Fathers and Sons

I mentioned in a previous post that I recently lost a very dear uncle.

The timing of his death closely coincided with the death of my own dad twenty-four years ago. As I watched my cousins grieve their father and my mom attempt to console her sister-in-law, it brought back a flood of memories of my dad's sudden passing at the age of fifty. I was twenty-five at the time, a grad student at LSU, with a wife and a young son of my own. My brother was in his senior year of high school.

My last memory of my dad was in a hospital parking lot in Birmingham, Alabama. We had come for a weekend visit to see my sick grandmother and he had followed me back to the car to us see us off back to Louisiana. We laughed and talked about the things we were going to do when I graduated and returned home. We made plans to buy a small Jon boat and do some fishing. Good times ahead that we would spend together. Our last words together were "see you son", "see you dad."

A week later I got a call that he was dead. Heart attack while working in the yard. My brother found him slumped over in the back of his pickup. Apparently the pain hit and he sat down on the tailgate to catch his breath, then laid back and never got up. His last view was that sweet blue Alabama sky.

I think of that a lot these days. I am getting close to the same age as he was when he died. I look at his picture and wonder if I am now having the same thoughts he had--if my views and outlook on life are similar to his at the time. I think we have a lot in common in the ways our lives have played-out, although his road was considerably harder than mine has been.

Sometimes I think of my own heart and wonder how many beats are left. I think of the similarities of stress and diet and genetics. I suspect I may also have a ticking time bomb inside, a devise with a timer that only the Master Bomb-Maker knows. How many ticks remain until the tumblers align and the timer hits zero?

One of my regrets is that I can never remember a time when we said "I love you" to each other. I wish my last words to him would have been "I love you, dad," instead of "See you, dad."

Three little words that never passed between us. And yet, they didn't have to. It was understood. It was played out in our lives, in our time together, interwoven into the very fabric of our lives. It was unspoken and unnecessary.

I suspect that the lack of verbal affection came from my dad's own childhood. He was the next to last child in a mill village house with eleven brothers and sisters. His own dad was a carpenter with bills to pay and a lot of mouths to feed. I'm sure sentimentality was in as short supply as cash money. Love was expressed by the clothes on your back and the food in your belly, as well as the stories and life lessons you got along the way. Perhaps it just wasn't a "manly" thing to say in the culture of that day.

My dad raised me in the same manner. He was a good and decent man who worked hard and sacrificed so that I could have a easier road than the one he walked. He was successful. No "I love you" was ever necessary. It was overtly implied. It was understood. Years later it still is.

And yet, it still bothers me somewhat. I am the the debtor in the verbal transaction. I wish I could somehow make it right. Perhaps in some small way I can.

Like father, like son. I have raised my two fine sons in the same manner. They have been the joy of my life, and I can say in all honesty that neither of them have ever given me reason to be anything but proud. I have been a most fortunate man. How many men can say that their sons have never disappointed them? I can.

My boys are grown now, both in their twenties. We've never been verbally affectionate either. No "I love yous" passing either way. Like my relationship with my own dad, it has been implied and understood.

I have decided to try to change that. It has been gradual and awkward. An "I love you son" slipped in occasionally as they drop by and then leave to pursue their own busy lives. It has been strangely satisfying.

I do this in hopes that I can stop the pattern, break the code of silence between fathers and sons. Halt regrets that need not be, regrets that begin at a graveside and can linger for a lifetime.

Three simple words between father and sons.

I think my dad would have liked that.