The Voice in my Head

My father was born in a ghost town in Northeast Wyoming in 1915. He passed away last year just shy of his 106th birthday. His story is one that most people today wouldn't understand. The house he grew up in had no running water or indoor plumbing and a single coal stove for heat. He was 14 when the stock market crashed. His first job paid him a dollar a day. He was born during a pandemic, and died during the next one. He lived through some of this countries best and worst times. He voted for FDR, JFK, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.

As children of the Great Depression, my parents always had a vegetable garden. I swear I didn't know what store bought tomatoes tasted like until I went to college. His garden was the talk of the neighborhood. He also fed the neighborhood. He grew everything. Tomatoes, green beans, onions, corn, hot peppers, sweet peppers, you name it it was out there. We had strawberries and raspberries and rhubarb. When my friends had a snack it was a candy bar - when I had one it was a stalk of rhubarb and a bowl of sugar.

An Italian immigrant's son he did not take the American dream for granted. He was working before he hit double digits, playing the banjo on street corners for change with his brother. He waited outside the local market everyday asking for a job until one day someone didn't show up for work and he became a bag boy. When World War II began, already a father of two little girls, he and his brother packed up their families and moved to Washington state. They worked in the Boeing factory building bombers while their little brother fought in Italy against the Nazis. At the end of the war they returned to Wyoming to build a better life for their families. During his life my dad did what ever was necessary to provide for his family. His passion was music, but he knew that would not pay the bills. He was a butcher and a meat wholesaler by day, and a drummer by night. Eventually he landed a job as an insurance agent, a job that he was incredibly successful at for 50 years, retiring at the spry age of 80.

For me, I was a late arrival in my father's life. He was nearly 50 when I was born, the fifth kid spread out over 25 years. I'd like to say we were close, but the truth is we didn't see eye to eye on much. We were literally generations apart; while kids my age were learning to play football and basketball, I was learning to play golf and bowling, because that's what 60 year old men do. The saving grace was baseball. We both loved it, and as luck would have it I was graced with enough talent to make him proud. Eventually I did what all kids usually do, ventured out into the world and started my own family, ending up on the other side of the country from him. I watched him grow old from a distance. Each visit home I wondered if it would be the last time I saw him. Looking back now I think he felt the same way. Every time we left he would come outside and watch us drive away, as if trying to make sure he got every second possible with us before we were gone. As the years passed I listened to him grow old over the phone, each conversation becoming more repetitive and frustrating for us both. We had so much left to say to each other and time was not on our side.

By the time he passed last year I thought I was ready. He had defied the odds for a long time, but I knew the last couple years had been rough. When the call came I flew home in time to say goodbye, and he died peacefully in his own bed. It just so happens his birthday was June 19th, so this year would have been his birthday and Father's Day. Just over a year since he passed, I've come to realize that the impact he had on my life.

Everyone has that internal monologue that guides their journey through life. Little things or big things, it's there to help. When my wife asks me why I have a vegetable garden big enough to feed an army of vegetarians, I just shrug and say no worries, I'll just give the extra away. When I prune my tomato plants to make sure I have the biggest and the best tomatoes, its the voice in my head telling me how.

It was the voice in my head that drove me to be successful in life. It told me to work harder than the next guy. It told me to do the right thing, even when that path was harder than another. For most of my life I thought the voice in my head was me. Now I know better. Now I know it was his.

There have been times in my life that I wanted to give up, throw in the towel and it was him telling me to keep fighting. When I failed, it was his voice giving me the encouragement I needed to pick myself up and start again.

So now on it is a bittersweet realization that you will always be with me, even though neither one of us ever acknowledge how much we loved each other. The best I can do is take your advice as we debate inside my mind, in the hopes that I can pass the wisdom you shared with me on to my family to keep your memory alive. Happy Birthday, Happy Father's Day Dad.