However, by the time I was born, Americans had been commemorating Pearl Harbor Day for nearly 30 years. And every year, that was the day we celebrated my dad’s birthday.
Dad died in the summertime. It was the same weekend Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died. I can never remember the date. I just know that every June since then, news outlets and radio stations memorialize Jackson with musical tributes and recognize Fawcett during “On this day…” mentions. Inevitably I think: I need to look up my dad’s obituary.
I should probably know the date my father died.
A writing professor once said that in Winter semesters students write about death, death, death; whereas in Spring semesters, they write about sex, sex, sex. At the time it made perfect sense: writing about death in the winter and sex in the spring. Yet I was still surprised to learn, after collecting the first set of drafts in a Winter semester class, it was true. Death, death, death.
Death is not the worse part though. Death, in its unapologetic finality, is but a prelude to the gone, the missing.
Death is a title we give to that hole of immeasurable depth. The hole we skip over nearly every day as we navigate the living world, trying – ourselves – to simply survive.
But then, on the first cold day of the year, not quite Winter, we fall into the hole. I fall into the hole. Deeper, it seems, every year.
I miss my dad the most in the winter. Not because that’s when his life ended, but rather it's when we celebrated his life beginning.
In 25 years, I will be the same age as my dad was when he died: seventy-four. It was June 27, 2009.
I have to look it up every time.
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| 06 September 2008 |
