In Search Of My Father

(This is the first column I ever published, from a 1996 local magazine called "On The Rock.")

I've been thinking a lot about my father lately. It's been almost 11 years since we lost him now. I was a young man when he died, with 23 years of memories stored up. Yet as time marches further and further from the day we laid him to rest, I worry about forgetting him.

I have children of my own now, children to whom Grandpa Lyke is simply a series of photographs. Children to whom Grandpa Lyke is just a name in the list of “God blesses” at the end of their prayers, though his name carries the special addition, “up in Heaven with the angels and God.” When my kids get older, I want to be able to tell them in meticulous detail all out the grandfather they never knew. I want them to know about his subtle wink, his hearty laugh, his huge hands, and his arms that were constantly scratched and scarred from farm work. I want them to know how he would relax by pitching horseshoes when his work was done. I want them to know how he astounded me by reciting the 1957 Milwaukee Braves lineup from memory twenty years after their heyday. I want them to know how he would take us on long Sunday drives through the countryside, never telling us our destination.

I'll never forget him, obviously. Putting these items down on paper will help ensure that I don't. But for every detail I remember vividly, I wonder about what I've forgotten. For example, his voice. I can no longer remember what his voice sounded like. I am hoping that among the things at my mother's house, I can find a recording of his voice. I have always regretted that he wasn't here on earth to see me evolve from a confused kid just out of college to a proud home-owning father with a suit-and-tie job. That he wasn't here to see his two grandchildren, including the one that bears his name. I can only take solace in the faith that I have, that he does indeed know all of this.

After an unemployed summer spent in pursuit of an advertising job, I finally got the one I wanted early in September of 1985. I called home, ecstatic, and when my dad answered the phone, I filled his ear for 15 minutes about what a great job I had just won. When I finally got around to asking how things were on the homefront, he told me that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

I placed myself firmly in denial. I convinced myself that his surgery was routine, and that within a few weeks, he would be home and all would be back to normal. He knew better. The day before the surgery, my family got together. At the time, we were not a huggy, kissy family. So when I left that Sunday, I started to go as usual, with simply a goodbye and a wave. My dad suddenly came up to me and gave me a huge, long hug. I was surprised, to be sure, but it still didn't faze me that this could be the last time I ever hugged my father. It was.

A little more than a month later, his body unable to recover from the surgery meant to save him, he demanded to be removed from all the medical machinery and brought back home. My family and I spent an agonizing four days in our living room, taking shifts staying up with him and holding his hand, as he fought the sleep from which he knew he would not awaken. Finally, at 1:20 pm on Halloween, surrounded by his entire family, a pastor and a nurse, he finally lost the fight. It was not a Hollywood death. His eyes didn't close, his mouth didn't close, his head didn't flop. He just stopped living. His last words had simply been, “last day.”

I do not want to remember my father by the last month of his life. Those details are far too vivid, surreal and disturbing. I want to remember him by the first 61 years and 5 months of life; the 23 years I knew that preceded that final month. And that's why I am so concerned about forgetting those details.

It's amazing, though, the memories you can pull out of storage when something reminds you. Recently, I was reading my daughter a library book, when one of those vivid reminiscences occurred. The book was written by a farm boy who had witnessed his father get badly injured, and nearly killed, when his clothing got caught in some farm machinery. I did not know what the book, a true story, was about when I started reading. But when I read the story, it hit me hard. When I was a teen, I had witnessed something eerily similar happen to my father. He was climbing up onto a tractor when his pant leg got caught in the spinning mechanism that operated our hay baler. When I heard the commotion and turned around, I saw my dad, pantless, straddling this bar that was spinning at God-knows-how-many rpm. I got the tractor turned off and helped him, painfully aware that I had almost witnessed a tragic accident. Amazingly, his pants were ripped completely off him, but his belt remained around his waist. I can't imagine how much that had to hurt. Despite the pattern of bruises all over his legs, he was incredibly lucky. What if his pants hadn't torn free? What if his legs hadn't been long enough to straddle the bar? Too many farmers have suffered far worse at the hands of their machinery.

I have been interested lately in my dad's childhood, which I knew little about. My aunt recently told me where I could find their childhood home, the farmhouse where my dad was actually born. I'm sure I had seen it before, probably on one of our long Sunday drives, but that would have been when I was a child. Now, as an adult, I was determined to really see it. I was armed with an old township plat book and my aunt's description of the house to pinpoint its location. I didn't know what to expect. I imagined that I might see a neglected old farmhouse on an abandoned farm. To my surprise, the farm was still a working operation and the farmhouse was in great shape. I drove past it slow a few times, trying to imagine his arrival on a spring day in 1924.

As I drove away from that farm, I thought about all of the things I would ask him if he were alive. I hope, as my children grow, they will have both the interest, and the opportunity, to ask me.