Dad is a complicated man, full of contradictions, yet resolute in many of his ways. Everything he told us boys not to do, he'd done. He told us never to steal, lie, or cheat, but then would regale his peers with stories of how he'd done those very things as a young man. He would gleefully tell about how he used to run moonshine and got busted one night. He would often tell how he took my mom out on his motorcycle, and got in a bad wreck after promising my mom's mother that he wouldn't take her out on it. It was always told in a way to make her out as the wicked girl who disobeyed her parents. I think in a way he needed to bring her down a notch so that he didn't have to feel like she was better than he was. Like I said, he was a complicated man.
As I watched him looking on that cold marble stone, I wondered what he was thinking. Dad very rarely talked about love, or touchy-feely things. You got the sense that he loved you, but he could never say it. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he said it to me in 67 years. More than that, I can't remember him telling Mom that he loved her. On the other hand, Mom breathed the words with every breath, and lived them out through years of loneliness, and unspoken love.
Actually, I felt sorry for him as he stood there in the cold November morning with the leaves of their 67 years together laying all around him. Time has a way of stripping the vibrant greens of our youth to leave us with empty branches and fallen leaves. Mom was the bright spring of his life, and without her he was just a bare and lifeless tree.
I don't want to make this a condemnation of his life. By and large, he was a good man, who tried to raise us boys to not be like the worst side of him. He would, and often did give those he loved anything he could give to help them. I was often the recipient of cars, motors, motorcycles, and cash during my early years in the Air Force. He had a huge tender spot for all of his daughter-in-laws, and all of his grandchildren. BUT, His help didn't come without harsh words for stupid actions. If you were being rescued because of something dumb you did, you would suffer his ridicule forever. Everybody would know how stupid you were. Even if he didn't approve of you, he would help you...(end of original blog)
I don't remember where I was going with the thoughts I was trying to write down. As I look at the picture of him alone, and grieving I know I felt sorry for him. The last five years of my mother's life were hell, and Dad was helpless as a caregiver. Severe dementia took away the vibrant woman who shaped my life in ways that still affect me long after her death. Dad couldn't, and didn't handle her dementia well at all. Our weekly breakfasts at the local diner became gripe sessions for him to unload his frustrations. It was a mistake for me to assume that once Mom was gone that he would be happy and free. You can't just erase 67 years together.
Now, I know what he was feeling after losing my own wife of 47 years together. In talking to a very good friend who lost a spouse after over 50 years of being together, I realize that despite their flaws, and even despite your own flaws, the melding of two lives is a powerful, spiritual act, that transcends the physical, and sexual bonds of being married. You become we, and us, with titles like DL and Beverly, Dave and Glenda...and on, and on, and on.
As I stood there taking this picture, I snapped two more as he walked around her grave, being careful not to step on the bare soil above her casket. With a somber, subdued smile he said; "She was a gooder ol' girl, wasn't she boy?"
"Yes, she was." I said softly as I grabbed him by his arm and walked with him to the truck...
That's where the original blog draft ended, I think where I wanted to go with this blog is to show how short life can be, and how we love, and even who we love matters. When we're young, love is measured in how they make us feel, what they can give us, and whether they make us look good. I cant' imagine the loss Dad felt when Mom passed away, because he really never expressed whether she was important to him or not. He always couched his attachment to her in terms of the years they'd been together, or the things they did together. To say the least, I wasn't always happy about the things my dad did to my mom, or most of the things he said to her. Not too long ago I figured out he was just a great big kid still stuck in his teens. It didn't matter how old he was, the memories that brought a smile to his face were from his teenage years.
I never got to mourn him when he died because Glenda had just had brain surgery, and I was facing the bitter reality of losing my own wife, and Like Dad, I am left to grieve the loss of the person who shaped me more than I'll ever know. That's often the course of our lives, especially for those of us who have the misfortune to outlive our wives. It's like a book that's half written, you know what the ending should be, but you'll never really know for sure.
So, there you have it, our lives don't really play out much different no matter how we wish they would. Actually, I kinda wish someone could have taken a picture of Dad and I standing together. That would have really been a reflection upon a life.
