Memorial Day Lessons From My Dad

My dad died 10 years ago last Thursday.  In some ways, the loss is as fresh and as acute as May 26, 2001.  In other ways, I notice the blurriness of my images of him now and fear that, more and more, he is becoming a set of fuzzy memories, a set of stories.  In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote about how the passage of time causes our mental picture of someone to fade:  "Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes -- the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night -- little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of [him].  Ten minutes, ten seconds of the real [him] would correct all this.  And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again."

My dad died on Memorial Day weekend.  Nick and I were in Charleston looking for churches for our wedding.  We were staying in the Kiawah Inn.  My sister called at 2am to tell me dad "had a heartache.  And he didn't make it."  They were words that profoundly changed my life.

Driving back through the night to Raleigh, I remember being overcome by grief that my father would not walk me down the aisle.  So much lost that day, and yet I became fixated on a moment... a ritual.  A self-focused loss for a future special day.  It was a strange thing to mourn.  But the grieving mind knows no logic and is often selfish.  At that moment, I didn't grieve the larger losses.  That I wouldn't watch him grow old, that he wouldn't know my children, that I could not have grown up enough to have "grown up" talks with him, that I couldn't ask him for career advice or what the sunrise over the Carolina mountains looked like this week.

Today, we took our boys to a Memorial Day ceremony in the Ardennes in Belgium.  Ten years after losing my dad, I still remember that it was hard to arrange the military honors for his funeral because those who play Taps or neatly fold flags over caskets or fire 21-gun salutes were attending Memorial Day ceremonies to honor America's fallen.  Every Memorial Day, I cry when I hear Taps.  I sometimes feel embarrassed...like I want to explain I am not being overly patriotic or sentimental.  That I am still mourning.  That I am missing my dad.  But these are thoughts best left unsaid at a moment meant to honor others.


Listening to the Admiral today and watching the jets overhead, I thought my dad would have loved to hear my stories about working at NATO.  He was an Army Colonel, and he believed in service to your country.  When I work with my military friends at NATO, I think about how I used to help my dad polish his boots for summer camp over spread-out newspaper in the living room while watching NFL football.  My military colleagues remind me that soldiers are neat, punctual, polite, and honorable.  They say "sir" and "ma'am" like I was taught to do.  When I watch a soldier with his cover in his hands, I think of how my dad used to slowly turn his in his hands as he talked, creasing the edges with his fingers.  When I watch a promotion ceremony, I picture my dad proudly pinning a new rank on my sister's shoulder and saluting her.


I was trying to explain to Ben and James a little bit about what Memorial Day means.  I was using words like "fallen soldiers" and "courage" and "remembering and honoring."  It was too much for them.  James asked me if we would see zombies.  Teaching my boys about the heart of the matter won't happen for many more years.  And perhaps it shouldn't.  They should enjoy being young for now.

But today, I sure did wish my dad was around to help me explain.

I came home and looked for an article I wrote right after my dad died.  Re-reading it helped  me see that although I might not be able to teach my boys the true meaning of Memorial Day yet, I can continue to live my life, day in and day out, as my father did his, trying to show my boys how to be earnest, to be humble, to put others first, and to be courageous.  Those, too, are the lessons of Memorial Day.  And you can teach those without saying a word.


The Other Obituary
Raleigh News & Observer, Father's Day Special, June 2001

            The last thing my father said to me was “love you, doll.”  It was just one month ago.  He said it from the front porch of his home in Raleigh as he waved goodnight to me.  We had just had dinner, and I was leaving to go back to work.  I would give anything now to have lingered a little longer at my father’s table that night.  I didn’t know then that it would be my last chance to spend time with him.

            Three weeks ago, my father died of a heart attack.  He was 58 years old.  He ran 5K races with me, and was an active, busy, seemingly healthy man.  He was buried in Montlawn Cemetary with full military honors.  Those who loved him could hardly grieve yet because it seemed so impossible that such a strong man could be gone.

            The obituary appeared in Section B, page 6, of the paper the day after Memorial Day.  It was 28 lines long and told only the essentials of his life– that he left behind a wife, two daughters, a stepson, two grandchildren, a sister.  He was a retired Colonel in the United States Army, a high school football referee, and a N.C. State graduate.

