It can be tiring, the turmoil of life as we lead it.
Times are uncertain, as is the future for many. Companies cut costs, stress arises, bills are due and we worry and fret and try to hide all of that from our children, who only need to know they are loved and provided for and need not worry.
They’ll have plenty of time for that later, we know, as we watch them flit across the now-pristine beach of life in well-worn shoes, unaware, as they should be, of the storm clouds gathering in the distance.
Meanwhile, we adults can wallow in that uncertainty, forgetting the reality.
For me, today, the reality is that 11 people serving our country died in a helicopter crash Tuesday not far from the field where my son participated in a soccer tournament days earlier.
The reality for me, today, is that the weekend before that, we were at another soccer tournament in Daphne, Ala., and my son and I went to visit the grandfather he never met.
The reality is that 20 years ago today, his grandfather, my father, James Kennedy Cazalas, was eaten up with a small-cell cancer that would take him from diagnosis to death within a five-month period. For 20 years, my father’s earthly body has rested contently near the magnolias and crepe myrtles at Magnolia Cemetery, next to his parents.
I had kind of forgotten my visit to my dad’s grave two weeks ago until I saw a post this week from Marjorie Lahmeyer on Facebook that tugged at me. She posted, “I am going to share with u a note my daddy wrote in his final days.”
It was hand-written and titled, “Things I will miss,” with the notation, “not in order.”
He listed “camping,” “creek,” “shooting,” “hunting,” “tinkering with my little stuff in garage,” “watching girls in backyard,” “holding a sleeping baby” and “making love.” He also listed his “sweetie” twice, writing, “Sitting, etc., with Sweetie Hon,” and “Everything with Sweetie Hon.” He ended the note, again, with “not in order.”
Seeing that took me back to my recent visit, with my son, to see my dad.
It had been a few years since I visited the grave, my son in tow that time as well, and as part of our visit — we stayed with my Uncle Joe, my dad’s youngest brother — I wanted to visit my dad. My son, God bless him, who usually has to be cajoled into anything that is going to involve a car ride and going somewhere without Internet for his various devices, immediately said yes when I asked him if he wanted to go with me.
He only vaguely remembered having been there before, but, at 11, he has a deeper understanding of the father/son relationship and intuitively knew it was important to me. And he’s an empathetic child, the kind who insists on staying home when I’m sick to take care of me, and he said he didn’t want me to go alone.
We headed to Mobile, and my son again humored me by agreeing to lunch at the Dew Drop Inn, one of those restaurants where, at some point, its reputation attained such heights that the food could no longer match it but which still demands a visit when in town. I had a couple of hot dogs, for which they’re famous; my son had a burger, which he could not eat and which, after tasting, I couldn’t in good conscience chide him for not eating.
I wasn’t there for the hot dog as much as for the memories. The Dew Drop Inn is an institution not only in Mobile but with my family and is a place my dad always took me when we were there.
We drove to the cemetery and, despite the directions I had the foresight to write down the last time we visited, spent a good 20 minutes walking around the seemingly endless rows of graves looking for dad. My son and I played a game along the way, seeing who could find the headstone with the oldest date of birth, and my son was leading with a man born in the 1820s.
And there was my dad’s headstone, but I decided to let Dylan find it as we meandered that way, and moments later, he shouted, with enthusiasm, “There he is!”
That’s important. Dylan didn’t yell, “There it is!” He said, “There he is!” His grandfather is a person to him, not a thing, though they never met.
We laid on his grave, resting our heads on his headstone and cuddling in a way that’s acceptable for 11-year-old boys and their dads. I told him some stories, including how we dressed my dad in a suit top for the funeral so he would look respectable in the open casket, but that we put him in pajama bottoms and slippers so he’d be comfortable.
And though my son knows I don’t drink, he knows my dad enjoyed a drink, so I told him about the Bob Dylan tape we slipped into the coffin at the viewing, along with the bottle of what I remember to be Jack Daniels, but was a whiskey of some type.
I cried, and my son hugged me, and I explained that adults cry, too, and it’s healthy and that these were happy tears and that’s why it was OK for him to cry when he was sad. And he hugged me tighter and said he understood.
He asked how I always knew what to say to him when he was sad, how I was able to talk to him about his fears, and I told him because he is a spitting image of me genetically, and I’ve been through every fear he has and can make his trek through life easier as long as he’s willing to talk about them.
After a bit, I told Dylan he could go play, that I was going to talk to my dad for a bit. I remembered him running around the last time we were there and how happy it made me.
It worked again as I watched him leap from ground to wall and back, from the wall to a magnolia tree, which he scaled and from which he swung. I marveled at the life he showed surrounded by death and smiled.
I know that but for the trials and stresses of life there would be no real joy, no revelations, no surges of pleasure over the little gifts that would otherwise go unappreciated.
For 20 years, my dad has had no concerns, no bills, no stress. Those do not exist in death. But there is no life there either — at least not on this earth — so my job today is to enjoy what I have.