Walking Across Fire

My dad died 3 years ago and I still miss him regularly.  Our relationship was a rocky one, smoothed out by time and both our efforts.  Twice in my lifetime I told him I would never talk to him again and twice he reached out and asked if we could heal it and twice we did.

He beat me regularly when I was young.  Never in rage, always controlled, explaining my deserving of the beating as he did it.  I never struck him back.  At 16, as he struck me, I told him he was no better than the bullies in the school courtyard and he could beat me bloody, but I would listen to him no more.  He stopped and never hit me again.

My parents divorced when I was 10, so, for the first few years after that I only saw him on Sundays.  I was 12 the first time he hired me to work in his office for the summer.  I did that again at 14.  Moved in with him after his second divorce and worked for him at 18 for a year. 

Spent most of the next 6 years living in California, seeing him only for occassional visits.  When I moved back in my mid-20’s we began the ritual of playing tennis on Sundays, which we kept up semi-regularly for the next 20 years.  We both evolved alot during this time.  By the time grandchildren started showing up, he was not the same man I grew up with.  A kinder, gentler man had arrived.

After I moved to North Carolina, we spoke on the phone every Monday for 9 years.

When we knew he had about 6 months to live, I made trips up to visit every few weeks and stayed for a week at a time, giving space for my 5 siblings to do the same.  Only one other took advantage of this time.

I watched him die in the hospital bed.  I wrote Dad’s Song the next day and performed it at his funeral the day after that.

There are Mondays I still go for the phone.