Dear Pa,

I'm 58 years old, you've been gone 20 years, yet I cried today because I miss you.  It was the weirdest thing. I was driving and a Hannah Montana song came on the radio.  She's a teenage character in a Disney show, and it's about as stupid as TV gets. But a song of hers came on about her dad raising her by himself.  Then she sang the line that slayed my: "You had to do it all alone, make a living, make a home.  Must have been as hard as it could be."

And just like that, I was in tears.  The fact is, for most of my high school years, you did have to do it all alone.  I was 14 when Mom died.  For at least a couple of those years, since I was the youngest,  it was just you and me in the house.  You did an excellent job with the very unfortunate hand you had been dealt.  You, a World War II vet, career tool maker, suddenly had to be both dad and mom to me.  And it wasn't like I was a little kid; I was in high school: moody, introverted, indifferent, and self absorbed.  Yet, you were almost always at my basketball games and band concerts.  And you would apologize - sincerely -when you couldn't be there, or perhaps were just too tired. But you were glad to hear about the game or concert once I got home.

I'm 58 years old. If I did my math right, you were my present age when I was 15 And I distinctly remember a day when I was 15. Basketball was everything to me then, and I was on our driveway shooting baskets at the hoop you built for me. What you didn't know, when you came walking up the driveway, is that it was as if someone had put a garbage can lid over the hoop that day.  I couldn't hit anything.  At 15, any perceived failure eroded the very sandy foundation on which my ego precariously balanced.  So you -smiling to be home after a long day at work and glad to see your son - asked me to pass the ball to you so you could take a shot. In anger flamed by my bruised pride, I hurled the ball to you, striking you in the face and breaking your glasses.  I have not been able to think of that moment even once over the past 43 years without cringing in shame and embarrassment.  I dream about rewinding time so that never happened, but life isn't a video, and it doesn't come with a remote. No doubt I apologized many times that evening; I hope I did.  I know you forgave me because that is the type of parent you always were, but nonetheless that has always been a painful memory and, worst of all, I was completely to blame.  But as I listened to Hannah Montana sing her sappy Disney song, I realized neither you nor God wants me to agonize over that memory any more.  Either one of you has every right to hold this over me until my last breath, but that is not what good fathers do.

And you were a very good father.  

When you tried to cook balanced suppers for the two of us, with varying degrees of success, you were parenting well.  When you welcomed my idiot high school buddies into the house, you were parenting well. When you I came home from college and tearfully told you (giving you no particular context) that I just didn't know who my best friend was any more, and you let me cry and worked really hard at being tender, you were parenting well.  When you sat on the hard wooden bleachers just to watch basketball games that I often never got into, you were parenting well.  When we went camping, just you and me, and we lined our empty beer cans along the edge of our lean-to, you were parenting me well.  Even when you got it wrong - and I really need to search my memory to come up with anything that remotely fits that description - you were parenting me well.  

I am so glad that you lived long enough to see me outgrow that hurting, immature, insecure kid I had been and become a somewhat stable adult.  I'm glad you lived to meet the lovely brown-eyed French Canadian girl (whose cooking you always loved!) who became my wife.  I'm glad you lived long enough to meet our first two daughters.  They still talk about you.  I wish you could have met our youngest, Rose.  She is hysterical, creative, smart and very, very caring.  

I'm 58 years old, you've been gone 20 years, yet I cried today because I miss you.

Love,

Topper