            But as with almost every obituary I’ve ever read, it was wholly inadequate to describe the man who was my dad.  The obituary didn’t tell you about his big, brilliantly blue eyes that often shared his sentimental nature with the world or his boyish grin that could charm the crankiest of curmudgeons.

            It didn’t tell you that my dad never missed one of his children’s graduations, dance recitals, or military promotions, or that he waited nervously in the hospital waiting room when his grandchildren were born.  And it didn’t tell you that he was the loudest (and often the only) supportive voice from the stands at my junior high school basketball games.  Years later, when I played basketball for a year in England, he checked the team webpage after every game and wrote to me about my performance.  He was “there” still.

            The obituary didn’t tell you about the poems he wrote for the people he loved or about the inscriptions he put in the books he gave.  In Ayn Rand’s "Anthem," a Christmas gift to me in 1995, he wrote: “To a beautiful daughter with a mind for the intellectual and a soul for compassion.  Read Chapter XI and think about it.  Love Dad.” 

            It didn’t tell you that he taught his children multiplication tables, county seats, and how the solar system works (with fruit).  He taught his daughters how to change a tire and use a chainsaw.  But he wouldn’t let us use the chainsaw unless he was standing nearby.

            From the lines of the obituary, you couldn’t see the animation with which he talked about the D-Day landing with our guide on the beaches of Normandy just a year ago.  And you couldn’t see the joy in his eyes as he solved a Rubik's Cube or figured out a word while doing the Sunday crossword puzzle.  

            Indeed, as I write this, I am struck by the inadequacy of my own words to give you a small glimpse of a man who was larger than life.

           If you recognize your own father in my words, take the time today to thank him and to tell him how his constant support and love changed you.  We are given such precious little time on this earth with the ones we love.

            As for me, this Father’s Day, I hope to find comfort in the many happy memories I have of my time with my dad.  On the inside cover of a book written by a native of the state he loved so much, my dad wrote, “As Thomas Wolfe said, ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’  You can always remember the good times with love and the not so good times with understanding and compassion.  And may you always look homeward, Angel.  Love Dad.”

25 Things About Me (A Recycled Product)

1.  Grace is my favorite word and my favorite trait in another person.

2.  Not only does my life have a soundtrack, but I like to sing along loudly. I think music is god’s way of telling us we’re not alone.
3.  My favorite smell is the ocean. I feel most alive on a beach.
4.  My big sister (a talented doctor) helped deliver Ben. She was about 3 months pregnant herself and not feeling much like getting her little sister through 18 hours of labor. She has protected me like that many times.
5.  I was the officiant at my best friend Dani’s wedding. Being asked to do that was one of my life’s greatest honors.
6.  I am not able to describe how close I feel to my mom. And I did not understand how much she loved me until I was pregnant with Ben. I found the realization startling and humbling.
7.  The judge I clerked for after law school is the wisest man I have ever met. He would stand at my enormous window looking out over the Cape Fear river and wax poetic about whatever he had read, painted, sculpted, invented, or talked to “his bride” (his wife of 50 years) about that day. When I remember those moments, the music in my head is Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” (see # 2).
8.  My son Ben is a lot like I was as a child. He is stubborn, gregarious, mischievous, and the near-death of his parents. Being his mom makes me love my parents even more. Being his mom was my first experience with unconditional love.
9.  My baby James makes me feel peaceful. He is an old soul. I sing “Sweet Baby James” to him at night when I rock him.
10.  I named the high school I graduated from (well, I was the person on a student government committee who suggested the name that the School Board ultimately chose-- but the first sentence sounds cooler). It was Providence High. Very original. It sat on Providence Road.
11.  I was a daddy’s girl and a tomboy growing up. I used to go with my dad to football games he refereed and hold the yardline chains. He taught me how to shoot free-throws and always came to my basketball games. When I played basketball at Oxford, he would read about my games on the web and give me pointers-- he was "there" across an ocean.
12.  2001 was the worst year of my life. It followed right on the heels of 2000, the best year of my life-- which probably made it feel even worse.
13.  My girlfriends and I have GPWs (girl power weekends) that always make me feel heard, understood and/or loved anyway, and usually a little tipsy.
14.  “Shadow Lands,” about C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy, is my favorite movie. It reminds me that your joy is your sorrow—that they are one in the same. That makes me love more boldly.
15.  I always read Tennyson’s "Ulysses" right before I do something that is good for me but that nonetheless makes me want to throw up fear soup.
16.  I did not expect to fall so deeply in love with Mexico City. I left a big chunk of my heart there (probably in a bar in Polanco near a shot of tequila and a taco al pastor).
17.  I have kept a journal since I was 13. I love sitting in a coffee house and working out how I feel about something on a piece of paper. When I re-read my old journal entries, I am reminded of the last line of "The Great Gatsby": “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
18.  I’m a Tar Heel born, I’m a Tar Heel bred. One of the first things people usually find out about me is that I’m from North Carolina. I am unusually prideful about my home state.
19.  I used to sneak down to see my grandmother (she lived with us when I was young) after bedtime. She would cut an apple for us and read poetry to me from “America’s Best-Loved Poems.” My favorite was “The Female of the Species.”
20.  I gave my high school graduation speech. In it, I read part of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” (yeah, I know that makes you wish you had been in the audience). As I was winding up, I quoted: “But which is more, you will be a man my son.” And at that moment, on stage, it struck me as rather unfair that Rudyard had only mentioned men. So I paused and said, “or a woman” and nodded in this indignant, self-congratulatory way. People in the audience chuckled. I’m afraid being raised by my mother and my grandmother made my feminism rather inevitable. See # 19.
21.  I’m a picky eater. It’s one of the things I like least about myself.
22.  If I could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, it would be President Lincoln. It used to be Jefferson. But I think Lincoln had more of #1 above, and I find that the trait most lacking in our leaders today.
23.  I would like to learn how to cook and how to play the guitar. I think you are only “old” once you stop learning new tricks.
24.  I wish I had done a tour with the Peace Corps. I have never met a Peace Corps volunteer I didn’t like and admire. I didn’t do a Peace Corps tour largely because of #21… I would have a hard time eating bugs.
25.  About 10 years ago, Nick, without thinking probably, said one of nicest things anyone has ever said to me. He forwarded me the Word of the Day, which was “Gibraltar,” with a simple note: “You are my Gibraltar.” It was right after my dad died when he was, in fact, my Gibraltar. Since then, we’ve always found different ways of telling each other we are our strong place to lean.

