought highly of them.

I was at school when dad was diagnosed. He was adamant that I stay at school. “I’ll be fine” was what he repeated over and over again. He didn’t want me disrupting my studies, and though I offered to take off the semester to come home multiple times, he insisted that I wait till the end of the school year. “I’m not worried, son. The doctors are pretty confident that we can get a hold of this. I don’t want you wasting your time.” It was the only time my father was wrong.

Dad died three weeks before fall semester was to begin. I couldn’t go back. I didn’t want to go back. His death seemed so illogical to me; I grew up, due much to my own father’s teachings, with a strong belief in the cause and effect nature of life. There was no cause here, no reason why he would contract cancer, no reason why he would go from a healthy and fit man of fifty-five to a weak and bed-ridden ghost in a matter of a few months. If life didn’t fit the cause and effect relationship I had been taught, then why was I doing the things I was doing? What guarantee was there that the things I had planned for would ever pan out?

With my dad gone, there was no secondary guide to direct my decisions, no system to check myself against. Sometimes, when there are too many options available, a second opinion provides the necessary influence to make a firm decision. That is the most important thing I think I lost when my dad died. And now, as I look back to my senior year in college and the ensuing chaos that eventually consumed it, I realize that, perhaps, this was what I was desperately trying to find; so used to having someone else’s opinion guide my decisions, I wanted someone to tell me what to do without telling me what to do. It was simpler that way, and probably why my life, until my dad’s death was so, well, normal.