Father's Day 2002

      It's late, Daddy. The house is quiet; the lights are off. Only the computer screen and my desk lamp glow in the darkness. I've been thinking of you, trying to get the words out, but I still don't know what to say.
      In a way, that's funny. Me, the guy who has written books, plays, poems and hundreds of newspaper articles, but I don't have any words. What words are even possible that can express this emptiness inside, this gaping void that hovers near me, waiting to swallow me whole?
      Don't worry; I'm fine.
      That's what I say when people ask how I'm doing. I smile at them and lie, "Fine." How's the family? "Fine." How's life treating you? "Fine." Or maybe it's not so much a lie as it is a hope. A promise. We will be fine. We won't ever be the same, but we will be fine someday.
      People tell me you are in Heaven, and I know that to be true. They say that to comfort me, but I am not comforted. I know you are happy and healthy now. I know you are with my precious mother and my little brother whom you loved dearly, but at night when things get quiet and I toss and turn in my bed, this knowledge does not help. I miss you.
      I've made my share of mistakes in my life. (You once said that you knew I was creative because I made different mistakes than any of your other children.) But I learned from them. One thing I did right was to record your words, your stories, your life. I learned from Mama's death, from when she was gone and I realized how much of her life was lost. Your stories exist on tape, and I’m putting them on compact disk so they'll survive to be heard by your grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on. They'll know your voice and hear your words and know a little bit about the great man who came before them.
      I enjoyed hearing your stories. I told you that many times, but you always acted surprised that I did. Your stories connected me with the past. You gave me a real sense of your father and mother and how they raised you and how you lived your life. From you, I heard stories of my great-grandparents. Thank you for that. Thank you for putting up with my nagging for more stories. They are dear to me.
      To share your life, I published your stories in our family newsletter. It was the main reason I put it out. It gave me a monthly deadline, a reason to make sure that I didn't put off talking to you.
      Not that we needed a reason to talk. We made the phone company much richer because of the hours we spent on the phone. We talked two or three times a week and always talked at nine on Sunday morning. No matter if we had talked the night before, that time was set aside for us. Even now, every Sunday, I find myself looking at the phone, expecting your call.
      Several people told me that I should write down what I'm feeling, that there would be a release in putting my feelings on paper. They were wrong, but I knew that. I remembered when Mama went to Heaven; words were no comfort then. This is the place where words fail. Only the passing of time will help.
      One of the worst things about it is knowing that it won't kill me. I'll have to live through this. There will be weeks and months of feeling bad, and then there will be hours of not feeling bad, and then days of not feeling bad, and then it will be okay. But it won't be the same. The days will be shorter and the nights longer, the joys less and the sorrows deeper.
      You wouldn't like what I'm writing now. You would rather I be funny. Sorry. I don't feel funny. I will again, I promise. You liked my humor. I made you laugh. You always enjoyed a good joke, and when you traveled selling furniture, you'd come home and usually share a new one with us. Always clean. Not always politically correct, but never bad. I got my love of laughter and my sense of timing from you.
      Two weeks before you passed on, I came home. You were sick from the chemo and terribly thin. I sat on the couch beside you and held your hand for hours. And I talked. Inside I was wailing, but outside I was at my most funny. Everyone else laughed, and you smiled. Laughing hurt you, but you smiled. I cherished those smiles even though I didn't know they'd be the last of yours that I’d see down here.
      I've only written about death once in my various humor columns. It's not a subject that lends itself easily to humor, but I wrote about it for a college newspaper (Mama told me it was my most meaningful column, and who am I to argue with her?) and then reprinted the piece in the family newsletter. In that column, I quoted what Henry Scott Holland wrote about death:
      "I am standing on the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails on the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon; and someone at my side says, 'She is gone.'
      "Gone where? The loss of sight is in me, not in her. Just at the moment when someone says, 'She is gone,' there are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes,' and that is dying."
      Daddy, it's two in the morning on Father's Day, and I'm on the dock, eyes straining toward the horizon, standing as straight as I can, waving goodbye.
      I'm waving goodbye.