04.03.06
The Living Years
Today is the one year anniversary of my father’s passing. He died of prostate cancer about four and a half months after my mother passed away. I miss my father terribly right now and I wish more than anything that he and my mother could see what I am doing now.
Or as my Daughter said: “Aww… That’s your Daddy. He’s a Prince! and there’s your Mommy, she’s a Princess, like Cinderella!”
I am sitting in the front stoop on my house, typing on the laptop computer that they gave me for Christmas a few years ago. Their only grandchild is asleep in her bedroom, dreaming about who knows what. My father’s organ is in my living room, waiting for someone to play the old songs again, “Those Were the Days,” “Blowing in the Wind,” “Have I Told You Lately (That I Love you.)”
I wish that they could see what I’ve done with the money they bequeathed my little family and that they could know that without them, none of it would be possible.
It is hard for me to write about my father because as he told me once, we never really understood each other. My sister and I have spent many hours talking about him and trying to figure out who he was and why he did some of the things he did.
My father was a good man who loved his family. In some respects, I think he loved us too much. As his children grew up, he never wanted to let us go. He had great difficulty dealing with me as I became a woman and we struggled with each other as I began to assert my independence. It was incomprehensible to me at the time why he fought so hard to keep me dependant on him, but maybe he was just scared to let me go.
Now all I have left of my parents are memories, and there are a lot of happy ones. The trip to Knott’s Berry Farm and laughing as my dad hammed it up with the street performers outside the Birdcage Theater. I would stand and watch him mix a cauldron of off-brand macaroni and cheese. The day my father led me down the aisle, the two of us never quite could walk in step. When he held my daughter for the first time and commented that she has his eyes, and she does… so do I.
The Living Years
Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
I know that I’m a prisoner
To all my father held so dear
I know that I’m a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got
You say you just don’t see it
He says it’s perfect sense
You just can’t get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defence
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It’s too late when we die
To admit we don’t see eye to eye
So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It’s the bitterness that lasts
So don’t yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different day
And if you don’t give up, and don’t give in
You may just be o.k.
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It’s too late when we die
To admit we don’t see eye to eye
I wasn’t there that morning
When my father passed away
I didn’t get to tell him
All the things I had to say
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I’m sure I heard his echo
In my baby’s new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It’s too late when we die
To admit we don’t see eye to eye