March Forth!

March Forth!  No it’s not a misspelling.  And yes, it’s dorky.  I consider today to be March Forth!, not March Fourth.  I like this day. 

When I was young, I heard a sermon (yes, in a church) from a beloved minister on “March forth” and how we should use the day to march forth, with purpose, into a life of good deeds and kindness.  Over the years, I have thought a lot about the day, and I’ve turned it into my own Dr. Philesque self-improvement program.   

I'm a self-improvement kind of gal.  I make New Year’s Resolutions.  At the beginning of every year, I promise to do something new that I haven’t done before or done well.  Take a course.   Write more letters.  Drink more water.  Start blogging.  And I like the idea of Lent too – the notion of self-deprivation to remind ourselves to be disciplined -- but I haven't tried it.  Perhaps this year?

But March 4^th is my day to do something I should have done awhile ago—and I’ve used it mostly in my interpersonal relationships.  I think of March 4^th as the day to consider what I have let fester, what I haven’t said, what I need to say better, what I need to resolve.  It is a day of action in the face of past days of inaction.  It is girding my loins.  It is finding the courage.  It is doing the right thing.

I have used March 4^th to do many long overdue things.  I quit smoking on March 4^th.  I broke up with a boyfriend on March 4^th.  I forgave a boyfriend on March 4^th.  I had a really productive disagreement with my mom after one March 4th (we can do that).  I called up an old friend on March 4^th and cleared the air.

Today, I find myself in a bit of a pickle.  I cannot think of anything I want to quit or resolve.  Things are going pretty well, and on this March 4^th, I am thinking about my great fortune.  I have my healthy, happy 3 boys (2 small, 1 big).  A wonderful mom.  Loving friends and family.  Mi amiga, Obdu.  A career I like.  Several weeks in the Carolinas this summer to look forward to.     

I think this March 4^th I will sit somewhere and remind myself that sometimes it is nice to not have anything to resolve.  Sometimes it is nice, as my friend Ana tells me, to live in the moment and feel grateful for it.   Today, I will think of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez quote I just read and loved:  "I have learned that everyone wants to live at the top of the mountain, forgetting that how we climb it is all that matters."  Today, I will not try to fix anything ... today, I will just enjoy the climb.

