Belated Thoughts on Father’s Day
When my brothers, Jim and Dan, died in 2001, I was shattered awake to the reality of death. As I struggled to penetrate its mystery, I allowed myself to grieve long and deeply. One of the ways I immersed myself in actively mourning Jim and Dan was to write a book about their lives and deaths, growing up together in an Irish Catholic family of eleven, and the first six months of the grief process.
When my father died four years later, although I grieved, I protected myself against the full weight of the loss. Although losing him ushered in a period of self-analysis and therapy, when it came to feeling the reality of my father being literally gone, I hardened myself. It felt good to be somewhat in control of my feelings. I had grieved Jim and Dan intensely and the outcome remained the same. They were gone. I didn’t have the heart to do it again that way.
I don’t remember much about Father’s Day last year, the first one without my father. But this year, I kept finding myself in front of racks of Father’s Day in shops, grocery stores, and gas stations. I guess my denial had caught up with me because the realization that I didn’t have a father anymore seemed strange and shocking to me.
I wrote in The Jim and Dan Stories that after my brothers died a part of them lived on in me and that I looked at the world differently, through the eyes that they no longer had. Jim’s interest in weather, sky watching, and photography was transferred to me and other family members. Dan’s generosity inspired me to be more generous in his name. His love of music made me appreciate it even more than I already did. I knew soon after my brothers died the ways their lives expressed themselves through me. It took me longer to recognize how my father lives on in me.
I’ve always loved birds, but my interest in them this past year has heightened. It’s the first year that I’ve kept our birdfeeder consistently filled and have made a real effort to identify them by color and song.
The last time my mother and father visited me in Virginia was the spring of 2005. An early riser and all day napper, my dad would wake up at the crack of dawn, make coffee, and take it on the porch where he sat and watched the birds. At his home in the South Shore of Boston, Massachusetts, he had a favorite chair on his porch where he watched them from as they perched on the electrical wires in front of his three story house. He claimed to have seen some exotic ones, but it was hard to tell with my dad. He was as a big a kidder as he was a napper.
When I bird watch, I do it for my dad, the way I listen to music for my brother Dan, the way I watch the sky and snap pictures for Jim. As I mentally check off the new ones I’m able to identify, it’s like being in conversation with my dad. I had imagined he would sit on my porch and do some more bird watching with me. If my mother died first, maybe he could come and live with me, I once thought.
But there’s another way my dad lives in me. I used to make fun of at his rumpled appearance as he went about the house doing house projects. Mostly he’d spend time in his video room where he had several TV’s, VCR’s, and a table that looked like an artist’s station. He liked to copy videos to give to his kids and grandkids and design his own covers for them. Sticky with tape and printer ink, it wasn’t unusual for his pants to have marks where he wiped his hands. If it wasn’t for my mother periodically collecting his clothes for the washer, they would have been worse.
I laughed at my dad’s lived-in appearance, the way I used to laugh at my brother Jimmy’s weather photos. Besides taking ones of storms, ocean waves, and clouds in the sky, he loved to capture the oddities of life, scenes that hardly ever had people in them. “I don’t like pictures without people in them,” I told him. But now I have developed an eye for the unusual and out-of-place. More than half the pictures I take have no people in them.
Watching the birds in my lived-in house clothes, garden dirt stained on fingers that are holding a mug of tea, I feel my dad living in me. When I start getting older and doze off like he used to, it might be hard to tell who was who.
Post notes: The above photo is of a tribute collage my son Josh did. To read more about my father’s and my connection with birds, read The Black Feather, HERE.. It’s about a transpersonal experience I had related to his death, written and posted last year at this same time. Right now I’m on my way to my hometown in Massachusetts. It will be my first extended time home without my father there. Posting here should continue but will likely be erratic. If I miss Thirteen Thursday you can go HERE. Scroll down and read one from the past.
June 27th, 2007 10:09 am
Hope you have a very safe, happy, and relaxing trip! Say hello to everyone up there from all of us down here. I love reading about your dad and brothers….I can’t help but feel my father when you talk about them. We came from some very special people! xoxo
June 27th, 2007 12:01 pm
Colleen, I read thru for the first time your “Eulogy of your father” and then the “Belated thoughts on Father’s Day.”
I am sad to say living a couple of houses from him in the years 1968-78 and never getting to know him was a loss for me, he would of been a great mentor for me!!!! I am grateful that God allowed me the honor of knowing Jim and now you!
I have just written a “Letter to my Mom and Dad” and would like to share it with you:
Astoria Street on a Saturday morning as I saw it!
“Up and at em’ “, mom would say as another great Saturday morning rolled around. The sun filtering its rays through the shades showing off outer space particles and settling to the floorboards which mom mopped from under our beds. I can still hear the back and forth motion sounds of the cotton strands and metal bands.
