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Recently I saw a movie about the famous American author, Joan Didion, who chronicled the last 50 years of the American social and cultural scene, releasing two books over the last few years on the grief of losing her husband and, soon after, her adult daughter. As difficult as I am sure it is to lose one’s loving companion after so many years, suffering the loss of one’s child, at any age, must be beyond endurance.
I could see the deep and profound pain in Joan Didion’s eyes as I began to think about both of my now adult children, missing them horribly; tears welling up in my eyes at the thought of losing them, seeing their images playing on the screen in my head like an old-time film projector.
My heart and soul embraces them like Sisyphus rolling that boulder uphill. I just can’t get close enough to them, or hold them long enough as much as I try. Of course, now, it’s me trying to snatch a few moments with each of them which are so precious now, and when ‘they have the time.’
My mind inched back as though I were following a trail of almost 40 years to the times I was with my children- from when they were babies until this very moment. I think about the time I squandered, always focused on my own interests or desires. I’m ashamed to say that for a long time, they didn’t come first-I did; trying to fill some hole in my soul from my own abandonment through a gut-wrenching divorce when I was six years old. We learn from our parents. Either we do what they did or we don’t. Hopefully, we do better.
Fortunately, my son is doing what I should have done so much more. He’s present for his wife and both of his young children. He’s involved with his family up to his eyeballs; he has more professional responsibility in his burgeoning career than I had in my entire work life, and for better reasons. I was a ‘captain of industry’ focused on my own career in marketing. He is making our country a better place for our own society. My daughter is the kind of strong and giving woman that I can only admire and love from the depths of my heart: a leader in her profession and a compassionate friend and daughter.
Some years ago I began to appreciate and understand what my wife knew long before she was pregnant: The lives of our children are a treasure God entrusts to us. Nothing can be more important-nothing! And that tired excuse about making a living to provide for my family only went so far. Great rhetoric and total BS. Children need fathers more than the financial security their fathers claim they are providing when they’re at the office. Not only did my children lose time with me, I’m the one that lost the precious gift of their lives- my loss as well as theirs.
So now that at least I know better, I can do all I can to be present in my adult children’s lives and my grandchildren, now, when they have time.
And it’s never completely hopeless. I think about my own father. He was 47 when I was born. Emotionally distant but, of course, when he was with me it was the brightest day in my small world. To this day, in my late 60’s when I see a father and son embrace with hugs, I completely go to pieces. Some wounds just remain open I guess.
When I was six, after he left my mother, my father took me swimming often to a big pool at our synagogue. Someone took a picture of me-a skinny little,seven year-old, black-haired boy looking up at dad admiringly as he stood behind me.
Many years later when I was in my 40’s he sent a birthday card to me. The front of the card showed a cartoon of a grinning, excited little boy swimming: “Watch me dad,” said the caption. Pasted inside the card was that same picture of he and I at the pool with the caption scrawled in the shaky handwriting of a man in his late 70’s: ‘still watching.’
I know for this life and eternity this father will always be watching
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Photo: Getty Images – Top — Courtesy of author – bottom.