I know many people will speak of a deceased parent and say that person was "the best" parent ever. I am someone who is inherently cynical (though I think I'm merely realistic, which is exactly what a cynic would say), and not prone to hyperbole. Which I why I'm able to comfortably say those other people are wrong, because my father truly was.
I've mentioned my father's past in this thread, which I'll repeat here:
He admittedly misspent much of his youth, a spoiled doctor’s son who was expelled from Lock Haven HS and sent to military school, only to be kicked out of there for knocking out a teacher. The guidance counselor at Lock Haven told my grandparents not to expect him to ever be anything more than a gas station attendant or house painter.
He didn’t fair much better in college, being thrown out of Alfred University multiple times. One time while home from one of those expulsions, he was working at the Lock Haven paper mill, and an old timer asked him what his plans were. He said to spend a few months there and figure it out. The man told him he’d said the same thing 30 years ago. He quit that day and went back to school to finish that time.
He finished college and went off to Penn State for a graduate degree. There, as a bartender at the Sheraton, he met my mother who was waitressing, another Penn Stater with a young child from a brief marriage as a teenager. They fell in love, but were still leading a poor life. Then they found the Lord and their lives and paths were changed forever. My father adopted my oldest brother, and they then had my other brother and I.
He worked in the commercial and residential door industry then for 40 years, eventually becoming the VP of sales and marketing for a billion dollar company. He's one of only two people awarded the lifetime honorary member award with the Internal Door Association. Most importantly, he showed me the value of maintaining your integrity no matter what. He was looked up to and admired in his industry for those reasons. He was able to travel every corner of this country and many parts of the world as a result, achieving more than a million miles flown with multiple airlines. Not bad for a gas station attendant or house painter.
What really mattered to me though was that he was my best friend. And my hero. He was everything I want to be in a man in every way. From the type of husband he was to my mother, to the type of father he was to us, to the type of businessman he was. He was an aggressive fighter who backed down to no one, but I never heard him raise his voice or argue with my mom once. I remember as a child visiting friends' houses and hearing the way their parents talked to one another and being shocked, because I never heard that at my house. He honored my mother in every way, and insisted that everyone else did as well. He enjoyed a good drink, but I never saw him drunk. He enjoyed a good meal (and peanut butter cups, and snickers, and ice cream with chocolate syrup), but was always in incredibly good shape. He was always perfectly organized, perfectly groomed, perfectly fit.
One of my brothers and I both happened to marry into women from very difficult situations. My wife's mother is a borderline personality and bipolar, and who has actively rooted for bad things to happen to her for her entire life, because she wants her to be as miserable as her. Her father is a paranoid schizophrenic that created serious anxiety issues for her at a young age, and who is a constant stress and depressant. About a year into their relationship, the father of my brother's wife shot and killed her mother, then killed himself. She was 20 at the time, her sister was 12. My father became the de-facto father to all of them, filling the role of the stable, secure, loving father-figure none of them ever had. My wife ran multiple half-marathons with my father as he finally had the running partner none of his sons were. That once 12-year old sister of my brother's wife had my father walk her down the aisle at her wedding last September. So he wasn't just a father to us, he was also the father these other 3 women so badly needed.
There is no one in my life who I had more fun with than my dad. My mom would always say that nobody on earth enjoyed each other more than he and I did. We just enjoyed all of the exact same things so closely. And nobody laughed better than my dad. It was the type of deep, fall to the floor, can't breathe laughing that would make anyone else around laugh uncontrollably even if they had no idea what had started the laughter. His laughter is one of the things I will miss the most. I've never met anyone whose laugh was so contagious, so perfect.
I'm 40 years old, so maybe this is pathetic, but I still lived to make him proud. To impress him. Nothing made me feel better than to tell him about the things I'd done or was doing, and to hear him react and tell me how that made him feel. Maybe he was just appeasing me, but it worked. I think now often about how every time something happens where ordinarily I'd want to reach out to him, I won't have that anymore. Today, my wife texted me a picture of my 10-year old son in his cast (I came home for 2 days at the beginning of last week, and while we were playing catch in the front yard, he dove and broke his wrist...). He'd chosen the blue cast so it would be Penn State colors. When I got it, my mind immediately thought to send it to my dad. About a minute later my wife texted that she'd just thought she should send it to him before it hit her.
It's so hard right now to imagine how so much joy in my life can ever be replaced. He just added so much to everything that I love. Can any of those things ever be the same without him? They can't of course, they can still be great, but they'll never be the same. So I'll have to find other things which aren't attached to him, because those things will always be shadowed by the thought of how much better they'd be if he were still there. And I can't dwell on those. I have a responsibility to make my son's life as full of joy through me as mine was through him. I just wish so desperately he could've known my father for another couple decades. But when I'm busy feeling sorry for myself or him, I remind myself of my best friend who died of brain cancer at 15, or my mom's best friend who died of breast cancer at 38 with two daughters in 5th and 7th grade. They would have given anything to live to 71 and see their children grown.
As I finally got home last night, I sat and talked with my son a bit. Told him how we would never forget his "Pa," and that we'd often talk about him to remember him. Sometimes that would mean we laugh, and sometimes that would mean we cry, but that both emotions were okay. My wife had told me he didn't want to cry in front of me or my mom because he didn't want to make us more upset. His first reaction when my wife first told him that he had died was to ask if my mom was okay. And after I talked with him, he said that the thing that was most important to him is how thankful he is that the procedure last week worked so my dad wasn't in pain anymore when it happened. Even if I can't ever live up to my father's standard, my son appears well on his way.
I've said this on here before, and I will again, thank you so much to everyone who has followed along, offered encouragement and prayers, and shared in the sadness and joy along the way. Many would consider it stupid, but the ability to unload my thoughts and emotions on here with you all has meant a lot to me, and I'm forever grateful to you. You've got drinks on me should we ever meet.
