From Grandpa Bill to Baby Will

My grandpa died on a Thursday.  It was over a year ago.  I saw him die.  Holding his hand, I watched as his consciousness of this tangible world ceased, leaving a rigid shell behind.  And then I felt nothing.   I felt no further reason to care for what was in front of me.  THAT was not my grandfather.  In the movies, the lead kisses the cold dead lips of his tragically taken love and we weep because he does, making us feel his pain.  But in the stinky reality of life, death takes hold of a driverless body quickly, spilling juices and rusting up the axles with uncaring efficiency.

But an infinite chasm stands between how a felt about Grandpa Bill’s lifeless body and how I continue to feel about the man today.  I loved my grandpa.  Of course I did.  We are supposed to love our family.  We are bred to, conditioned to, maybe even programmed to.  But I also respected the man, and no one is forced to respect another person, programmed, bred or otherwise.  Respect comes from an individualized observation of character.  It is a personal judgment, not a feeling.  It is, and will always be, an unfettered act of free will.  I love a great many people in my life, I respect a handful.

I respected the man because he lived his life with neither pomp nor apology, setting an example that I have tried to follow.  He never told me that he loved me, but he wrote it in a letter once.  I whisper it to my 11-month old son roughly twenty times a day.  He doesn’t understand the words, but, still, they are not meant for anyone else to hear.  I chalk up these differing methods of protectively communicating our love to the cultural boundaries of generations.  In our own ways, though, both my grandfather and I have truly wanted the people we love to hear it said so in a voice meant only for them.

He was known as a father by all of those I ever met during our overlapping years of consciousness.  Professionally he was a soldier, a ski patrolman, a supplier of lumber and a reluctant, yet implicitly-compelled realtor.  But I knew him as a surfer, a skier, a speedboat driver, a carpenter, a house builder, a handyman and a mechanic.

This blog is a tribute to good fathers like my Grandpa Bill, a raw pledge of endless commitment to my son, William, and a therapeutic catharsis for me.  But, more than that, it is an unapologetic call for fathers to declare themselves parents, gnarly, fucked-up warts and all.  And to that end, I mean to make this a raw window into my life as a stay-at-home dad.