Thanks Dad

Thanks Dad


I was one of those fortunate children that were raised by parents that tried very hard to instill certain qualities and traits in me. I was never called stupid, even though I did stupid things as a child. I was never chastised for failing in any endeavor that I took on. I was constantly told I could be anything I wanted to be.
But as I stated in a previous story I was never able to decide what it was I wanted to do with my life, especially at the age of twelve. Well I’m not twelve anymore and have reached that age where I am starting to look back upon my life, reviewing it.
There are naturally certain events that have caused this trip down memory lane. One was reaching the magical age of fifty; the other was a severe decline in health. While I don’t want to sound melodramatic I felt as if I was facing death.
I can not help but wonder why a man will review his life, as if he could change it, when he thinks death is on the horizon.
As I started reviewing my life I was just a little surprised that I didn’t start with my childhood. Surely there were event s during those years that shaped what I became and what I did or did not do in my life. I would have thought that I would start during those years of childhood, as so many others do, in order to find a place to lay the blame on some one else, or upon the doorstep of some life changing event.
But the review of my life started in the winter of 1972. I was twenty-two years old and engaged to be married.

Just about every Sunday evening we would gather around the kitchen table to play cards or just talk. I really don’t remember whether we were playing cards on this particular evening. The evening would forever be defined in my mind by a realization and the subsequent conversation between my father and me.
Looking across the table at my father I suddenly realized that he was dying. He looked tired, wore out by life.
I quietly got up and went into my room, laid down on the bed facing the windows. Moments later my father came in and sat down on the edge of the bed. I said nothing. He laid his hand upon my shoulder and said; “Butch, we all die someday. I’m tired. I’ve lived a long life and a pretty good one. I am ready to rest.”
I was a little surprised that he knew what was bothering me and yet I realize now that I shouldn’t have been. We were a close as any father and son could possibly be. He always seemed to know what I was thinking and quite often we would sit for hours on a lake bank fishing, speaking very little. We seemed to understand each other and we enjoyed our time together.
I have always been amazed at the fact that a child seems to think that his or her parents will live forever. I was just as surprised that as I began reviewing my life searching for the answers to the question of; What is the meaning of Life, that I began with the realization of my fathers own mortality. Perhaps the answers lie in his life rather than my own.
“I have lived a good life”, were his words not mine. There are, I’m sure, those that would even question the accuracy of that statement.
He most certainly led an interesting life. Being born in 1903 the advancements he saw were, I’m sure, a little intimidating. He went into the service, 7th Calvary no less, at a young age. This was something that was common in the era in which he lived. He served at a literal fort in Texas at a time when Poncho Via was causing all kinds of problems. He rode a horse, never riding in a jeep. He experienced John Phillip Sousa first hand and actually met him. He marveled at the abilities of a vaudeville man named George M. Cohan and played the songs that he wrote. He watched with the world and anxiously waited for word about Charles Lindbergh in 1927. He read the headlines as the newsboys hawked their papers. Wyatt Earp has died. The year was 1929. He walked the streets of Norwood, Ohio looking for any kind of work during the great Depression.
After the depression he got a job driving a truck for Anchor Motor freight delivering new cars. He drove bus for Cincinnati transit, that’s where he met his future wife. The last job he held was that of cab driver for Cincinnati Yellow Cab. He was too old to drive truck and to old to be hired for anything else.
He had bought a farm in the forties calling it Windy Acres. He sold it in 1948. It would be the last time he owned his own home.
His wife gave birth to a baby boy, that’s me, in 1950.
He buried his first born son at age twenty-six in 1959. Lost to lung cancer.
He took in his disabled mother-law when she had no place to go. Several years later he would also take in his disabled sister-in law for the same reasons.
He stood by his wife through the loss of a son, several surgeries for hip replacement and knee replacement. He stood by her even though she never fully recovered from the loss of her first born.
He did without some of the things that he wanted in order to provide for his family. As a child growing up I always had nice clothes and new shoes. I had all the toys that other kids had and some they didn’t.
I must interject, in all fairness; my mother also did without those new dress and new shoes that all the other women seemed to have.
They had a son to raise.
I never went to bed hungry.
I never went to bed in a cold house.
As a child I would sit on the front porch and watch my father walk up the street, going to work. On many occasions he walked so slowly that it seemed he would never get to the corner to catch the bus. Being sick was no reason to stay home there were bills to be paid, clothes to buy, a son to raise.
I never once heard my father cry out,” Why me.”
I never heard my father blame my mother or anyone else for his lot in life.
I never heard my father speak ill of my mother’s side of the family, or anyone else for that matter.
I never heard him speak with malice to anyone.

Albert Einstein once said,” The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.”
It would seem that today the worth of a man is determined by the material things that he has. The type of car he drives the suburb he lives in. Where he took his family on vacation and how long they stayed there seems to be of importance when determining the value of a mans life.
By the standards that seem to be in play to-day perhaps my father didn’t have that great of a life.
But my father used words like integrity, honesty, faithfulness when looking at other men. He measured his life by those words.
My father was right; he had lived a good life.
Moreover, you know what, so Have I.
Thanks Dad.