Dad Remembered

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Today my sister and I will rendezvous in Canastota, New York. There we will meet with family, friends and strangers to remember our Dad who ended his earthly journey sixteen days ago. He was ninety-eight.

Dad (Robert Jewett Comings) left behind a collection of memoirs which he entitled, The Path Taken. In them he chose to remember the pleasant things. It was not easy for him to do. Sixty-six years earlier, after enjoying a farm home as the fourth in a family of seven children, and following a stint in the Army, he settled on a farm which he hoped to call his own. He was proud to be the husband of the woman he loved and the father of a two-year-old son, and the possessor of dreams.

It was then his world crashed around him as my mother descended into the dark caverns of paranoid schizophrenia and pulled our worlds with her. Dad’s memoirs give only passing reference to those awful days. Years later we were able to talk about them and, I hope, soften some of the grief which lay deep within his spirit. In the meantime, due to the angry nature of Mom’s tormented mind, he and I entered over two decades of estrangement.

To wish one could go back and have things happen differently, aside from being impossible, is terribly uninformed. Paths taken, with all their pain and pleasure, bring about important realities which would be lost if such a wish could be granted – and the loss would be unacceptable. It is unlikely my own path would have crossed with the woman I love. It is unlikely I would enjoy the sons God gave us and the families He gave them. Especially, I would not have the friendship of my sister, Sue, whose presence is one of the happy results of Dad’s later marriage to a delightful southern girl named Perra.

All of this is not to say that bad is good. It is, rather, to agree with a preacher who said concerning life in this fallen world, “Good and evil are trains which travel on parallel tracks and often pull into the station at about the same time.” As God put it, all things will work together for good to those who love Him, when the bigger picture is fully seen.

Over the last forty-two years in which my father and I have enjoyed a re-established friendship, we have shared many common interests. We both enjoyed writing and liked to dabble in philosophical ponderings. We both kept dates – that is, remembering when this or that happened in our lives. We had somewhat the same dry wit which my sister and I and Dad’s four grandsons perpetuate.

A child may not be able to put it in words, but there is a deep longing to be blessed by one’s father. I will always be grateful for the times when Dad said in one way or another, “I’m proud of you.” I remember being surprised by how much it meant to me when he first said it. But I think perhaps the most profound memory I carry with me today will be of my sister’s last conversation with Dad before he slipped out of awareness. Very simply, he said to her: “God bless you and Harold.”