This post's theme has been sitting in my drafts for months.
I was thinking about my dad. It's not something unlike me to do. This whole grieving process is really something. You never know when a happy or sad memory will hit. It can be such a little thing that triggers it. Or, it's day on a calendar that marks some significant time in your life together.
I lost my father.
My four siblings lost their father.
We all lost the man who fathered the five of us.
However, when I think about it, we all lost a different dad. Each of us had our own relationships with him. Our memories and experiences differ.
I read something one of my older brothers wrote about memories of things he got to do in his childhood with our father. It really struck me. It was sweet. It was his dad. They had their things. Things I didn't share in.
My childhood with my dad didn't involve days at the then Cleveland Indians' games. I went to evening Mass with my dad and would get a sucker from the corner drug store on our walk home. He would lie on the couch and watch public television. I would climb up and lie on his belly and watch Julia Child cook something neither of us would ever make. I would hang out with my dad on Saturday afternoons after my morning class at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Before heading home, we'd make a stop at Lakeview Cemetery to visit my grandparents' and other family members' graves. Then we'd stop at Hough Bakery where I would get a Lady Lock.
When I was older, he gave me his copy of The Catcher in the Rye from his teenage years when it first was published. He said that he thought I'd like it. How did he know? Also, I became his date to see A Christmas Carol at Cleveland's Playhouse Square. We did this a few years in a row. Then we went on to get tickets for a partial season to see the world renowned Cleveland Orchestra at beautiful Severance Hall. We even got to experience the performance of my dreams when we had tickets for Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. (My dad had the 1975 album that was a recording of the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall in 1974. When I was little, the album art shocked and horrified me.)
