My dad died 25 years ago today. And most of the time, it feels like it’s been that long. Especially as I get ready to walk down the aisle next month without him in attendance.
He listened to John Lee Hooker. And he read Walter Mosley. I wasn’t cognizant enough at the time to put two and two together in order to ask if he turned to those voices because he felt marginalized. Maybe, through them, he was trying to understand something – about the world, or maybe even himself.
He also enjoyed golf, photography and yard work. They don’t seem like they go together until you look closer. As I think about it now, I think he was drawn to beauty, order and peace.
Dad battled with alcoholism most of his life. And that made his life more difficult. It strained his relationships and cost him jobs, but in a weird way, I wonder if his numbness brought him some snippets of peace. Was that what he was looking for all along?
I introduced him to the Prince of Peace near the end of his life. And even that turned into an internal battle of sorts. But on his last job, which required him to be away from home for long stretches, he ended up rooming with a Pentecostal pastor who shared the same gospel with him, and it changed him. He came back a different person. I gave him my Bible and he began to read the sections I recommended.
Then one day, he took a drink, and he never recovered from that. After he died, I didn’t have the language for grief.
But I kept bumping into the things he loved. A blues riff that carried more ache than anger (Gary Moore’s Still Got the Blues comes to mind). A book that gave me a glimpse into his life and mine (J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar). A quiet morning with sunlight spilling across a perfectly manicured lawn (captured in a picture I have of him mowing). And in those moments, I felt close to him again.
Beauty didn’t erase the grief. But it gave it space to breathe. It reminded me that even after 25 years, something in me still responds to what he responded to. That’s no small thing.
I won’t get to see his face when I say “I do” next month. But I can still trace his fingerprints in the quiet moments, in the music I let play too long, in the books that move me and in the stillness that lets me feel both sorrow and gratitude at the same time.
Maybe that’s what grief does over time. It loses its sharp edges, and if we let it, it points us back to the beauty that remains. And that beauty becomes a quiet reminder that love leaves fingerprints, not just memories.
