Text: Father, funeral

Often times I find myself contemplating what I would say at my father's funeral.

In 2002 my father died of a heart attack. He died on the same weekend that my mother married my stepfather. My mother put off the marriage for 10 years. My father's death ushered in some freedom in my life. He left me as the beneficiary on his life insurance. The money freed me from credit card debt that I was literally about to consolidate the same week. I ended up obtaining his truck the very same month my 36-month car-lease was ending. In one month, problems resolved but in their doing so, more problems spawned. I began to consider myself as a man.

You realize that you've failed up until this point. You are fighting to save a personal love-interest with a girl you hardly care about. You're strapped to an amazing amount of debt for someone of your age. You're landlocked in Colorado due to a condo purchase you've made. You find solace in attending college, if even for just a moment you feel like you're doing something worthwhile. Even there you can struggle--but it is different from everything else. You are graded, you can see how you stand up to the rest. You have some confirmation of life in school. You also wonder if your father felt like he failed. Did he share any of your emotions. Hell, you begin to wonder if he even has any. If you never receive a call from your father, does he still cry?

As a boy, you look to your father to measure yourself. You grow in his shadow. He is the law. Whenever you don't have the courage to stand up for yourself, he should be the bastard shoving you into the fray. He should tell you, "Son, you can do this. You can do anything. You just have to be strong." In the face of death, a soldier needs his captain to wash the stomach-churning fear from its occupation. Where is my captain. When I stare long and hard into the angry face of life, what armor breaks its teeth when it comes to bite. What is my grade--what is his grade--when it is all said and done. When you don't attend class--when you don't see your son--what are you really learning. You never learn to grow as a man whether you are the father or the son in that scenario.

You’d shed a tear for yourself if you only knew it was right. You’d shed a tear for the death of a father if you believed it would’ve made a difference. In this case, you don’t sit around and wonder who or what your father was. I chose not to see him in the casket, as I showed up late (flying in from my mother’s wedding in Vegas, to my father’s funeral in Colorado). I want to remember him as a forgotten call on Christmas.

You realize that answering questions of his existence may be vital to your understanding of him, but not for understanding yourself. The more you know about a man you don’t want to be, the more likely you’re able to mimic his actions and justify them as part of your genetic core. Here you do not learn from history. You take the path not traveled. You be a good father because you never knew if yours could be. You take the second chance at freedom and capitalize. You meet the right girl. You worry less about stress. You create makeshift tools to guide you in the construction of yourself--you blueprint the foundation of manhood. You hope some day to succeed, using mistakes, immaturity, and experience to sharpen the edges. You are your own guide now. You are the captain.

If there is anything I’ve learned from my father, it is that he loved me. He told me it. I was a passing thought on holidays, contemplated whenever he viewed a family sitcom, considered whenever he thought of his successor—I was a thought. I was everything he wished he had the second chance to be. I was just a long distance call and a $250-a-month bill. I can say the same of my car payments.

My father is gone now. Gone is the legacy, or so I’ve heard, of comedic ingenuity wrapped into a downtrodden heavy-machinery salesman. Here today I stand a descendant of his glory. No further knowledge of him than what I can speculate or hear from those who knew him. I stand at the fork-road of life, the unwanted path of his life behind me, and only my future ahead. I miss you dad, but I’d miss you more if I had known you.