Imagined Conversations

I don't recall discussing politics with him. And with my sister having passed away last year and my mom being gone nearly a decade, there is no one who can fill in the blanks. So it is up to my imagination to inform me as to how these conversations might have gone.

My dad died in 1979 so I can be excused for my lapse. But he was there through the Dwight Eisenhower years when I was drilled in getting under my school desk in the event of a nuclear explosion. The days of JFK and the Bay of Pigs, of Martin Luther King and the civil rights marches, of Lyndon Johnson and the protests against Vietnam, of Richard Nixon and Watergate, of Nixon's pardon by Gerald Ford and the fall of Saigon, of Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis, of a landscape stained blood red with the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK.

There must have been myriad conversations with him that helped shape my belief system, my understanding of the complexities and complications of the world. My dad was a brilliant, caring man and, even, in my immaturity, when I was less than laser focused on the events of the moment if they did not have immediate impact on my existence, I know he was far more intimately impacted by them. And that his words to me reflected that intensity and urgency.

All the particulars are lost to me now. Yet I am absolutely certain that my dad would have been at the protest with me yesterday. That he would have carried a placard, would have stood shoulder to shoulder with me, in our mutual outrage. I know this to be immutable fact, as clear in my mind as if he had been standing next to me, deep in discussion on the meaning of what was transpiring. I can feel his words in my heart.

So on this Father's Day I give him my thanks for all the unremembered talks that guided me in the right direction, the words we surely spoke during the important days, the uncomfortable days, the critical days that marked the 27 years of my life that he was there pointing me in the right direction.

My father still walks beside me every step I take. Travels with me everywhere I venture. Continues to shape my thoughts and temper my excesses. As true on this Father's Day as it was 46 years ago.