Happy Birthday, Dad!

For the last few years, I've tried to teach myself to say "This used to be my dad's birthday". I'm done with that, now. This is the day my dad was born, regardless of whether or not he's still here. Dad was a countdown baby, "Five... Four... Three... Two..." (5/4/1932). He would have been seventy-nine years old, today.

I thought I was a pretty normal kid, growing up. Dad would, from time to time, try to teach me some goofy lesson about patriotism, about getting involved in my community, about civic responsibility. I was much more interested in trying to learn the opening solo of "Reelin' In The Years" and how to convince girls to go with me out to the airport. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good to vote. It's also good to drive a new Camaro. Yesterday was Election Day here in Lincoln. Dad would have been proud of me, for voting.

The way I have dealt with the grief over dad's death is probably a measure of how important he was to me in life. I had no idea. Everyone else who lost a father seemed to be coping so much better so much quicker. I am still about nineteen seconds away from crying—sobbing—if I'm not careful. Friends I grew up with were back at work within a few days, continuing their educations, their careers, their families, their plans. I seemed to hit a wall there, for a long time.

I still have moments. The phone will ring and, for no reason at all, I find myself thinking, "Oh, that'll be Dad! I have to tell him about…". I find myself at Sears, looking at a long row of lawn mowers and thinking to myself, "What in Hell do I know about lawn mowers? I should talk to dad about…". I drive a 1995 Honda with 160,000 miles on it, and sleep under a roof with twenty years on it. How do I decide which one to replace, first? And how do I pay for it? And what do I do about the other one? Dad would know.

House advice, career advice, car advice, fashion advice. How to deal with family and friends and church obligations. How to get a dog. When I was twelve or fifteen, I didn't want any advice. Now, I would give anything to have him lecture me for just an hour.

When I was very small, Dad was super-human. He was a young, fit, Marine. He drove a sports car and had a wife and a dog and a house and… me. As I got older, he became more real. There was a time Dad was never wrong about anything. There was a time when he knew more about everything than I did. But gradually, he became less a Super man and more just a regular guy. We developed different interests. He loved to go fishing. I loved learning the guitar. I liked The Association and The Monkees, he liked Johnny Cash and Floyd Cramer. I found myself depending upon him less and less, as is the natural order of these things.

I feel cheated, somehow. It's funny. I've said this before, but I was much better prepared to lose him when he went to VietNam. Twice. When he came back, he became just "Dad" and on some level it's like I expected he would be with me forever. In VietNam, dad had occasion to ride around in helicopters and transport planes that were used to apply Agent Orange, to defoliate the jungle and make trails and personnel easier to find. They would go out on a spraying mission and come back, take the tanks and booms off of the aircraft, and then Dad would get in and fly to some other base with a bunch of mail, groceries and other supplies. They'd put all of that stuff back on and go back out spraying again and then send one of them back out to get him. He developed a lung condition. He died at seventy-three. He would probably be dead by now, if it weren't for that. But it's still hard. Somehow, I don't see it as an extra thirty-five years. I see it as a lost four, or five, or seven.

Dad would tell me it's fine to honor fallen heroes, but that it's up to us to make our own lives. Dad would tell me to get my nose back inside a Drupal book, because a whole lot of people are going to be depending upon me to know this stuff, soon. Dad would, as usual, be right. So I'm going to spend the rest of this day reading-up on Drupal, in his honor.

Happy birthday, Dad.