It’s Time’s Nature

A dear relative’s relativity

It’s what happens to days, weeks, months, and years. Minutes and hours can drag on unceasingly, laboriously, glacially, especially when we are waiting to ride Jurassic Park at Universal Studios; or to see a doctor in a waiting room with no magazines to read and a low-battery phone; or for a boring three hour movie to end; or when you are watching the minute hand on the clock in the classroom tick down to the final bell of the school year; or to while away the time at home after the doomscrolling is done, the article written, and nothing is good on TV. And when you have no book in sight. But not so, that, with days, weeks, months, and years. Before you know it, you turn around and the first words out of your mouth is “where did all that time go?”

Before you know it, the next birthday or Christmas is here. Before you know it, you’ve put 30 years into your career. Before you know it, the kids went from diapers to college to spouses. Before you know it, the first grandson is graduating from high school. Before you know it, the season is over and the Mariners still aren’t in the playoffs. Before you know it….

Before I knew it, it’s been two years since my dad died.

Tomorrow, in fact, it will be two years now. March 15 at 4:41am. And tomorrow will be here before you know it.

Milestones are what they are because they are the trail cairns, the signposts of life along the paths of our journeys, that prompt memory. Tomorrow marks the end of year two, and I’ve been thinking more about my dad as tomorrow approaches. That’s where my dad lives now, in memory.

People, in moments like this, where we reminisce about the death of a loved one, will often respond with “sorry for your loss.” I’ve written about this. Please don’t be sorry for my loss. I never lost my dad. I always knew where he was—and since his death, I’ve kept him in a safe space.

I don’t live with regrets. The things that have happened in the past, happened and are gone; thinking one could have or should have done something different, for want of a better outcome, invites suffering—ie regret. Whatever happened, the good and the bad, ended up being an important part of making me, me. Regret is one of those absolutely worthless emotions. So, I don’t live with them. But that being said…

If I could go back in time, I’d ask my Dad what he thinks about when he stares off into space. I’d ask him to share more often what was on his mind. This man was typically very quiet and seemed to thrive on solitude—as long as that solitude involved hours on a tractor driving back and forth on endless rows of hops, or in a pickup checking his irrigation multiple times a day. Growing up, we never really had conversations, my dad and I—as in, we never would sit on the porch, just the two of us, and talk about life, the world, the farm or…anything really. I mentioned in his eulogy that I was still waiting for my “birds and bees” conversation from him (never got it, though I was able to figure out a few things on my own). He and I never shared “a beer” to shoot the bull. (Though my dad grew hops, he wasn’t that big of a beer drinker; and I don’t drink beer at all—how’s that for irony? So we’d have likely had diet cokes in hand had we talked. But we didn’t talk like that.) For all this, I am NOT resentful in the least. I took after him in my desire for quiet and solitude. And he and I had very different interests. I never wanted to be a lifelong farmer; dad couldn’t throw a football to save his life. We never really “had a catch.” In a way, we inhabited different worlds, and it seemed to have suited both of us well. We loved each other, dearly. I won the Dad lottery, that’s for sure. He rarely lost his temper (he rarely had reason to), and he never abused my brothers and me either physically, psychically, or emotionally. He insured we always had food and clothes and school supplies (well, actually that was my mom but my mom’s funding came from the sweat of my dad’s farmer brows). And he helped me pay for college so that I graduated with no student debt, never having to take any kind of loan from the government or the bank. In my dad’s later years, we’d have more conversations of this type—but this was way after I had moved away and had a well-established family of my own. To want dad, or our relationship, to be different in my growing up years, in any way, makes dad into someone he wasn’t.

For most of his life, Dad was left alone with only his thoughts—his body naturally going through the routine motions of seasonal life on the farm, but his mind no doubt roamed miles away. He could farm with his eyes closed; but he’d be thinking deeply about something all the time. I just never asked him what it was he thought about, and he never volunteered it.

So yeah. I’d ask my dad, more often, to share with me what he was thinking about. And then I wonder if he would be able to find the words in order to share those thoughts with me. That, I’m certain, would have also been hard for him—the introvert that he was.

Although he could read and write quite adequately (his reading and writing was 100% practical—and mainly in service to his farm life), my Dad chose not to read or write for pleasure. So I inherited no books from him to see what his mind was interested in (I would have loved to have seen what he wrote in margins or underlined had he “inherited up” my own habits). He didn’t leave any journals behind, into which he poured his thoughts and soul. What we tangibly have left are a few of the things he owned: wedding ring, phones, watches, some clothes, a red Ford 150 pickup truck still with a rusty trailer hitch ball…. The intangible things, our memories, are all we have of stolen moment conversations, thinking out loud sessions, worries he shared after mom died, and idle chit chat about the Seahawks, farm life, and the comings and goings of the days, weeks, and months for his aging body.

THE most valuable intangible he left us, however, was his way of Being in the world. His example on how to lead a life of dignity, humility, and persistent dedication to something bigger than himself. I like to think he passed on to each of his sons his incredible work ethic.

Though he knew no philosophy, and if asked if he knew who Socrates, or Seneca, or Marcus Aurelius were, he’d likely say “no, do they play for the Seahawks?” But my Dad LIVED their philosophy. My Dad was a Stoic. Of that, I have NO doubt.

I miss him. It’s been two short/long years since our last hug and our shared “goodnights and I love you’s.” He’s here in my heart, though. It’s weird that at times, it seems as if it’s been ages since his death; and then there are still random nights when I think I hear him downstairs in his bedroom calling for me on the walkie monitors. Some memories are fading; others are crystal clear and seem as if they were created recently.

Such is the funny thing about time. It’s what happens to minutes, and hours, and days, and … lifetimes.

My dad’s body aged 84 years 6 months and 3 days. My Dad, however, was infinite. His body died on March 15th of 2023. At 4:41am. I know, I was there, holding his hand alongside my wife and my brother. We witnessed his last breath and felt his final heartbeat. But he’s still with us. Through me, and his granddaughter, he has a new great-grandchild who carries a portion of his DNA (so even physical parts of Dad live on.)

Every day, Dad’s still with us.

And the days… well, they are flying by.

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Always and Ubuntu,

~ k

🙏🏼

[Slava Ukraine 🇺🇦]