Coffee With Dad and My Meaning of Life

In our lives, we start as wee tadpoles forming into little humans. We are created with the genetic code of our parents and all the lines of generations prior. Our traits are bred, oh we certainly pick things up along the journey that adapt our natural instinct, but when the root basis of an idea or notion pops into our head it is usually due to our makeup. From birth, and through our early years, we are dependent on our parents for everything. In essence, they are our everything. When we reach teen years, our lust for independence is so overwhelming that we are a nuisance to all that love us. As we hit adulthood, we are so busy gaining a foothold on life, we forget we even have parents, that is until we need something like advice, money, or an acknowledgment we are headed down the right road. Marriages and having our own children give us glimpses at who our parents are, but we are still more interested in showing them who we are. We give nods to them and our respect by thanking them for coming to these significant events and we feel fortunate they are able to join us. As we head into our later years of our career, we begin to think about how many more years we might have with our parents. We ponder mending wrongs through the years and we begin to think of them as someone whom we might have to consider in our plans for retirement. If we are lucky, at any one of the stages of life, we might get lucky and stumble into conversations listening to their tales of youth and career and we realize that we actually knew very little about them as people. Their hopes and dreams, their life changes due to ourselves and their sacrifices and joys experienced throughout their lifetime. This time came for me a year or so after retirement, when I learned that the man and woman I loved had one more gift for me. The gift of knowing them and understanding how much love they had and how they stayed out of my way, on the sidelines, admiring my life through their watchful eyes.

When I retired at fifty-seven, the final piece in the decision to retire was knowing my parents weren’t getting any younger and having watched my parents never getting to enjoy their own retirement of travel and experiencing life we all hope to enjoy after working. My mom was also becoming more ill and was spending months and not days in the hospital dealing with issues she would eventually succumb to. We decided to sell our house that we were excited to own, we had made changes to benefit us as we got older. But knowing that we lived at a distance that could provide no assistance from us. So, we sold our house and moved literally three tenths of mile from their house. Had we known my Mom was only going to live five months beyond our arrival, but had we not, I often wonder if she might have fought harder to stick around. She was relieved we had moved as she was worried about my dad. I on the other hand, knew my dad was strong and capable of going on alone, but the assistance was obviously needed. My sister had gotten married and was in the middle of creating a life together, which was leaving my dad to have countless time on his hands alone to deal with mom. My moving, allowed us help in care for that brief time, but we started having a routine morning coffee. A time with him to talk about anything and everything. Some mornings have been filled with silence for times seemingly too long, but at some point we pick back up on the conversation from the day before. I’ve never tried to tell him he can’t do anything, but in listening to him, it was easy enough to know those things that needed change as he approached another year of him getting older. My purpose was to listen and clue in to those signs that times were a changing and convince him it was ok to go with the change he felt and that it was necessary to listen to himself. I’ve heard too many horror stories of kids stepping in and abruptly changing the lives of their parents to do nothing more than simplify their own. Is that good for anyone? I should think not, because in time the child becomes more aware of how they treated this person that gave their all for us. This usually comes as we are facing the same situation, reversed. So, if you don’t want the bad treatment, adjust in your approach now as a guide for your kids that are surely old enough to watch close enough in what things might be like for themselves later in life. I want my dad to have the freedom to choose what is best for him and I will fight tooth and nail to represent those wishes to others. I’m still having fun, he is not a burden, my mom wasn’t either. In fact, I felt honored that I got to have some of the best times with my mom at the end, to include holding her hand as she passed. I was also honored to bathe her the last time before going to the funeral home. A right of passage, I think all should be a part of, a cleansing of the soul as they leave for the next great adventure in eternal life. My dad is eighty-four, and I share a part of my day, everyday, with him. I learned this from Jen as I saw her spend more and more time with her mom, to the point of living with her to ensure her mom knew all was well and she was there for her anytime and anyplace. Ironically, I think her mom loved those moments so much and knew they were moments cherished by Jen, that it took us going on vacation to Hawaii for her to feel okay with passing. They had both done their part in bringing two lives full circle start to finish. I aim to do the same, but in the meantime, I will ask a thousand questions, laugh a thousand times, and cry when we can’t avoid it. The man I held on a pedestal as what a dad should be, is held in the same regard as my dad now. My best friend, confidant, and sharer of times past that I know where I came from and why.

By allowing this part of the day sharing a cup of coffee, I’ve become acutely aware of of how little I knew of this man, but have also had the enlightened sense of my meaning in life. The job I held for little more than a year, somehow set the stage for learning. Not just from books, but from an inquisitive thirst to learn from and about my dad. My life has never felt as complete as the last five years. I dread the day that my coffee will be by myself wondering if I did enough to payback a debt of a lifetime of thank you to a man that shaped me into who I am. But that time will come and knows, maybe there will be one of my own kids willing to find a better understanding of who I am. I love I get to sit face to face, but with technology today, you can have that same morning of coffee filled conversation via a portal or FaceTime. Wouldn’t that be something?