Dad would be filling the 1 gallon glass orange juice bottles with tap water and feeding it to this one particular potted green vine. . .I could actually hear it gulp the water down.
Breakfast consisted of sliced cantaloupe and oranges.
Throw in some apricot juice at times. . . yum!!!!
And our favorite cereals: Fruit Loops, Lucky Charms, Quisp and Quake, Captain Crunch, Cocoa Crispies, Cocoa Puffs, Rice Crispies. . .oh what fun with what you could do with milk!
In the Fall season, Saturday’s reminded me of plenty of crisp scented leaves ready to be gathered together to jump in.
I looked forward in Winter to sledding, making snowmen and forts for snow ball fights.
But best of all~the anticipation of Christmas Morning. . .which
Dad & Mom made so special and magical. I was never disappointed!
Spring was a time to explore under rocks, logs and in the fields for bugs and creatures to bring back home. . .I probably surprised my parents once or twice!
The Dog Days of Summer was no match for my Dad as he hooked up the sprinkler in the backyard or in the driveway so us kids would run in and out of it!
Seasons of Life,
40 years later,
With my own kid and wife,
Will I make memories and cater!
Love you Dad & Mom very much, your son ~ Stu_art Barden
June 27th, 2007 12:01 pm
Thank you for writing about your father. My Dad, also alcoholic but a sweet, dear, never angry person, has been gone from me over 20 years now yet he is always a part of me. He also served in WW II but his time in France was pretty much after all the action.
In the late 30’s & early 40’s, as well as after the war, it seemed everyone drank and smoked. Few knew the dangers, they only knew when the war ended it was time to have your own little house, a nice car, parties with your friends and neighbors,a secure job.
Daddy grabbing Mother around the waist & dancing with her to the music from the kitchen radio is a memory that will always be with me. Thanks for the reminder..
June 27th, 2007 1:08 pm
We lost a family member earlier this year so now I’m taking him everywhere we go…looking at things with different eyes and being more alert just because of that… I think of him a lot more often than I did before, when he was only a phone call away…
Hope you have a wonderful vacation!
June 27th, 2007 3:20 pm
you know I ould still like to read the book. seems oddhaving livedtherre for a while that I didn’t get to it. i will thoug eventually I guess.
love and peace,
LeighinAtlanta
June 28th, 2007 10:05 am
One of the great things about having family and friends who read the same blogs is that we can discuss them. Many of my friends read your blog that aren’t bloggers (like my best friend Sharon) because they enjoy your writing. Amy and Delane and I often discuss you and the goings on of Floyd.
Last night over dinner Amy was telling me your post for the day. She had really enjoyed it. I am sure she can relate to that by missing her mother, and her dad, in her life now.
It is a beautiful tribute to your family Colleen.
Today I have a little note to you in my post…blogging just makes the world a little smaller and a little friendlier. I like that I have made friends through the Internet.
June 28th, 2007 10:51 am
stu_art, I had to laugh at the part about your dad watering the plants because I know about his traffic stopping flowering yard (which I can see right now if I lean out). I’m sitting on my mother’s porch with the sea breeze flapping the flages and making the wind chimes sing. Surprisingly, I picked up wireless, although I can barely see the screen and miss my mouse.
Mar, isn’t it interesting how after someone dies we think about them more than when they when they were here? Maybe that’s where the saying they are “still here with us” comes from.
Marion, I do think the WWII men and women are a generation that has strong bonds. And we’re losing so many of them now.
Deana, your comments made my morning. I love the way the connections ripple out!
June 28th, 2007 2:24 pm
We carry so much more than our genes from our fathers and mothers! Excellent post!
June 29th, 2007 8:53 am
happy blue mooniversary xoxo
June 29th, 2007 9:11 am
So you’re up in Bean Town. Heard the temp had climbed up there, so I’m sure you’re enjoying those ocean breezes.
Enjoy your visit and have fun!
June 29th, 2007 10:12 am
It was hot enough to fry a frog on the sidewalk yesterday, but it’s cool today.
Thinking of you, Joe. I couldn’t find the moon last night, but the sunset was over the top. Hope you like the photos above. xo
PS Seems that my dad was telling the truth about his exotic bird sightings. My mother just told me they saw a parkeet on the high wires once. And yesterday up at the gravesite I saw two small mostly red birds that were not cardinals. My dad told me he saw red birds all the time. I thought he was fooling with me.
June 30th, 2007 12:24 pm
A lovely thoughtful tribute, in a way…How your Dad lives on in you. Very touching, Colleen.
June 30th, 2007 9:37 pm
A very reflective and connective post. You must miss your dad so much. Maybe you just had a delayed grief response. Hope you have a good trip back.