Love and the Metaphorical Sea

The ocean is a part of me and forever will be ... from my days as a tow-headed little girl on the Carolina shore clad with only bikini bottoms and a shovel for a day of adventure, through an adolescence of walking the wide, flat beaches of Kiawah Island, to my time as a busy mother who yearns to go to the sea but has not been in awhile.  The ocean washed away bitter tears the night my father died and the ashes of my dear grandmother, scattered by my mother and me, at sunrise under Johnny Mercer pier.

For me, the ocean is God’s most powerful natural tool to tantalize the senses.  I love the way the sea sounds as it crashes to shore.  I love the brackish smell of salt water.  I love how the sea feels – warm and encompassing—around my skin as I dive in after a long run on shore.  The ocean comes closest to the sensual perfection two lovers can create.  But, if I’m honest, I am frightened of it as well.  

My protective instincts as a mother make me wary of the sea.  When I took Ben swimming in Wrightsville in 2007, swollen and pregnant with James, I remember how tightly I held on to him and how unwilling I was to let him venture out too far on his own.  I wrestle with how to teach my sons to both embrace and fear the sea—especially when almost equally in my life I have feared it and been drawn to it.  When I have experienced much of my life’s greatest pain on the shores of it and have spent many of my life’s most sensual, happy moments there as well.

I have often thought when I am old, I would like to build a home on the sea and fill it with books, and recipes, and wine, and guest bedrooms … and live out my waning days watching the tides come and go.

In September, along the Carolina shore, whether the hurricane pattern for the season is bringing storms to the Gulf, along the Florida coast, or up the mouth of the Cape Fear River, the waves and the undertow are unusually strong.  But the warm water is perfect for those strong swimmers willing to brave it.

When I lived in Wilmington in 1999, I went with friends to Masonboro Island by boat in September.  It’s an uninhabited island south of Wrightsville, perfect for camping or picnicking or long walks.  As we sat on the shore, eating, drinking, and enjoying the hot, windy day, I noticed the waves getting bigger and bigger.  When I stepped into the water—where the small waves usually lap at your feet gently—I was almost knocked over by the strong tide.  

To this day, I’m not sure what got in to me, but I decided to swim past the wave breaks so I could float in the deeper water.  I fought wave after massive wave and noticed that the forceful undertow was moving me further and further down the beach, away from my friends.  It was hard to judge how far down shore I was drifting because the usual markers of civilization – hotels, houses, and water towers -- were not there to help me judge.  For whatever reason, I felt certain that if I could just make it to the deeper water, I’d feel safe.

I did finally get past the waves.  I floated in the warm water for a long time-- a little weary from my journey, a little drunk from the wine on shore, a little overwhelmed by the powerful sound of quiet, the warmth on my skin, the taste of salt, and the beauty of it all. 

I am not sure what awoke me from my floating half-slumber, but I remember the abruptness of the change from contented bliss to fear.  Fear of the swim back to shore, fear that I had strayed too far, fear quite simply of the ocean.  It was jarring. 

The fight back to shore was much harder than the swim in.  Every time my tired arms and legs would make 10 feet of progress, the current would pull be back.  For a moment, I even felt panic.  Could I make it back to shore?  Do I even want to go back to shore yet?  I felt peace past the waves ... the kind of naked, pure peace you can only feel in deep water.

When I finally got to a point where I could stand, I paused for awhile—caught my breath, looked over my shoulder at the waves and the place beyond them.  I entertained swimming back for awhile.  But my arms and legs were shaking from the exertion, and I realized I did not have the strength to go back. 

I waited for the next seventh wave and rode it in.  It was massive and foamy, and it deposited me with a thud onto the shallow shore of broken shells and sand.  When I stood in the knee-deep water, I was disoriented, dizzy … I felt a little bit broken.

I waded back to the beach and began the half-mile journey back to my friends, our picnic, and my wine.  I was a woman in search of her towel … in search of a place to rest, to pick seashells out of my shoulder, and to stare at the ocean I do not understand and marvel at her from the safety of shore.

That Woman Is A Success...

When I was a senior in high school, I gave a speech to the Women's Executive Club in Charlotte about my mom.  I remember I quoted a poem in the speech -- "That Woman is a Success."  I searched for it online recently to no avail.  But as I recall, it was anodyne stuff to put it mildly. 

