The last time I saw my father outside a hospital and fairly aware, able to carry on something of a conversation, was Fathers' Day a year ago. That was also the last time my son saw his grandfather at all. Nicky's big news at the time was that, after years of struggling through debilitating migraines, he had graduated high school. My father wasn't able to grasp what that was about, or even quite what his relationship was to this kid, but he understood that Nicky was someone who mattered to him and that something good had happened.
Today is my first Fathers' Day without a father. It's also the first in this new era of my own life as a parent, as Nicky pulls steadily out from under his health issues and starts to get his life back, getting ready for a summer trip to New York to stay with a friend and then an autumn in Japan to study, needing me less and less all the time. Today we're going to a local county fair to wallow in pig races, junk food, and Mexican music, a fair we saw together years ago when he was little, the kind of cornball thing my dad would have liked. Meanwhile my father's ashes wait in my bedroom in a little box for the trip to the Montana Rockies my brother and I will be taking next month to scatter him in the place he loved best.
I never did care much about Fathers' Day as such. Contrived commercial holiday and all that. But I like it as a day to stop and look around, to note where I am on this long, good course.
2 comments:
How exciting that Nicky is going to spend the fall in Japan! But it must be hard not having your dad around today. I can't remember my first Mother's Day without my mother. It was just two months after she died (15 years ago), so I must have blocked it out. Sounds like you're in a great place on your trajectory as a father. Congrats! And Happy Father's Day!
Thanks for the note, Meghan! And yes, it's good watching things get slowly, steadily better for the kid!
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