Yesterday would have been Dad’s 94th birthday. I was up early, before I had to start the work day, so I sat alone at the dining room table and waited for some sign that he was near. The stillness and quiet were strangely overbearing. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Outside, the trees were absolutely stoic, and there wasn’t the slightest movement of air. No birds or rustling in the garden. The occasional falling of the seven sons’ flower tree blooms was the only thing in motion, and even their landing in the pool was silent. The fountain grass, the tips of which are usually waving even when there wasn’t a breeze, remained frozen as if in a still photo.
My Dad was often a quiet man. He could yell and scream and get riled up by the horse races he followed in the paper and on television, and he would happily regale dinner guests with stories boisterously punctuated by laughter that brought tears to his eyes, but the bulk of my time with my father was largely spent quietly sharing an observance of all around us, only occasionally partaking in the foolishness. There was a stoic calm in him that seemed both contemplative and cathartic, as if by his age he knew that things were no longer worth fussing about. For the last few years of his life, this was the state which Dad and I happily shared our time together.
On this morning, the second birthday of his that we are commemorating without him, I find solace in the absolute stillness around me. In this quiet, I still feel my father. In this calm, I know he is here.
Happy birthday Dad.
