A Change in Trajectory

My dad died on August 26, 1997, and I wasn’t there. I could have been there because my mother-in-law at the time offered to let me use her frequent flyer miles to go to his bedside in a Tennessee hospital. I turned her down. Part of me just didn’t want to believe that he was dying, leaving forever. It’s hard to describe that feeling; it was overwhelming. My dad. Dying. I didn’t want to accept it, so I stayed home. Around 2 am, that morning, the phone rang. It was my step-mother calling to tell me that my dad had passed. I cried the rest of the morning, and that day completely changed the trajectory of my life.

What I remember most about my dad was that he was extremely intelligent. He and I would talk on the phone every Friday afternoon and into the evening, and I used to grab my dictionary to try and stump him on some definition of some word I had never heard. He always got it. I wanted to be like that. My dad went to a technical school when I was younger, so there was never any real push to go to college. After many conversations with him, I had decided that I wanted more from my life than what I had. I wanted a stable job, a family, a decent car. I wanted to be like my dad.

Up to that point I had been moving from job to job, never really settling on anything. I had my GED, but that wasn’t good enough for some of the jobs I wanted. I found out, however, that my GED would get me into the local community college, so I applied and was accepted. My excitement was dampened when I got that phone call at 2 am and realized I had to start my first class at 8 am. Should I go? My dad just died. But, I thought that he would want me to go, to continue on with my life. I went. I stayed in college for 10 years, earning two MA’s. I have been teaching college students ever since.

Just about everything I do has my dad’s fingerprints all over it. He was with me through college, he was with me when I started a family, and he is with me as I write this. His influence on me was unmatched by anyone else in my life. He taught me responsibility, empathy, parenting, and much more. He also taught me that knowledge is freedom and that is something that no one can take from me. He didn’t tell me in so many words, but the type of person he was made such a statement from him possible. I have taken every lesson I learned from him and am passing them on to my sons. I talk about him to them because I want them to know who he was and what he was like and that he would love them.

It has been 24 years since he died, and I think about him every day. I think about how he changed my life and made me into the person I am today. While he is gone, I still have the memories, and I still live my life the way I think would make him proud. I have grown so much in the past 24 years, and I owe that growth to him. He may not have thought of himself as the greatest father on the planet, but I did. The picture above shows his Scrabble face. He made that face when he was trying to create the word that would blow everyone else off the board. He could always do it. That is what I loved about him. He just did those things that others either couldn’t or wouldn’t, and that is what he taught me. So, I continue on, and I know that I can still count on him when I need him.