One Year in and the Rest of my Life to go…

Bear with me…

A year ago, my aunt, who I don’t talk to very often, called me to tell me that my dad (her only sibling) had unexpectedly passed away.  This was 6 months after a similar call about my grandmother falling and being airlifted to Harborview where she eventually passed away.  Being my dad’s only child, and being who I am, I first freaked out a little, then immediately went into “I must take care of all of this” mode.  My dad was 65, healthy according to his doctors, but smoked most of his life.  Quite a few years ago he had stopped smoking to “get healthy”, then after a few years he started again.

More recently, Devon and I had our first daughter — My dad’s first grandchild.  He stopped smoking, and he talked to a doctor about some indigestion, which was diagnosed as nothing serious.  The “cute young VA nurses” (as he referred to them) talked him into changing his diet.  Did you know that 3 to 4oz of beef is a normal portion, not 16oz plus two potatoes?  So there’s my dad in 2014, a former smoker, eating healthier than me, no alcohol to speak of, literally a survivor of a Viet Cong bomb (Purple Heart and Bronze Star to prove it), a fisherman and a hunter, and here in 2015, at 65 years of age he has a heart attack while watching television on his couch.  How do you reconcile that?

I’m not sure if my wife Devon and the rest of my family really see it, but I didn’t and haven’t taken this well.  I have literally given up on work.  Luckily my employer hasn’t appeared to notice.  Our long term boat trip is all that I think about most days, it consumes me with it’s promises of peaceful sails across a forgiving ocean under a bright tropical sun.

Just a few days before Christmas (Dec 22, 2015 specifically) a very old friend of mine from elementary school, who also lost her dad recently, sent me a Facebook message with a link to a music video.  Honestly, I left the message unread until today.  Tonight I clicked the link and listened to the song that her aunt had sent to her, fully 3 weeks after she sent me the message.  And I cried.  It certainly hits home, “one less present under the tree”.  And I feel guilty about that, that my life has so quickly moved on from my dad’s death, such that Christmas doesn’t include him and that’s somehow normal.

As I close my father’s estate (which by the way is one of the shittiest things a person has to go through in his/her life) I feel some sort of closure, but then I worry that I shouldn’t feel closure.  Before his unexpected death I had told my dad about our long term cruising plans and he was excited.  He talked about meeting us somewhere and travelling for some period of time with us.  I had assumed that I’d probably have to arrange and pay for that if it was to happen, something I’m completely okay with, but now I just feel guilty for thinking that way.

My mother re-married when I was young, two times actually, and her third husband raised me from the age of about six.  I refer to my second step dad by his first name, Tim, but he’s much more than that to me.  I’ve always known that Tim was an important part of my life but it was sort of lost in the ether until my biological father past away.   My daughters had spent a bit of time with my dad, referring to him as “Grandpa Anderson” and loving their time him.  He loved his time with them as well, you could see it, a sort of renewed vigor.

My dad had told me that he wanted to do various things…

• Take a Caribbean cruise
• Explore Alaska
• Go back to Hawaii
• Move back to the Seattle area (something I’d actually been pressuring him about)

He didn’t get to do any of these things.

I’ve decided that my dad’s death is proof positive that you should pursue your dreams with vigor and without delay.  Not knowing what to do, since he had no will, I had my dad cremated.  I had a portion of his ashes put into three necklaces, one for my aunt, one for my grandfather, and one for me.  My families adventure starts in 17 months, kids and all, across an ocean, around the world, anything can happen. And my dad is riding along, around my neck.

Shortly after my dad’s death, I consulted a counselor to try and address the stress and guilt I felt at the time.   The counselor assigned me the task of writing a letter to my dad.  I was quite upset about this task but accomplished it nonetheless.  At the time I would not have shared the letter with anyone but somehow I feel like it’s okay now.  So to round out this post, here you go, the letter I wrote to my father after his passing.  You are the first to read this… take it or leave it.

Dad,

It really never occurred to me that I’d be writing to you about this at this time in my life.  Over the past year or so I feel like our lives were sort of reintegrating as Morgan and Olivia became more aware of the various people in their lives and began spending some time with you in particular.  Of course you and I have always gotten along great and spent time together throughout my life but I feel like you may have had a renewed vigor recently, possibly because of having grandchildren, I don’t really know for sure.  I saw that you took the time to be sure that you were healthy, that you were eating right, that you stopped smoking, and somehow it was all in vain which is distressing.

It’s particularly sad that the girls and you won’t be able to spend more time together – I know they really enjoyed the time they did have and Morgan brings you up every so often, in the very strange ways that a 4 year old talks about someone who is no longer around.  She tried to help in her own way by reminding me that I still had another dad.  A statement that actually made me realize that I was lucky to have both you and Tim in my life, even if the reason was that my parents had been divorced.  She followed up by telling me she wanted a step mom some day, something I hope I am unable to deliver on, though I can see the appeal from her perspective.

I always enjoyed talking to you, even if I was so busy that I felt like I didn’t have the time.  I think my biggest regret of late is that I didn’t slow down and actually make the time to visit you more.  I feel paralyzed by conflicting priorities — work, family time at home, time with local family, time for vacation, time for just myself, time for you, time for grandma and grandpa including logistics of driving over there and back.  I’ve been self-reflecting a lot lately about what my priorities should be and I’m really no closer to knowing the answer.  Some day I will.

I hope that you felt like you had a good life, that you got what you wanted out of your life.  It’s amazing to me that after suffering so much tragedy in Vietnam, that you were able to go out and hunt, fish, camp (including with me) for your whole life after that.  Mike recently told me that he fondly remembers the time when you even took him fishing, despite not being his biological or step dad.

When Sue called me to tell me that you had passed away, I had prepared myself for hearing of Grandpa’s passing, and was blindsided by the reality.  I had actually planned to call you that weekend since it had been a week or so.  In reality, I realized later that it had been 3 weeks, and I’m frustrated with myself for letting it go that long.  I feel like I would have known something happened had I tried calling, and maybe you wouldn’t have been there, alone for so long.  I don’t really know what happened, I could only go by my layman’s knowledge of health and heart conditions, common sense, and what the experts tell me…  I’m told and I hope that it’s true that your passing was quick, quiet, uneventful, and painless.  All I can do is accept that as truth.

As you probably know I’ve never been super religious, though I was raised more or less Christian with some Catholic thrown in here and there.  I’m also very engineering and science oriented so I very much understand the physics of reality.   All that is to say that while I know what science tells me, I hope that there is at least some truth to what the Bible says… that our souls go on after our bodies fail, and that you now have the opportunity to see your mother, healthy again, and experience the growth of your grandchildren in some way that I do not fully comprehend.

I know I really didn’t say it enough, but I do love you.  You may not have been the father who raised me in the traditional sense, but you were kind, loving, trustworthy, and I believe much of what I am as a person was influenced by you..  Not to mention you were humble enough to be an actual war hero without telling anyone about it.

I really would have liked for your passing to come later in both our lives, so that you could experience more time with us, and the girls in particular.  But maybe there is a reason that it happened now; maybe this was the best way for you to move on without agony, long-term depression, or some horrible ailment you have to deal with for years.  I hope that’s the reason anyway.  I also hope that now you can sleep peacefully and soundly, without nightmares of the past to bother you.

I miss you.. We miss you.. I’m so sorry!  Good-bye for now…

Your Son