"Call it dad." My oldest son, standing with his father in the damp grey morning air on the back deck commands. His dad looks around dramatically. "It's a magnificently beautiful day," he declares ceremoniously, as he does every day regardless of the weather.
This was his mantra, his legacy.
My former husband died this past summer. He had a particularly aggressive cancer which whittled his usual robust self to a shadow. In his final days he continued to hold court to dozens of friends and family members. His children were by his side every step of the way.
We were married for 27 years, parented five wonderful kids, did crosswords, ran turkey trots, went on fun family vacations (we were a Motel 6 kind of family), and laughed about shared childhood memorabilia. He was a bushy red-headed boy, the male complement to me. When we met, the first thing I noticed was not his smile, or his banter, but the fact that his freckled arms looked just like mine.
A more likely match you would not find. Raised Irish Catholic, we could quote from the old Latin Mass, and, later, had a reverence for Enya music. Our kids felt the solid foundation we set for them, in secular and spiritual ways. We were a family full of children, of dogs, cats and various other pets, of friends over for pizza and Broadway songs.
But, for both of us, something was missing. For me, it was the truth that I was not so straight, and for him that he was not so secular. It was our simultaneous undoing. We separated, he (the Ivy League lawyer) putting the blame squarely on me for cheating (with a woman no less) while he too was testing his own straying waters. When financial agreements were discussed, he became manipulative, cold, a bully I had never seen before. He moved out quickly, barely saying goodbye to his children.
We communicated in spurts in the ensuing years. I appreciated that he attended the funerals of my father and brother. I came to say my last goodbyes to our family dog who he had adopted as his own. Cordial, sometimes chilly, always at arm's length. His wife, more rigidly religious than he, was fake courteous, but I sensed she really wanted to erase me entirely from his life's story.
Yet, this man, with all his volume and bravado, was a genuine light to many. His Sunday school class. The daughters on the annual 'Dads and Daughters" overnight hikes. The children of women widowed young who needed a trustworthy father figure. His university students who learned about the importance of the Constitution and legal ethics from him. His fellow believers who needed one ethical leader among a rabble of religious shams to give their lives a semblance of meaning.
A few weeks before he passed away, I traveled with the kids to visit him at his home. We all sat, encircling him, playing and singing his favorite songs. There were some tears and lots of laughter. His daughters held his hands.
At his funeral service, the kids told stories about their dad. At one point, our youngest got up and spoke. She had been his constant caregiver for the two years of his illness, driving countless hours to be by his side during his grueling hospital stays and at his home hospice bedside. She reminded everyone present of her dad's hopeful mantra. "I have a tattoo of it," she said sheepishly. "And if there is anything we can take from my dad's life, it is that every day contains beauty and promise.
Call it dad. It's a magnificently beautiful day.
