WhateverBlog

My Father was 50 when I was born.  When I am 50, my son will be 18... old enough to fend for himself.  I wonder now what was on my Dad's mind when I came around. Probably something like, "Holy Crap! I thought we were done with the kids, already!"

It must have been frightening for him, knowing that as I grew up, he'd grow old.

When I was 12, he had a massive heart attack that he wasn't supposed to survive.

He did survive it. And he lived another 18 years.  What eventually killed him wasn't his heart, but a virus he picked up from the nurses in a hospital after a case of pneumonia. MRSA. Nasty stuff. Stay out of hospitals if you can help it. They'll kill ya.

As a parent myself now, I wonder if leaving children too young to be without parents was what kept him from giving up in the hospital when he was stuck to tubes and wires for what seemed like forever -- to me and probably to him as well.

Thinking about my own son, I'd fight hell itself to stay with him, to make sure he's safe, and to watch him grow up. Not that I believe in hell, but I'm just sayin' - a heart that doesn't work wouldn't stand in my way either.

It's been quite a few years since my Dad's death. I still miss him.  I still think about him often.  I wish I had talked to him more about his own childhood... but when I was growing up it was so hard to think of him as ever being young.  I never even knew the man when he had hair on his head.

He never got a chance to meet my son. I think they would have liked each other, though. My son has a whole lot of my mom's personality, and my Dad liked that enough to stay married to her for 45 years.  I think he would have liked that I named his grandson after him, too.

If he were alive, he'd be 91 right now. And when I think about him, I understand why people take to religions. I would love to believe he's still "out there" somewhere... that he knows what's going on (in a vague, not nosy, non-judgmental kinda way) and that I'll see him again.

But the only part of him that survives is his genes, which, I suppose, is a pretty darn good thing. I see my father in my brothers, in their kids, their grand-kids, and in me. Even his namesake grandson, for all my mom's personality, has some traits that make me think, "Yeah, that's my Dad."

So, for all the bits of him in those that are carrying on the best of who he was... Happy Father's Day.