I received my dad's chapter for my next book in the mail yesterday. He wrote it on yellow legal pad paper, just like he did for the first book. He didn't want to write a chapter this time. He said he didn't want to go back to that dark place. Losing Wesley left a gaping wound in all of us.
I've spent most of the evening preparing his chapter for my editor while my family plays loudly with excitement downstairs. Hot Guy is playing Wiffle ball in the family room with the kids. It's winter here now and gone are the summer evenings in the yard playing Wiffle ball until the sun goes down. We are a family that improvises.
When I was a kid, I always felt lucky to have the family I did. We didn't have a lot of money when I was younger, but we were always going some where, doing something. My parents are social people and we had BBQs with our friends and we went to my grandpa and grandma's house in the mountains nearly every Sunday. My brother Vance and I played sports and had birthday parties with all of our friends. My mom made us cool cakes and my parents saved their money to make sure we got what we asked for every Christmas, within reason.
The Christmas I remember most wasn't because of the gift I asked for and received. My brother was racing BMX bikes (and so was I, but that's another story entirely) and he was slowly building a bike that my parents could afford. For Christmas he asked for one alloy wheel for his bike. He figured he would ask for the other one for his birthday in January. My parents told him they couldn't afford to get him both at once for Christmas.
Christmas morning, they wheeled my brother's bike in from the garage and he hopped on with absolute delight as he marveled at the beauty of his front wheel, alloy just as he'd asked.
While he was sitting on his bicycle seat, still looking at and thrilled about his one alloy wheel, I noticed the back wheel looked just like the front one.
"Hey! Aren't both wheels the same?" I asked.
Vance looked at the tire on the back of his bike and started to squeal like a girl with excitement! Somehow, our parents had managed to buy two alloy wheels for Vance's bike.
I've never forgotten that Christmas and every year when I am preparing my son's gifts with little consideration to what they cost, I think about the many sacrifices my parents made to insure Vance's and my childhood was a good one. To this day, I refuse to spend much money on Christmas, because I know the presents won't matter to the kids when they grow up, but the stories they tell of their childhood will.
Below is an excerpt from my dad's chapter, which will be the second to the last chapter of my second book, just as it was in my first. I cherish it as much as I cherish my brother's alloy wheels on his BMX bike.
Excerpt from Thoughts From My Father:
As a man who has been married for forty-three years, the father of two wonderful grown children who exceed my own capabilities, and grandchildren who make it all worth it, the most frequent prayer I pray is for the safety and the happiness of my children and their children.
When Wesley got sick and wasn’t getting better, I knew that balance of happiness and safety that I prayed for my family every night would never be the same. I knew my daughter would never be the same. The story as we’d known it, was being rewritten.
There was nothing Wes wanted more than to marry my daughter and have a son. He took great pride in his family and the two of them together built a solid life. As time when on, and Wes got sicker, he got angry. As much as I hated to watch what he was doing to himself and to my daughter in his anguish, I knew it wasn’t his fault. And Lisa knew that too. He was just a man with a body that wasn’t allowing him to live the way he wanted to live and he knew he would never grow old and see his son grow up. He was only thirty-five years old. I can't imagine what that was like for him.
We were there for them as much as we could be. My wife Carmen did what she did when Lisa was sick, she selflessly showed up every day in every way she could. She was in Texas for days at a time, helping them with Hunter so Lisa could take care of Wes. I only visited a few times that year, because of work. As much as Carmen told me they were going through, it was worse to see it up close.
Carmen and I met Vance in Texas to spend the new year with Wes, Lisa and Hunter. We tried to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but hauntingly, in the back of our minds we all secretly feared this might be Wes’s last.
Late that New Year’s Eve, Wes and I sat in their Jeep after a few shots of whiskey. The car was parked in the driveway of their house and we weren’t going anywhere. Somehow I knew we were heading to an ugly, dark place. Wes was so incredibly angry and raging that night. He was venting his fear and disappointment. This young, driven family man was in a rage. He knew he was dying and he wanted no part of it. I would have let him beat on me if it would have somehow helped ease his despair. I just tried to receive his rage and would like to think that I was there for him. We took away some of the darkness that night and I would later realize that that was our own, private good bye.
MY DAD'S CHAPTER