My father died two years ago this month. He used to say — tongue in cheek — that he was the greatest father since St. Joseph. I tell you now that he came pretty darn close.
My dad was not perfect, and becoming his caregiver was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. However, whatever flaws or shortcomings he had no longer matter – all of that pales in comparison to the valuable gifts he imparted to me.
My father has influenced every facet of my life – my Catholic faith, the kind of man I chose to marry, the music I listen to and movies I watch, my political views, even my career – they are all his legacy.
We never really had heart-to-heart talks as most people would think of them. Instead, my father and I discussed politics, the cosmos, physics, philosophy, and anything interesting he happened to be learning about while reading or watching PBS documentaries (and he was always learning).
But don’t let any of that fool you. Just beneath the surface lived a tender-hearted, sentimental man — though I only figured that out when I was older and started really paying attention.
My dad had a serene contentment with life as a husband and father of three. He didn’t ask for much, just his wife and kids safe together in our little row home.
His life growing up wasn’t easy – his family didn’t have much money and he lost his mother when he was still in high school – but he made the best of whatever was thrown his way.
My father had an old-fashioned idea of what it meant to be a man, and he did his best to live up to it. Like many children of the 50s, he grew up watching Westerns and loved those stories that valued a man’s toughness and grit in the face of adversity. When we were kids, he’d sing “Happy Trails” to signal bedtime, a playful tradition using the song Roy Rogers and wife Dale Evans would sing over the ending credits of their Western-themed program.
Days after my father died, I wanted to feel close to him again so I re-watched one of his favorites in the genre, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.” Movie critics probably have a different takeaway from this classic starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, but Dad loved it because he saw it as a story of a man who does what’s right and necessary — even when someone else gets the glory.
There’s so much more, but I won’t go on because this feels self-indulgent. However, the best summation of who my father was lies within a poem that meant a great deal to him. He had a copy of it hanging by his desk at home and once told me, in so many words, that it was how he measured his own success and what he hoped for his own children.
You were all of this and so much more.
Happy trails, Daddy – until we meet again.
If—
By Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
