The Father I Didn’t Know

by | Jan 15, 2011 | 0 comments

My father died on the day my first grandchild was born.  His death and her birth are all of a piece. He had always been in my life, but I didn’t know him well, at least not as a son should know a father.  Throughout most of my adult life I more or less ignored him.  Of course, I did the obligatory things that one does, but with little interest or feeling.  His gentle nature and lack of apparent drive or ambition had caused me to conclude that he was, at his core, a weak person.  I, on the other hand, had already achieved things that he could never understand (or so I thought).  We had no basis to relate, except that biology and my mother had conspired to...