Mortality Morality

On this day, almost to the hour, three years ago...I had my last conversation with my dad. It wasn't an especially good conversation, for I was gruff. My parents had skipped my son's first birthday party the week previous, and I was in no mood to hear about western kansas, Agrigas meter service, snow over the door handles on the pickups, etc...I was in no mood to negotiate visiting over Thanksgiving at some hotel buffet again, either. I was cloudy, thinking how unlike the Cleavers we were, and how very much I wanted a Rockwellian holiday, just once.

Then, Wednesday morning at the same phone, a call came in. I was the only one on campus, it was a fluke that the phone would even ring on the holiday break. Out of curiosity, I picked up, only to talk to someone from the Ulysses PD, who shared the bad news: my dad had died in his sleep.

I think that was the moment, more than any before/since, that I wished I could control time, that I could TIVO back just two days and have that conversation all over again. Sure, we said the perfunctory "Love 'ya" as always. Sure, he didn't likely even know I was unhappy with him...but if I could re-do that conversation, it would be so very different.

Of course, that is just a fantasy. The reality is that in life there are no do-overs. That one change, my dad's passing, has likely affected me more than any other single event in my timeline. More than getting married. More than having kids. More than flunking out of college. More than asking my best friend to shoot me with a .30 caliber rifle when wearing a kevlar vest....Since that one event, my career changed twice, my residence changed three times, and my outlook has never quite quit revolving around the presence of the present. (For that matter, the present [gift] of the present.)

Sometimes I forget, like everyone else, and just take time and life for granted. There are moments which pass that I still reflect on with regret. For the most part, however, I try to now live as if this moment, these people, this presence, may never recur. Days like this, milestones like headstones, remind me.

I'll never quite know if my dad saw it coming. He was in good health, had quit smoking and he was exercising daily. He'd had a full physical just a month before, and he'd passed with flying colors. Somehow, however, tracking back through his notes, journals, files, etc...I think he was privvy to the reaper's knock. He had become somewhat obsessed with the idea of not only capturing family geneology, but also family history, particularly stories. He had commissioned my wife and I to gather up all the Jarvis family anecdotes by video and audio, and to then link them to 'fruits' hanging from the family tree. Sadly, that idea has not gone past his dream of it...but it suggests that he, at least, understood mortality and wanted to preserve a little something.

I tried following in his footsteps. I even moved back to Western Kansas and took over his estate, his business, and the care of his wife, dogs, property, bills, etc. I was so resolute in that effort that I bought a house there before I even had quit my job back at Cowley.

I learned that wasn't really healthy for me. I'm not him. I don't like it out there, and I didn't like his business. I wanted to preserve the farmstead that had been my father's and his father's before him...but it's just not the same, anyway.

Now, I have a good life, and I'm a much different person than I was 3 years ago. I'd like to show him around the farm I own, set a grandkid on his knee, swap stories, tell lies...and in my head and heart, I suppose I do.