Lessons My Dad Probably Didn’t Know He Taught Me (And a Few He Did)
Photo by Alexis Haselberger (My dad and my son, cuddling.)
One of the top 5 “deathbed regrets” is “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard”.
No one looks back, from that vantage point, and says, I wish I’d spent more time working!
Unfortunately, the specter of death has loomed pretty large in my life in the past few years, but more acutely recently: a few weeks ago, I lost my dad to brain cancer.
So, today we’re going to take a little departure from our regularly scheduled content, and I hope you’ll come along with me for the ride.
And if this isn’t your thing, well, that’s OK, too, you can skip this one; I’ll be back next week with more of what you’re used to.
But today, I want to tell you about someone I wish I’d spent even more time with: My dad.
Because the loss of him is the only thing on my mind.
And sharing him with you is a gift I can give to you, and to me.
Because my dad was a guy who put his time where his mouth is; he spent time doing things that were important and meaningful and that he enjoyed, even if others may have found him, or his deep interests, a little strange at times.
So, here we go:
My dad was a lot of things, but most of all he was a constant presence in my life, from some of my earliest memories of being zipped inside his coat to keep warm on summer beach vacations on the Oregon coast (where no one really goes in the water because it’s so damn cold) to the fact that up until he couldn’t, he played chess on Sundays with my youngest (virtually, via chess(dot)com, while talking on Google Meet), and played Go with my oldest, whenever their schedules aligned.
My dad wasn't super effusive with his language around love, but the fact that he loved me deeply was never in question.
It was my dad who read to me every night, aloud, with funny voices.
It was my dad who stayed up all night with me when I was sick, reading to me aloud, on the bathroom floor, when I was puking so much I needed to be close to the toilet at all times.
It was my dad who took me along on Saturday errands (surely, in retrospect, to give my mom some breathing room).
We’d go grocery shopping, and he’d buy me treats.
We’d stop at “Silver Platters”, the CD store he loved, and he’d get me set up listening to music while he perused the stacks.
We’d go to Crossroads (a local strip mall) and get lunch, dosas mostly, after spending who knows how long at Half Price Books, where he’d always let me get whatever I wanted because reading was his “special interest”.
It was my dad who made sure that his daughters would be self sufficient:
Every Christmas as a teenager, I received tools. I have 5 types of saws, most of which I’ve never used. But you better believe I’m prepared!
He taught me how to sharpen my knives (good knives, that he bought me), at a perfect 15-degree angle on a whetstone. And even though he taught me how when I was a teen, it’s only now, in my 40s that I’m going to have to start doing this task myself, because he did it for me every time he visited.
He taught me to change the oil on my 1982 Toyota Corolla, then to change the spark plugs when they started to go and my car started rattling.
It was my dad who met me at a random gas station one night when I was 16, having gotten turned around while driving home from a babysitting gig in the impenetrable fog, in the time before cell phones.
It was my dad who chaperoned my 16th birthday party, on Cameno Island, at a friend’s house, full of teenagers, doing god knows what (just kidding, I do know), just to make sure we were safe, but not interfering at all.
It was my dad who dropped me off in NYC for college, walking around Washington Square Park with me, and buying me a small painting I still have in my house today.
It was my dad who sent me manila envelopes of articles that he’d cut out of the various newspapers and magazines, with handwritten notes about why he thought I’d like them, until the internet became his primary source of information, after which I got MANY (like upwards of 10 a week) emails from him forwarding stuff he thought I’d like.
(I will say, I did, indeed, need to batch-process those emails! The internet, made it a little too easy for him to share; I think I preferred the old days, but I digress.)
It was my dad who drove with me to Portland, after I left New York at 23, and got us a hotel and took me out to dinner while I was interviewing for jobs for which I would receive offers and yet decide not to take, based only on gut feeling. And he never gave me crap about those decisions.
And when I didn't end up moving to Portland, but to San Francisco instead, it was my dad who rented a U-haul and drove me 15 hours to San Francisco to move me in, on Father’s day, no less.
And when I was lonely in San Francisco, those first few weeks before I had friends, before I met my husband, before I had a real job, it was my dad I wanted to talk to, just to shoot the shit.
And now I’m well into my 40s, but it’s my dad who I always called when I had a question about, well, most anything:
How to fix a running toilet
How to prune one of the fig trees he planted in my yard (which he brought to me, on a plane, in a suitcase)
How to troubleshoot a stove on the fritz
Was our relationship without friction?
Of course not. He could be infuriating as hell.
I remember once, when he was explaining something to me that I was never going to use or remember, and I said: “I’m happy to listen to you tell me this, but I want you to know that I’m not going to remember, I’m just going to google it, or hire someone, should this ever come up again. Do you still want to tell me?” And of course, he did.
But, it’s hard to be mad at someone who’s being so god-damn helpful.
But so far, I’ve only told you about how he related to me.
And he was so much more than that, of course.
He was excellent at everything he did, and that was because, at least in part, he made time for his own interests:
He was a skilled craftsman and woodworker
A prolific gardener
A handyman extraordinaire
He had the rare skill of being incredibly patient with every customer service agent he ever spoke to
He was a voracious reader, and he instilled a love of reading and books in us all.
As a person who reads, on average 50-75 books a year, often reading several at once, that’s all dad.
He had impeccable taste and was a thoughtful gift giver.
He instilled in me a love of the Beatles, Bob Marley, and Don McClean’s “American Pie”. To the end, he maintained a perfectly organized collection of 1000s of CDs, a music lover with wide-ranging tastes. Gregorian chants to the Eurythmics, Dylan to Enya, to Tracy Chapman to the Stones.
And he was obsessive not only about music and books, but many subjects, in succession.
First, it was bamboo, then figs, then rugs. (At least, in my lifetime.)
But you better believe that when he got on a subject, he was going to learn all there was to learn about it. And, by proximity, you were probably going to learn more than you ever wanted to about that subject as well.
He was generous with his time, even if he wanted things to be on his own schedule.
His diagnosis about a year ago, of terminal brain cancer, was a blow to us all, most of all him.
Because he wasn’t ready to stop living.
In fact, we used to joke that he’d die sometime in his late nineties falling off a ladder or the roof, because he was never going to hire someone to clean the gutters.
As it is, we got him for a whole lot less time that we expected.
And, as cliché as it is, I’m not sure what I’ll do without him.
I feel lucky that he was my dad, and for the time we got with him.
And in the last year of his life, I got to test my own ideals about time by making sure that I visited as often as I could, and called more often than that.
And for a guy who never, ever wanted to talk about death, I was so impressed with his optimism, his almost Zen-like acceptance, in the face of this f*cking disease.
And, oh yeah, he taught me how to swear too. Not on purpose. But through osmosis.
I have been lucky in life to suffer relatively little loss.
And I know that no one likes to think, or talk, about death.
But it’s important to do so because being reminded of the fact that time is limited, for you, and for me, is one way that we can make better decisions about how we want to use our time in the future.
I aim to live a life of few regrets.
And rather than feeling morbid, thinking about my dad’s death, my eventual death, etc., allows me to make the choices that feel hard in the moment, but that will reduce regrets.
So:
Answer that phone call, even if you’ve got a to-do list a mile long.
Invite a friend you haven’t seen in too long to lunch.
Start up that hobby you’ve been interested in taking up for years but haven’t felt like you’ve had the time for.
