Reflections on
Conversations with Daddy Late in Life
Written July 5, 2005 (just a little over a year before my father died) by Cheryl
Banks
Reflecting back upon my father and his life I wonder how I could go for 51 years and not know how much poetry my father could quote. That he could remember his friends names from childhood, even their addresses; could talk animatedly, as if it were just yesterday, of walking to the little corner grocer for a Moon Pie and an RC Cola; of throwing his paper route before school on his bicycle and going up and down every street in Leaksville so many times that he could make those trips in his memory simply by closing his eyes. He told me on several occasions of lying awake during the night, unable to sleep, and walking the streets of his beloved hometown in his memory. Going into the homes of friends and family and remembering specifics. He would say, "It's been said you can't go home again, but I do it all the time. My memories take me home."
My daddy's heart home for the last 53+ years has been with our
mother, the love of his life. I don't think in my entire life I've heard my
parents quarrel. They just always deferred to each other, thinking nothing
important enough to fuel a rift or sustain an argument. Their love produced
five children, 14 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren (at this writing
there are 8 great-grandchildren). Dad is very sentimental and has kept many of
the notes and cards we, as young children, gave him over the years.
I've spent all week just sitting, literally and figuratively, at
my father's feet listening. He seems to have so much to say and I have a need
to hear it. A need to hear the voice of this man I have heard for 51 years and
can't imagine not hearing. It's as if I can't listen fast enough. Time is
moving too quickly and there is so much to say. I have to leave soon. I hate
that I live 7 hours away. Weeks between trips are going to seem like an
eternity when there used to be times, half a year or more, between visits. Time
is running out. I wish I could have all those past years back. I wish I had
understood then how precious those days and hours with my father were going to become.
I massage daddy's diabetic feet, an act of love, something simple
to do. Yet the act becomes more somehow. It becomes a way of connecting to him
and of honoring him. It feels like an live electric current between my hands
and his warm skin covering his thin bony feet. His feet are so slender - I
never realized that before, and soft because he never walked barefooted. The
with There is a slight pigeon-toeing when he walks. I've never seen him cross
his legs like many men do with his foot resting on the opposite knee. He always
crosses his legs daintily, more like a woman, with his long slender foot toed
in. Come to think of it I've never seen daddy sit in that familiar, confident,
open-legged posture, typical of men. I pause as I hold his soft foot and we
hold a gaze into each other's eyes, not speaking, but speaking volumes. Two
sets of brown eyes glistened with tears that don't quite escape their
boundaries.
"These feet have taken me a long way." Daddy starts
talking again, "all over the streets of Leaksville growing up. Okinawa,
Pearl Harbor, Siam, Philippines, Guadalcanal. He said he thanked Adolf Hitler.
Strange thing to say I thought, but he went on to explain how if one thing was
changed in your history how everything else changes. Thus the ironical
gratitude for the war coming along and giving him the opportunity to escape the
mill town he loved but didn't want to spend his entire life in, knowing
he'd end up like his father working in the mill, drinking, never experiencing
anything else. He would have never met mom, the love of his life, and of course
would have none of his children or grandchildren. And that's how it was that at
the tender age of 17 my dad enlisted in the Marines, after being turned down by
the Army because he wore glasses. He had driven to Portsmouth, VA with one of
his friends to enlist. When the Army turned him down, someone told him to go to
the Marine recruiter "because the Marines took anybody!" During boot
training it was discovered what a sharp-shooter he was, so for a time he was
kept at the base doing rifle-training with other green recruits. Eventually he
would leave with a large Browning Machine Gun that weighed about 16 lbs. Dad
isn't a big guy, and back then he was 18 years old. The gun was too much for
him to haul around on long foot patrols so a nice guy in his platoon
voluntarily carried it for him.
My dad is an intellect - unapologetically. His richest most robust
world is between his ears. You'd never find him covered with grease in the
garage tearing down an engine. It doesn't seem like men today read that much
but there actually couldn't be a manlier hobby. Teddy Roosevelt was a voracious
reader and so were most of the greatest men in history. Reading allows you to
connect with the great thinkers and writers of history and expose you to new
ideas. It makes you "go deep" and become more well-rounded, able to
talk on a level that the majority of people seem to be too distracted to
participate in. Maybe they just have nothing to say - because they don't read
enough. I see dad pondering something deeply after reading, and then he begins
to extrovert his thoughts over something he read, looking for an exchange of
ideas, a meaningful discussion. How I wish I was that person but my thoughts
must be much shallower. It must be lonely for him not feeling he has anyone to
talk to on his level.
Well, daddy just shifted from one subject to another one. I wish I
had more days just to sit at his feet and listen. Now, at the end of his days
on earth, we are finally saying all the things we feel and want to say and
maybe never did. Why does it take pending death to incite us to cherish the
precious gift of each day with those we love? It's all over too quickly. Life
is a mere breath. I see that now. But then again, there is eternity - time that
never ends. Days and days of days and days. I'm so thankful there is a heaven
and I'm glad of the assurance that my precious father is going there and that I
will once again sit at his feet and listen.
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