Mourning.
How much can life suck in the space of a month? Quite a lot, so it would seem. In February, I lost a dear friend who didn't think his life was worth living anymore. Today, I lost my Father, who wanted only to give his sons and loving wife the world.
My attention was called this morning as my cell phone rang, the display flashing red as it does when known numbers call. The name in the display, my dad. But it wasn't him, it was my mother, in tears. This was more than a little unusual for her, as in my years I don't think I've ever seen my mother cry. She's a tough woman, and she raised kids of the same.
She told me that my father had died, one day after his 62nd birthday.
It's interesting how, if you've done something long enough, you can do it without paying any attention to it at all. On Autopilot, for all the world. Well, that's how work went today, as even as I write this I can't begin to process the emotion I feel right now. I didn't think anything could be worse than September 11th for me, I didn't think anything could hurt more or cut at my very soul as watching thousands of people die. I was wrong.
Dad was born in a time that held little hope for the world, a time when the world was in the final stages of a very bloody war. It was a stark contrast to how he would live his life. He had dreams, as most do, and he was willing to do whatever it took to achieve them. He was a simple man, born of a hard working family and rather far removed form the silver spoon. He had little use for formal education. But that didn't stop him from mastering physics, aerodynamics, and the piles of technical manuals required to fly one of the fastest and deadliest fighter aircraft in the world.
He flew F-104 Starfighters, at first, patrolling the skies of Germany against the new threat of the day, the cold war. These planes, nicknamed Widowmaker, had a tendency to end up several feet below farmers fields as they were so fast, the pilots would often fly them into mountains before realizing how close they were to them. They also had a tendency to have turbine fires, one of which happened to my father, forcing him to eject. He got tangled up with the seat and broke his ankle when he finally came down. I still have the screw they put in his bones to hold them together.
I once asked him why he did this. After all, there are a lot of other things one can do short of strapping into a rocket with wings and flying into the ether at mach two. He answered simply, "Because I wanted to see what was up there." He had other reasons, of course. Flying was in his very spirit, as it is in mine. Our bloodlines have been those of fliers for a hundred years, and that draw is so hard to ignore that I even find myself yearning for the cockpit of an F-16. He also was the kind of person who would always put his needs and desires after his sense of duty, and that never changed. He risked his life daily in a silver lawn dart so that little boys and little girls the world around could sleep securely in their beds, knowing that they wouldn't be bombed on his watch.
After his service, he went into a private life, using such an amazing skill the like of which I never saw. He became a carpenter, and later, through that a gunsmith. I remember how as a boy, I'd venture down to his workshop to watch him create so many things with his hands. Be it turning stocks that would become works of art from walnut, inlaying them with ivory, ebony and gold, or hand-forging sears and jeweling bolts, each of his works are a masterpiece in their own right.
I stripped his Colt 1911 before my years numbered in the double digits, having watched him a hundred times and learned the process. I was scared, of course, as I didn't know exactly how to put the thing back together, but I'll never forget his face when he found out. Pride, and so much of it I doubt he himself even realized. It's an expression I would see many times over the years, as I tried so hard to be him and do as he would do.
He bought me my first motorcycle when I was eight, in a day when times were tough and he had a family to support. I would ask him, years later, why he hadn't gotten something for himself instead. He answered, for the look on your face, son. For the look on your face.
So began his sharing his knowledge with me on a great many things. If we weren't bedding stocks or bore-sighting scopes, we were wrenching on cars or bikes. He taught me everything he knew about cars, which was really quite a lot. Later in life, when I bought my first car, he'd be right there every time I opened the garage to work on it. I found it annoying at the time, as I wanted to do things for myself as all teenagers will, but he'd always jump in and help me, often doing a better job than I would have. Through this I learned well, and later in life when carbs gave way to fuel injection, and pushrods to turbochargers, I started to show him a thing or two. I saw that face many times when he saw I had done something remarkable, his pride in me made him smile in a way that I'll never forget.
Life went on, and I moved away as all sons will, to start my own life and aim for the clouds as he did. But, we remained close. I got him interested in computers, something which he wanted no part of until I showed him the ropes and let his creativity do the rest. He got hooked on photoshop, often scratching away on a wacom tablet until the wee hours, always a little marveled by the electronic age. He'd email me various car concepts and the like that he'd draw, or send a greeting card, airbrushed with love rather than bought from a store display.
I never imagined that the last time I would see him would be when he drove me to the airport after my last visit home. He hugged me, something my father rarely did. He wasn't a guy to express his love in conventional ways, but, we all knew how much he cared.
My father was entering the sunset of his life, but he had many years of it left, or so I thought. I wanted him to see me do a Broadway show, a pursuit of mine which he was so very proud of. I wanted him to pick up and move out here eventually, to help me start a garage and speed shop bearing our names, perhaps even a race team for the weekends. I wanted to do so many things for my dad, as he had done for me for so long. I wanted to build him that Shelby Cobra he always wanted. I wanted to go to the range with him, talk guns, and drink soda in the shade with the sweet taste of burnt gunpowder on our tongues. I wanted him to see me climb into that jet one day, light the burner and soar into the sky as he had done for many years.
I wanted him to know that he gave me the greatest gift that any father ever could, the desire to achieve.
I look back now, as hard as it is as I sit here filled with grief. I remember all the times I wish I had spent an extra day with him, even another hour, instead of going off to hang out with my friends or run through the gears on a twisting mountain road. I know how all those other sons feel, those who lost their fathers before their time.
He'll be in the clouds, now, I suppose. Just like he loved to be years past. Only now, he won't have to land. He held his son high for the world to see, and many years since. I'll always remember, and love him for it.
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
--John Donne