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Appleby 
8:33am, October 17, 2009
The advertising for Fathers Day (June 21) is heating up as we are urged to buy all kinds of expensive, mainly electronic, gadgets for our fathers and take them on expeditions (or even, God forbid, for a spa day), whom the advertising all assumes are in their mid 40s in excellent health and who would in fact touch a Binkie or a facial with a barge pole even if it were offered to them free of charge. I have always faintly resented this assumption, and this year, my first Fathers Day without a father to visit save in the Veterans Cemetery, they rankle especially as I remember 20 years of slowly failing health and finally his confinement to a hospice bed. Those views of our fathers are ignored and brushed aside even as the D-Day Generation quickly fade away. In the Veterans Cemetery where Daddy lies, an entire two rows have been added in the months since he walked to Glory. On his row are four Sergeants and one Staff Sergeant of the Great War who died in the same week as he did. Where is the Fathers Day advertising for fathers such as these? Daddy always loved, and as we found a couple of weekends ago as we sorted through a box labeled Dad Stuff, cherished those things we made for him far more than he ever cared for our bought tributes. In an old cigar box we discovered Fathers Day cards that his daughters (now all over 50) made for him when we were little girls. There is even one signed *Katy and Nancy* that I made when I was 12 and my youngest sister was barely two, containing my own awkward drawing of daughters wishing their Daddy a happy Fathers Day with both hands, palms up, outstretched … and on the facing page the crayoned figures labeled Daddy and Nancy that a baby draws, a roundish shape with arms and legs and a face with a big smile, hand in hand. In later years the drawings by my artistic sister improve and those by my inartistic self do not. J The cards are all loving and very witty. We are a family who knows the difference between jokes and wit, even when we were children. Higher in the stack are handmade cards from the next generation now in their late 20s and early 30s; this year there would have been lovingly crayoned offerings from the great-grandchildren who are just learning the joy of making tributes themselves. We gave Daddy gifts, of course, that we saved our pennies to buy. He loved chocolate covered cherries and he received avalanches of them. Handkerchiefs were also a safe option. In later years well-meant but unnecessary gifts of calculators (Daddy could add up faster in his head than I can on a calculator) and magnifying glasses (he had eyes like an eagle), and books by his favourite authors: Tony Hillerman, Lewis Grizzard, Leo Rosten, and Tom Clancy; and if we were quick enough, best-selling books about the Greatest Generation and his heroes Eisenhower, Reagan, Omar Bradley and William Tecumseh Sherman – and one year a set of Lonesome Dove on tape that he sat down and watched for about 8 hours. One year I took him on an Alaska cruise that he had always wanted. By that time he was becoming frailer and the Holland America Lines elder cruise (I was the youngest on board at 41) suited him right down to the ground. He talked about that cruise for the rest of his life. But by far the most important gifts we ever gave him were the gifts of our time. Daddy thought the title of Daddy, and later Granddad, far exceeded in value all other titles the world might offer. We used to tease him that he would rather be called Daddy than Your Reverence, Your Majesty or Your Honour, and it was very true. As the boys reached their teens and realized that the soldiers who fought World War II were not old men when they went to war – they were teenagers and twenty-somethings like themselves and had everything to lose - they loved to sit with Daddy and listen to his experiences in the Great War because suddenly they could relate. He loved telling those stories and eventually he wrote them down for me to type up and now the kids can have them to read over and remember. (They also stopped thinking they were the most put-upon and unfortunate people on earth, at least briefly, when they heard Granddad tell that the first time he slept in a bed alone or had enough to eat every day was when he joined the Army Air Force.) I don’t have my Daddy this Fathers Day. My gift to him will be a donation to the hospice where they lovingly cared for him at the end of his days, and a card to lay on the altar of their chapel and the message that I miss him every day. I am glad I have my memories too.
Comments
Beautifully written. You have helped me to appreciate a little more what I have in my father.
rote