Dad
It’s going on 16 years since my dad died. For a long time, I thought about him every day. These days, I may go a day or two without thinking about him – or at least noticing that I am thinking about him.
And then something will bring him to mind. Sometimes, he stays for just a memory or two before receding again.
When we lived in a small town in West Virginia, he would sometimes take one of his five children out as a special treat. I remember walking to the movie theater downtown with him one night and taking in whatever movie was playing.
Another time, I remember going around with him during the day as he went about the business of being a minister. In the afternoon, he had to visit someone in the hospital. He didn’t think I should come in, so he gave me a quarter – which was what I received for my weekly allowance at the time – and told me that I could spend it however I wanted at a little grocery store by the hospital. I was rich.
Other times, I will find thoughts of him sticking with me for several days running. And so it has been recently. If he were still alive, he would have turned 80 earlier this month. But, he didn’t. So he will be always be 64. That means that, as time passes, I am catching up with him. Now the gap is only 11 years. Lately, I have been thinking about how much he accomplished and wondering whether, at 64, I will feel as good about what I have done as I feel about what he did during his time here.
At the moment, it’s not looking as if I will.
I did get a bit of information from my mother recently that allowed me to lighten up in comparing myself to him with regard to one of the things that he did. During the early days of the civil-rights movement, he once led a march through the downtown of that small town in West Virginia where we were living. I found out about it the next morning when he and my mother called the children together before school to tell us to slough it off if any of the kids of school said nasty things about my father or family. (None did.)
Through the years, I have sometimes asked myself whether I would have the guts to lead a march during such times. When I mentioned that to my mother recently, she laughed and told me that he had led the march only accidentally.
People asked him to say a prayer before the march started. He agreed. As soon as he was done, the marchers surged forward, and there, to his surprise, he was leading the march.