But the purpose of my oratory wasn't actually to consider what "success" meant.  I wrote the speech quite simply to defend my working mother.  To say to a room full of women who I wanted to nod in approval, "my mother worked and I am ok.  I survived.  I am not developmentally challenged."  Such was my feminism at the time -- self-righteous and sure.  And I carried that self-righteous feminism with me through law school and into a certain feminism professor’s buzzsaw.  Shortly after law school and that buzzsaw, I had my doubts that feminism meant women should do what men do and that women are just like men are.  I became even more convinced that wasn't true when I had babies and I witnessed something I'd denied for most of my life-- that women and men are fundamentally different in some ways.  And they are most different in how they parent.  Or that, at least, has been my experience.

I used to opine about the three prongs to my "successful" existence.  I think in the 90s and inspired by my legal training, my three prongs had two sub-prongs.  I don't remember the sub-prongs any more, but I do always remember my three passions.  They are just as Betrand Russell said they were for him:  

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

 I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

 Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

 This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."

I have sought love first and with the greatest degree of difficulty in my life.  Having supportive, communicative, loving relationships is surely how I find most of my sense of "success" (and my sense of failure when I screw up).  I did not know unconditional, throw-yourself-in-front-of-a-train love until my son Ben was born, and that brought with it an even deeper sense of commitment and even deeper guilt on dark days when I feel I am not giving my sons my all.  I find "love" the hardest thing to "work" on too, especially in a happy marriage.  We fall into patterns and routines, and usually we don't ask ourselves: "Am I loving this person the best way I can?" "How can I communicate better?"  "How can I allay fears?"  Challenging ourselves in these ways is difficult stuff and for the most part we avoid doing it.

My other two passions are the search for knowledge and the search for ways to alleviate others' pain.  Those play themselves out in many ways, but mostly they play an important role in why I am a U.S. diplomat ... because it gives me a sense that I am becoming more knowledgeable and acquiring experiences and that I am helping others.  I strive and fail mightily in these categories too of course. 

In my job, I see my achievement orientation and my competitive spirit.  I don't like it most of the time, but I see it.  I note with interest how I will send home to my parents news of some success at work and purr like a cat being rubbed when they praise me.  I know too that I felt "successful" when I had a very good job in the Department two years ago and that work was something I wanted others to know about me ... much like I want people to know I'm a lawyer.  Why is that important?  Why is other people's recognition of some outward "success" important to me?  I don't know.  My parents were valedictorians and my grandmother wanted me to be President.  It's in my genes I suppose.  Most days I think that I am more moved by the drive to learn and help than by the baser desires to please, achieve, and "win"... but I'd be lying if I said those baser desires weren't there pushing me on like a Chinese mother.  Making me burn my candle at every conceivable end.  Making me sleep with my Blackberry on my chest.

I once asked a woman I admire how you can "have it all."  She had the best answer.  She said "you can't...not at the same time."  Something always has to give.  When you give in one place, you have less capacity to give in another.  It is the sickening zero sum reality of modern, exhausted living.  When you perform some promotion-inspiring feat, you often miss bath-time.  When you stay up making a project and cupcakes for your child's 100th day of school and go with him to celebrate, you miss that conference call your boss wanted you to attend.  If you stay home with your children as your life's work, you think working moms' lives are glamorous.  If you work, you deeply envy a mother's time to watch the daily miracles in her child's life. 

In short, only you can define what your passions are and how you pursue them.  Even if you haven't assigned them in prongs and subprongs, you know what they are.  And only your tummy (that wonderful place where the wisdom of your head and the passion of your heart meet) can tell you in what measure to pursue your various passions.  Know this too -- no matter what you decide, you will always feel that you are not giving something or someone enough of you.

So my definition of success is this: 

·         Knowing what passions will govern your life and pursuing them with energy and focus (not just going through the motions or leading a life of quiet desperation).

·         Pursuing your passions with balance and the knowledge that excess in one requires loss in another, thus causing a never-ending, constantly shifting pursuit to be disciplined enough to give and do what you can when you can.

·         Forgiving yourself for the days and the moments when you fail to find balance, or when you fancy that someone's life is choiceless unlike yours and so much easier, or when you judge another, or worse yourself, for not getting the balance just right. 

If you can walk this path and keep getting better at it, you are a success.