Happy Birthday To You

Today is my father’s birthday. He would be in his mid fifties now, barely old enough to have a 33 year old daughter, let alone a 16 year old grandson. I wonder what kind of grandfather my father would have been to Max. Naturally, I also often wonder what kind of father he would have become through the years. Who would I be today? How would his presence have differently formed me? I realize these questions are moot, but it is fair for me to ask them and finally, I’ve stopped feeling otherwise. As if by doing so I am betraying my mother. Or his memory.

Some might believe you cannot miss someone you hardly know. You cannot long for a man whose face you hardly remember. This is not true for me. I do miss him, or maybe I miss the part of me that is missing. It’s hard to say.

He may be gone from this life and my questions may never be answered, but clearly, an aspect of his legacy lives on. It is said that my father was a fiercely passionate man and that in this way, I take after him. I thank him for that. I know there must be other things within me that stem from him that live on, but I am sort of always left to question that because I’ll never really know for sure.

It took a rather startling comment from my Aunty MB for me to realize that another way in which my father lives on through the generations is the fact that my son does look quite a bit like my father. I went and dug up some pictures that I tend to not look through very often because I have spent a life time thinking I needn’t really “deal with a lot of this right now” and by putting those pictures and letters and poems in boxes for a later date, I could sort of pretend like this pain wasn’t lurking somewhere in that closet which I can now realize is wholly symbolic of my heart. I think I’ve always been so absorbed with just surviving or other distractions to begin to delve much further then the logical obvious that when a little girl’s daddy dies, it’s going to affect her forever. Stuffed down pain doesn’t hide for long, it surfaces and when it does, it surely can take some ugly forms if not managed properly. Anyway, that’s a subject for another day. What I will tell you is that while looking through some of these photo’s of my father as a young man, I can see a pretty clear resemblance between him and my son. And now that I can see this, I can’t un-see it. It does not make me sad. Not in the least. That’s progress folks, major.

Some days, I feel I can’t dwell to long on this subject because clearly the fates had different ideas for me and my father. I know he loved me, I know my mom loves me. I know they did the best they could, I know how easy it is to fall into the abyss as a parent and not fully realize how your decisions are affecting your children, or the other people you share bonded love with. Experience does that to you, you know. It brings about tolerance of things that perhaps you once blamed another harshly for. My parents were just children, jeez he was still such a young man when he passed….still only on the verge of man-hood once could argue, even though he had a daughter and another on the way. I’ve long since forgiven him in my mind.

But, sadly, the heart is another matter. I still haven’t forgiven him for leaving such a big hole in me, even if it’s not his fault that he was taken so early, that’s where the blame lies. Again, it’s that whole idea of logically knowing something and reality being two different things. And on days like today, I miss him and I am sad that he’s not here to share in life’s little pleasures. No doubt Rose will likely have children and while I am done having kids, I know my father would have liked very much to have a grandson. I think my dad would’ve grown into himself, like we all do.

So, I wanted to wish him happy birthday in a public way.

Happy Birthday Daddy, I love you. You are missed.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve said that word, it makes me cry but it feels good.