Today is my dad's birthday.
5/18/1951 -- 5/14/1988
Here are some weird things I recently realized.
Today he would have been 64.
>>I love The Beatles including the song "When I'm Sixty Four." ("Will you still need me, will you still feed me...when I'm 64?")
He died 27 years ago.
>>The number 27 is my "lucky" or favorite number. (I was born on the 27th of January, I suppose that could have something to do with it being my favorite.)
He was 36 at the time of his death, but only 4 days away from turning 37.
>>I am now 37.
I am officially older than my dad ever was.
I try to not dwell on the negative. I spent too many years after his death feeling sad, depressed and angry.
That's not to say those feelings don't creep in. I still miss him. I still get sad that my kids will never know him. But instead of trying to hide from those feelings, I embrace them. I feel them. And then I try to think about the good. The good I had with him for ten years. And the good in my life now, the good that would make him so happy if he were still around. That's why I posted this, to Instagram, last week. I was trying to focus on the good.
Regardless, it's a strange concept, to be older than your dad.
I remember when I turned 30 I thought a lot about my mom. That was her age when her husband died and turned her into a single mother of a ten and six-year-old. At that time I didn't have any kids but couldn't imagine the pain of losing your life partner, let alone while you're still needing to be a mother.
And now, to be the age my father was so close to being but never made it... I don't really know how to describe that feeling.
Your parents are your guide. They go through everything first. You may not always follow their lead, but they do influence you as you make your way through life's major events. Parents aren't the only guides one has, but they are the first and, in a lot of ways, the most influential.
In the years since my father's death, I've been blessed with other guides. Other male role models. But, in the back of my head, I always think about my dad. What he would do. What he did do while he was alive. And, in my head, my dad is always older. Wiser.
It's like when you're a freshman in high school and the seniors look so old. Then you become a senior and while you feel like an "adult," you don't feel quite as old as those seniors seemed when you were a freshman. And then, after you graduate and you come back five years, ten years, FIFTEEN years later and see the seniors and think: "they are babies!" It's all relative...and that's where I'm at.
My dad was so big. Larger than life. Old. An ADULT. To have the realization that I am now older than he ever was is... weird. It's hard to describe it in any other way.
That "weird" feeling has lingered over the past couple of weeks. I write when I'm happy. I write when I'm sad. I really write when I'm angry. But the words over the past week didn't come easy. They were there, they just needed some time.
So here they are. In all their tangled beauty and contradictory messiness. I'm both happy and sad. I'm alive but aware of my own mortality. I'm content yet apprehensive. I'm a lot grateful and a little resentful.
I'm more on the positive side of each conflicting group, but it's all there. The difference today verses years past? I'm not afraid of it, I'm not trying to deny it. Because I know that even though it might be cloudy today, the sun is right around the corner.
The Beatles, "Here Comes the Sun"