It was forty-four years ago today. My father died on this day in 1981.
In a New York minute, everything changed.
On my most recent birthday, earlier this year, I finally attained an age that my father failed to live long enough to reach. I was fourteen when Dad died. He was fifty-seven. He was an old fifty-seven. When he died, I suddenly became an old fourteen.
Anyone who lost a parent while you, yourself, were still a child can easily identify the line of demarcation denoting the moment at which your childhood ended. Once childhood ends, it ends forever. Much like P.T. Barnum's "great egress", once you have passed through that portal, re-entry is impossible. And so it was, not simply for me, but also for Jill and for Kara. Dad died right before the end of the school year in which I was in 8th grade and Jill was in 10th grade. Kara? Dad died less than two weeks prior to her high school graduation.
In the final year of my father's life, he and I had an exceptionally contentious relationship. We spoke to one another only when necessary and more often than not circled one another like dogs in a cage. For years, one of my favorite films has been Field of Dreams. Among my favorite scenes is the one in which Kevin Costner confides to James Earl Jones that he had left home for good shortly after telling his father he could never respect a man whose hero was a crook, referring to "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, an allegation he knew was untrue but one that he never had the chance to take back, because his father died before he could. I know from personal experience what an awful feeling that is with which to live.
It took me a long time - far longer than it should have - to forgive my father for the life he lived or, better said, the prism of a fourteen-year-old boy through which I viewed his life. I am embarrassed to admit I had no understanding of what caused him to go through his day-to-day as he did, until my own life forced me to walk a mile in his shoes.
Forty-four years. In the abstract, it seems to be a long time. In reality, it is just a New York minute, echoing forever.
-AK
