20. Time Flies.
The house I grew up in was special. But I think the reason my dad loved that house most was because every night he could step out onto our patio and drink in an unobstructed view of the sun setting over the Rocky Mountains.
A place where he could witness the grandeur of sunset against the jagged silhouette of his first love while he cradled his greatest loves, us, in his arms.
20 years ago I had the wherewithal to notice that he was around for a lot of those sunsets. But it wasn’t until later that I understood the intention, effort, and stubborn resolve that it took to be there for every single one. It was no accident. It was Peter Barton’s will that stretched the days as long as he needed them to be in order to keep his promise to himself to be there. And boy did he stretch those days.
Now the sun will set for the 7,305th time without him standing on that patio. But the thing worth celebrating is that in the 7,304 sunsets since he died I’ve still been cradled in his arms for every one.
When my Dad died, it ripped a hole in my heart. As if a piece of my heart tore itself away to chase after the moments we’d never have together.
What remains is the hole, a doorway into the seemingly infinite space that exists between us. Along the edges of this doorway hang exposed nerves that reach out into the emptiness like tendrils, frantically feeling for the piece that has gone missing.
20 years later I feel him. More now than any day before.
Today I celebrate the resonance of his love.
------------
I, and so many others, are awestruck by the density of life that he was able to pack into 51 years. But now as I reflect on his life I am more impressed with what he has achieved in the years after his death.
There is a bittersweet truth that I’ve had to wrestle with in the years since he died. I feel closer to my dad in these last 20 years than I did in the first 12 and change. I felt guilty for a long time for squandering our time together. Not that a kid should know better or do better than I did, still I look back at a time through the eyes of an adult longing for more. The guilt has dissipated. The longing remains.
It is my Northstar.
I look for the frequencies in my own life that match the frequencies of his. The soul. The music. His riffs floating through my life. Chords progressions that I can reach out and touch, telling me my life is in key. Baselines he plays from the other side that I can waba-a-da-daba-do-da-dee to reminding me that improvisation is a part of life. And the power chords that send lightning through my veins, a rock ballad dedicated to the vibrations that make life feel alive.
The music of his love still reverberates through my bones, amplified by our family and the friends he’s left to cover, remix, and sample his sound. Volume cranked to the earth shaking decibel fit for the soundtrack of his life.
-------------
The Last Mile
I cannot remember the exact day, but I will never forget the moment, because it was the last that I alone would share with my dad.
“J let’s go for a drive.”
Man he loved to drive. A total gear head… if it had a motor he loved to toy with it. Tinker with the engine, and most importantly see how fast it could go. Looking back it makes sense. Feet would never be sufficient transport for a guy determined to pack so much living into his life.
I hopped into the Big White Van, and watched my dad gingerly pull himself up into the driver seat, careful not to snag the medical pack that these days permanently hung across his shoulder. The pack hummed softly, constantly managing functions that my dad’s gut no longer could. The work of the pack was carried out by tubes that snaked their way from the pack up under his shirt, hiding the fangs that plunged deep into his stomach. A veil over the reality that we kids were spared, save the grimaces that would come when a tube was caught.
Without much of a word we rolled to the end of the driveway.
Left or right? We idled in that decision for what felt like a lifetime.
Underneath us the engine breathed like a horse nosed up against the starting gate. The Big White Van more Clydesdale than a race horse. Not his first choice of wheels, but by this time climbing down into the cab of a sports car was a position his body could no longer endure. Cancer is has a poetic irony to it, it grows, nourished by the pieces of you it steals away.
Still the Big White Van was well equipped for just about anything. It was a pillar of our childhood. A passenger van that endured every conceivable need put upon it by a family of five with a whole lot of doing to get done. Road trips, ski trips, seats for a full lacrosse team, bring it on. It always answered the call.
Once again it was called upon. One more time.
Right or left?
With a full tank of gas it felt that endless possibilities lied before us.
He could turn right, take the highway. We’d race west . Chase the sun like mad men. As long as Dad kept his foot on the pedal we could make this day last forever, Cheat time and death, if not forever at least just a little longer.
We turned left. We drove up the block, turned left again, a quarter mile further we pulled off the road into an open field and put the van in park. He turned off the motor, no more than 10 minutes after he’d started the van.
We’d reached the end of the road. As far we could go together.
Not the end of the line, but the furthest we could travel before going our separate ways. Such a short ride, yet look at where it had taken us. Before us Colorado bathed in gold as the Sun nestled into the Rocky Mountain Front range.
It was all there. A full lifetime played out through the windshield, and all we could do was look out at it and appreciate its splendor from inside the van.
What do you say to your 12 year old son? It is not a rhetorical thought but a real question to ponder, What knowledge do you impart?
And what do you say to your dying father? Maybe the answer is the whole reason I write.
“You don’t have to be the man of the house… When my dad died people told me ‘Pete you’re the man of the house now, look after your mother.’ You don’t have to do that. Not yet. You can all take care of each other. Right now you’re supposed to be a kid. Be a kid.”
I don’t know how long we sat there. It’s hard to know what metric could possibly measure a moment like this one.
But while we sat there, Silence was the song we harmonized and riffed on. Leaving space for our hearts to say the things our mouths couldn’t capture with words. Dreaming of places that we would go, thinking of the ways we could skirt the rules of life in order to do them together.
-----------
...
When I set out to write about my dad, I hoped that it would be because at that point in time I would know exactly what I wanted to say… instead I offer this. A collection of thoughts, disjointed, incomplete, and raw. More aligned with the reality of life and the reality of the terms of my relationship with my dad. It tells me what life is really like, that after 20 years I am still grappling with the meaning of his life, his death, and the place he holds in my own. And it tells me that no finite conclusion should be expected, but that’s not the point. Instead I’ll come back to this place, process, and allow the feelings to remain raw and unpredictable. Acknowledge it. Carry it. For those are the signs that his Love is still Alive.
I love you, Dad.