I Miss My Dad, Especially As Christmas Nears (one of my most memorable newspaper columns ever)

Related: Dear Dad, A Few Thoughts
and My dad and journalism 
and A Fathers Day Letter to My Dead Father

I think of this newspaper column as we approach Christmas, when I spend a week or more in the house where mom and dad lived most of my life.... which includes one area where he is remembered in a collection of a photographs.

Most of this piece I wrote in 2001 after losing my dad in a fight to cancer. I revived and republished it online in 2007 when my Uncle Ernie, who I talk about in the column also got cancer and he died too.

This is one of the most meaningful pieces I have ever written as I ended it by beseeching everyone reading it in the Hagerstown, Maryland newspaper to go tell their kids that they loved them. 

I was flooded with emails and letters from parents (and sometime adult sons) proclaiming they had just had the best conversations with their son/adult in many many years. I'd call that a win.

Over time my opinion of my dad has improved and I'm embarrassed by some of my criticism of him but I'm going to resist the impulse to sanitize what I wrote.
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I miss my father.

There were times when I thought I would never miss this overbearing,
pushy, sometimes rude man.

Sure, he was sometimes fun to be around. Who wouldn't love a quirky
father who would stop in a busy intersection to pick up aluminum cans
or thrown away magazines? Or insist that each family member order
something different at a restaurant so we can more adequately explore
the joint's offerings? Or steal crackers from the table so we could be
sure to have snacks later? The result was that at home we'd have a
box of stolen crackers and would never need to buy crackers.

He had a curious mind, and if there was something he didn't understand,
he would get books from the library to figure them out. He read five
newspapers daily and compared them - or at least he'd buy them and
put them on a trampoline that served as a temporary newspaper stand.

He'd pass on jokes he heard, and hearing him laugh was at times
infectious.

And dad would never walk away when talking to you. He'd listen, and
while he may be unresponsive and snort at inopportune times, he would
not totally ignore you.

But that was not enough for me, though it may have been for
less-demanding children.
Still I wanted more - more love, more affection, more attempts at saying
"I love you" or "I am proud of you."

Friends and relatives said people of his generation, especially veterans
like him, couldn't say those words. But I rejected that theory.

When he started to die of skin cancer, he went to the library and took
out numerous books so he could better understand the present and
future problems, and challenges of his failing body.

Using knowledge and experience from his lifelong engineering
profession, his work as a professor and his hobby of pushing his body
to its limits by running marathons, he vowed until the end that he would
fight and defeat the cancer.

We became closer. I began calling him more often and talking about
our lives. He surprised me a few times. One day when I was about 28
he called me out of the blue - it was the first time my dad had ever
called me.

Another time he e-mailed me to ask for advice on how to deal with a
journalist who wanted to interview him. The suggestion that I now had
information he wanted me to bestow on him - blew me away. Maybe he
was proud of me after all?

I was with him in his final days. He told me he adopted a theme song to
repeat endlessly while he tried to win the biggest fight of his life.

Soon tubes were placed down his throat and I imagined he was still singing that song in his mind.

I forgot what the song was but I've not forgotten dad.

As he died I realized he would never say those words I wanted to hear.

But at his funeral I met his younger brother, who told me that dad would call my uncle and speak admiringly of me and tell him how proud he was of me.

Much of my frustration and anger at dad went away in the months after
hearing my uncle's words, dealing with dad's death and working through
grief. They were replaced by realizations that he wasn't such a bad guy
after all.

While I was struggling to avoid his bad habits, I was also picking up
some of his good ones, such as patience, perseverance and humility.

His life leaves a permanent mark on me. And while I used to think
otherwise, that's not a bad mark to have.

Dad's birthday is April 25. Happy birthday, Dad.

And happy Father's Day, too.

I picture you up there in heaven right now, sitting in a comfortable
chair, watching the University of Michigan Wolverines trounce another
college while you sit, relaxed, reading newspapers and magazines.

Maybe you even get this newspaper, too. I sure hope so.

You've left this earth but not my mind.

Uncle Ernie was the same as my dad - he could say those words about
his children to other relatives but not to his children. I made him promise to tell his children he loved them and he did.

You should, too.