He Kept Me With Him to the End

My mother divorced when I was four. She moved us in with her parents and my grandfather took on the role of father figure to me. I never really knew my biological father. At that young of an age, I only have few clear memories of the man she married. My grandfather played the role I needed and I was, in retrospect blessed for him being there. When I was twenty-six years old, I got more information about my father. As a young man finishing my college career with an MBA, I was sure and confident I was about to tame the world. There wasn’t anything I didn’t know. The last day at college, a tearful mother explained to me that the guy I thought was my father wasn’t. He was my brother’s father, but not mine. In a span of 15 minutes I went from knowing everything to not even know who I was.

For twenty‑six years, I didn’t even know who he was. When my mother finally told me the truth, I met him a few times over the next couple of years. I learned a little about his life, and then, like two people circling a door neither of us knew how to open, we drifted apart again. Twenty years passed without a word.

We did not stay in close contact after those early meetings. In fact, twenty years passed without a word. Then one day something, call it intuition or a nudge of fate. Something kept tapping at my mind. Call him. The feeling would not let me go. I reached out and he was glad I called. We talked for a while, catching up on the surface level things people say when they are trying to bridge decades. I told him I had lost my mom a few years earlier. He offered his condolences. Then he got quiet.

“I always thought you were mad at me,” he said. “For not being there when you were young.”

I told him the truth. “I wasn’t mad then, and I’m not mad now. I told you the first time we talked, I just wanted to say hello, learn a little about you, and let you learn a little about me. I never wanted to disrupt your life or your family.” He seemed relieved. Another person carrying a burden on my behalf that I never knew. Once again, I felt bad that someone had lived with that weight for so long.

He said, “When I thought you were mad, I didn’tt want to bother you.”

Before we hung up, we made plans for me to visit after he got back from a trip to the VA for some treatments. We spoke a couple of times while he was in the hospital that week. I could tell things were not going well. I told him I would come up the following Monday. He agreed. On Sunday, I got a call from his son.

“This is Scott.”

“Yeah, Scott, has something happened?”

He hesitated. “Dad told me you were coming up tomorrow. I wanted to let you know. Dad passed away last night.”

I offered my condolences. We talked briefly. I did not want to keep him long, he had a thousand things to handle. Before we hung up, I said, “I really appreciate you calling me, Scott. I will talk to you later.” In the weeks that followed, I thought about the years I might have wasted. I also thought about the timing, how something in me insisted I call him in the final days of his life. I did not know it was the end, but something did.

Then one day I got a text from Scott. Two photos. Each was a page from a small photo album his father had taken with him to the hospital. On those pages were the wallet sized school photos of me, kindergarten through eighth grade. He had all of them. I stared at those pictures for a long time. I wanted to ask where he got them. Did my mother give them to him? Did someone else? Had he kept them all these years? Had he followed my life from a distance? Had he wondered? Had he cared?

I will never know. My mother was gone. He was gone. The answers went with them.

For years I thought he never gave me a second thought. But he had known about me the whole time. He had carried those pictures with him into the hospital, into the last days of his life. It opened a hundred new questions. I try not to dwell on them.

I do not know where he got the photographs. I do not know how often he looked at them. I do not know what he wondered, regretted, feared, or hoped. I do not know what he told himself about me during all those years. Those answers left with him. Some questions do not need answers. Some truths are meant to be held but not solved. Maybe that has to be enough. In the years since his death, I have realized I have more answers than I once believed.

I know he knew about me. I know he carried my school pictures for decades. I know those pictures were important enough that he took them with him to the hospital. I know that he tried to respect what he assumed were my wishes for distance. I know he thought I was angry. I know he wasn’t carrying that burden when he died. He was able to put down those bricks he had carried for me all those years. In that realization, it meant I didn’t have to pick up my own bricks for a truth I never told him.

I know he liked me. I know I liked him.

Not all the answers left with him. The ones that mattered most stayed behind.

For me, that’s enough.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.