by Wendel Potter
June 15, 2008
The following column was written and published on my website on June 15, 2008. Some memories we keep to ourselves. Others continue to be worth mentioning from time to time.
From now on, Father's Day Weekend for our family will always be cast in a bittersweet light.
My
wife and sons will continue to celebrate my fatherhood. There will be
gifts and cards and dinner. I will always revel in being a father to
my boys, as well as a husband to their mother.
But there will be a shadow as though we are standing under an eclipsed sun.
On June 16, 2007, my wife's father died of cancer. It was on a Saturday, the day before Father's Day.
Bill
lived in a small town in Iowa. He was in his late sixties, was a
strong man still working full time in the mail room at Iowa State
University in Ames.
He had no immediate intention of retiring from his job. Or from life.
The
cancer settled in quickly and after diagnosis and then surgery, the
doctor's outlook was positive. With treatment, Bill could live weeks,
possibly months, perhaps a year or two. Maybe even go back to work
part-time.
He was gone in three weeks. The day before Father's Day.
Three
of his children - my wife Karen and her younger brother and sister
Will and Felicia - were by his side at the end. That was the last, yet
the best Father's Day gift they had ever given him, could have given
him.
Bill's daughter, Cheryl, who lives in New Jersey,
only recently got to know her dad. Sadly, we had lost touch with her
and were unable to let her know that her father was dying. Had we been
able to tell her, she would have been there, too.
Daughters and Son to the very end and beyond. Still are.
I
always looked forward to our annual summer trips to Iowa to visit Bill
and his wife. There was nothing like sitting lazily on the back porch
swing listening to the frequent whistling and rumblings of the freight
trains as they whisked along the tracks that split the little village
just a couple of blocks from Bill's house.
Countless
times over the 30 years I had known my father-in-law, he said, "I just
want me a little peace," and then he'd chuckle softly with a "hee hee
hee".
Sitting on that back porch swing and sipping a
cup of coffee on a lazy sunlit morning or a dusky summer evening in
that tiny Iowa town, Bill soaked in a little of that peace. It was
always a pleasure to sit there and enjoy it along with him.
This morning, on Father's Day, I sat at my patio table with my morning coffee. I
heard the far off whistle of a freight train. I was struck by its
lonesome sound. Like the lines from that Hank Williams song, "the
midnight train is whining low, I'm so lonesome I could cry."
My
own dad died 22 years ago. But I celebrated Bill on Father's Day
because I thought of him as a father. He thought of me as a son. He
told my wife that a couple of weeks before he died. That meant an awful
lot to me.
Memories are important and we should keep and cherish them. That's the way we can hang on to our fathers after they're gone.
If
we hold fond memories in our hearts, we will be able to sit down on
that swing and it won't seem quite so empty. And when we hear that
whistle blow somewhere in the distance, we know the train is taking our
fathers home where they can find themselves a little well-deserved
peace.
Copyright 2008 Wendel James Potter
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