September 21st again

Among my life's many regrets, I feel guilt about my father's death. I wish I had done more, listened more, been more alert to mistakes that were made in his care, managed interactions better, been better in tune with what he needed. I wish I'd somehow made better use of the time we had. It's not that I made a complete botch of it - it's just the finality of the thing. Always open to 'review' in my head because 'redo' isn't a possibility. I'm mostly just sad that he's gone. But I wish the guilt wasn't there; that's for sure.

Those feelings don't seem to be fading with the years since his death, but neither do the wonderful memories of the twinkle in his eye and his mellow voice; and the bad jokes, lengthy political discussions, criticisms of my driving habits and waxing eloquent about the virtues of blueberry pie.

My dad was a character. And somehow on his birthday I always seem to want to write something about him.

When my son was very little we shared a vacation with my folks to the interior of Alaska. It was an incredible trip - the mountains, rivers, glaciers and wildlife of Alaska are just beyond the superlatives of language I can throw at them. We actually SAW Denali - a mountain so huge that it usually hides itself in its own weather. (Yes, I know. It is really named Mt. McKinley but I just can't bring myself to call it that. It should be known as 'the great one' - Denali - not by the name of some mid-west politician who had never been more than 1000 feet above sea level in his life. Anyway.)

My father was completely taken by it all. He took what seemed, at the time, to be miles of videotape of all those amazing sights - recording for posterity what had stood there for centuries, and stands there still today. In the 'sound' background, where he wanted to provide commentary, he could only say how incredible, how beautiful... a lot of "oh my goodness's" and "wow's" and "just look at that's."

Along for the ride, of course, and competing with the scenery (in my view at least) was cute-as-the-dickens Todd - a little guy at the time and less impressed with the views than with the first time experiences of sand between his bare-foot toes and the smell and sight of a musk ox standing a few feet away from him at the Anchorage zoo. During that trip Todd was, for the first time in his young life, sharing space in the world with a video camera, and I have often thought how lovely it would be to look at that tape and catch a few frames of him walking, talking, laughing and just being a little boy.

But both my mother and I are sure that little Todd doesn't appear on those tapes much at all. My dad was so focused on what he had come to see - on the splendor, on the awe of actually being in northern Alaska, this place that he never expected he would see in his life but which was right there in front of him anyway... It wasn't that we weren't important at the time, but this experience was one of those times in life where taking it all in is the most you can do. So that's what he did. In the form of miles of videotape of inanimate stuff.

(I certainly don't fault him for it. My own pictures of the trip hardly included 'people' pictures either! Am I my father's daughter or what?)

Even so, I wish I'd followed his example in the last months of his life. I wish I'd done a better job of focusing on that time and sorting out what was going to be important and lasting about it for me. I hate having the fun of thinking about him get all mixed up with the sadness and guilt of not having made the last times with him as good as I might have.

Is it a lesson I can apply to the future? I hope so.