On my dad

A Father’s Day post, with a surprise at the end

May 30, 2021, last month, would have been the 100th birthday of my (adopted) dad, Roger James.

I’ve written a lot about losing my mom, and about the reality of losing my parents, but I’ve talked less about the loss of my dad at age 13. And that’s because in the decades after Daddy died, I felt deep shame and regret about how I’d treated him toward the end.

We were 60 years apart — as I was approaching 10, he was turning 70.

While he was slowing down in life, I was speeding up. I buzzed around him like a fruit fly, often impatient and wishing he were like other dads — more energetic and modern.

Today, I’m profoundly grateful to keep his stories of being a torpedoman on the USS Guardfish, a World War II submarine that was depth charged in the South Pacific, costing him a lung. Of his stories of the Great Depression, of going to bed hungry. He loved history. I rarely showed him this gratitude in person. I rolled my eyes — why did he always have to talk about the past?

He never graduated high school, but he was smarter than most of us. He’d read the entire World Book Encyclopedia set. He read the dictionary. 

“I can spell Czechoslovakia,” I bragged, once. Maybe about second grade.

“Oh yeah,” he replied, barely glancing up from the television. “Now spell Saskatchewan.”

I ran to our home library — two walls of books — to look it up.

Daddy loved me, unconditionally. At times, when I’d flit past his reclining chair, he’d hold out his hand. I’d sigh, and stand there, holding his hand for as long as I could stand it. He wanted to connect. I wanted to go! I didn’t want to stand still.

He wore Old Spice. He never wore his hearing aid, or his dentures. He was stubborn. He clipped his ear hairs and his nose hairs, as was expected of him. And he took me with him to the barber shop, where he connected with other vets and kept current on his crew cut.

He adored the women in his life — his wife and his daughters. And he taught me how I deserved to be treated by a husband — doted upon and adored. Before either of us left the house, we gave each other a kiss. You never know when you might not see someone again.

Years after he died, while I was in the midst of unbraiding my grief from guilt and regret, some morning before dawn, I felt his presence.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy,” I sobbed. “I didn’t appreciate you when you were here.”

He forgave me. I felt it. He still loved me. We were good.

Daddy often started sentences with, “God willing,” or “Lord willing.”

It used to drive me nuts. I know now what he meant.

Lord willing, my husband and I will give birth to our third child, our first son, this fall, and we’ll name him after my dad.

I hope I’m never in too much of a hurry to hold his hand.

~* end *~

Photos of my dad and me. The pink bow is my favorite. I put it there, and he endured it. That’s love.