Some See Life as a Broken Promise

Today is my father's 90th birthday. He didn't live to see it (of course); I added that parenthetically because if you knew him ( = he allowed you to see some part of his life) you might be more surprised than those who shared his hearth and home about the abrupt ending of his life story.

As you would know had you visited this space but only two of three times in the last half decade plus, our father-son relationship was strained. I smiled as I typed that word and I hope he would have as well. If I were to be honest and he taught me that if little else, I grimaced, but from a distance they're close.

I was the oldest of six children and as near as I can tell, he never was comfortable in his own skin with any of us. I assumed, ignorantly and arrogantly, that he and I clashed because we were so different. It took a picture my wife once snapped of him on the only visit to America he was alive for her to know for me to realize, decades afterwards looking at a photo of myself with my head cocked exactly like his, that we were too much of the same kind.

Dad was 28 years old when his son was born. I was thirty when ours was. I think I learned a lot about life from life itself but I forgot who had prepared me to be ready to learn at all. I'd like to believe had Dad lived he'd have enjoyed meeting our two children as much if not more than I would have enjoyed introducing them to him.

It's part of the movie of my life as it might have been that I'm an expert at making (scoring the soundtrack has proven to be difficult, so far); as long as I don't have to script an ending, this should be cake.

Dad was the smartest person I will ever know though not smart enough to figure out the inchoate rage at life he carried with him every waking moment and that (at least) I inherited is toxic and fatal.

He found that out too late to help himself but in his passing he helped me see it and, I'd like to think, to make some adjustments, though not as many as I should/could, to better catch the second act of our children's lives.

Curtains go up while others are rung down. Christine Rice offered, "(T) purpose of life is to live, laugh and love." I'd like to think we are to light a match against the darkness without being consumed by it on our way to where we need to be. Happy birthday, Dad.
-bill kenny