December 29, 2010
"Warts and all" my father would say. It wasn't one of the more famous "Royisms." Certainly not up there with "beer-thirty" or "able to sit up and take nourishment." I'm not even sure that too many people heard him say it or would have remembered if they did. But, for me, it embodies his life in a way that no other expression of his did or could. It was an expression of love - the true love that, as he explained, only fully-developed humans could feel.
"Don't ever assume that animals and small children love you," he taught me. And it's true. A child may at one moment, with every fiber of his being, feel an affection that is deep and irrefutable. But it is based on the circumstances of that moment and his whims. In an instant he may hate you just as deeply for reasons equally circumstantial.
The human species is the only one on this planet that is able to consider the totality of a person - those things that are admirable as well as those that are despicable - and still make a conscious decision to love - "warts and all." I am of the opinion that love can only be expressed in this way - with the full knowledge of imperfections. My father did not make it hard to discover his imperfections. While I'm sure this was not always so over the course of his life, the man that I got to know and love was so - quite imperfect in ways too innumerable to mention. And it was my pleasure to witness how he overcame an equally countless number of those imperfections. And, as you would expect, he took many of them to his grave as well. That may help to explain why I have a hard time missing him.
Don't get me wrong. I miss him in ways I can't possibly express. When he drew his last breath there were things lost to me that I will never recover - some that I never discovered - and I will grieve that loss for the rest of my days. But I am not overwhelmed by such feelings.
Those things he left behind are so much more palpable than those things that were lost. And his life- lessons, both intentional and unintentional, resonate with no less intensity for me. His life is not defined by his death.
It did not take long to figure out that this year would mark a year of "firsts" without him. And so it was. We have all celebrated birthdays, holidays and milestones over the past year that he would have been pleased to celebrate with us. So I have been pleased to celebrate each of these for him. I suppose I will think this way less and less over time. But I am sure I will never entirely stop, either. And that is a measure of comfort. But for this year I have, albeit quietly, marked these occasions quite dutifully. A year ago today I was spending my first full day of life without him. And today marks a complete year.
It has been a year of changes, triumphs and defeats for those of us amongst the living. And I suppose one might focus on the fact that my father hasn't been here to witness them or to experience such things for himself. It just seems so pointless to think of how he is no longer changing when, in so many ways, he continues to change me. Warts and all.
