Letter to My Father

Most of the people who read this blog are probably already aware. But, for those of you that aren't, my father Edward A. Morris (Alex) passed away about a week ago.

He was battling multiple health issues and finally succumbed to colon cancer on April 26th at approximately 12:15pm. He died in his bed at the age of 61.

I've been avoiding posting anything on here about his condition out of respect for him and the rest of our family. He was a proud man and wouldn't like the world to see how his condition effected him. 

He was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer last October. So, we have known this was coming for quite some time. I have discovered that knoweldge can be a double edged sword. Yes, it gave us time to talk and settle things. It was not a surprise that caught everyone off guard. But, we also had to watch his decline. We had to watch as the his pain became increasingly and unceasingly unbearable. And in the end, it still came as a shock. No amount of preperation could have truly prepared me for the shock of his death. There are always things left unsaid, frustrations unresolved.

I loved and will always love my father. He was my role model and I don't feel like I was done learning from him. And, I will miss him more than my feeble attempts at writing can possibly convey.

Nobody is perfect and as you grow older, most peoople start to see thair parents as people instead of just seeing them as "mom and dad". I was no different. I started to learn who Alex was and was starting to seperate him from the persona of Dad. I was not ready to lose him. I don't know that I ever will be.

I'm sad, I'm hurt, I'm angry.

Earnest Hemingway once said, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." So, with Earnest in mind, here goes nothing.

Dear Dad,

I love you. It's been less than a week since you've been gone and I already miss you. I have to constantly remind myself that you're gone and that you're not coming back. There is no more, "Dad's going to hate this when he gets home," because you're not coming home. And, that may be the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with.

Until recently, I sometimes took it for granted that you would always be there for me. I assumed that you would be an ear to listen or someone to help catch me when I fell. I knew about your health problems and on an intellectual level I knew there was a good chance you would never live to see 2015. But, on an emotional level, I guess I always felt like these were temporary setbacks. These were all things that we would get through and be able to laugh about it after. Here we are, at the portion after the disease, and you're not here anymore to laugh at things with me. I miss you.

I know we didn't always agree on everything. You thought I was young and callous. I thought you were old and naïve. But I always knew, or at least felt, that everything you did was for the greater good of your family and friends. Your naïveté was born from a desire to see the best in people. You had a good many great friends and family members in your life that would never intentionally do you harm and although you had encounters with people who wanted nothing else, you never let that color your viewpoint of people as a whole.

You built great things. You had many great accomplishments and great friends. You have touched the lives of many people, even outside of our family. Our family and your friends will wax poetic about how great you were and how much you helped everyone you met. And for that I'm thankful. It helps to validate my viewpoint that you were a good man.

But, none of that changes the fact that you're gone. Believing you WERE a good man does little to console me in the face of the fact that you are no longer. 

I have modeled much of my person after you. I have tried to take all the good things you had to offer and make them part of myself while recognizing some of your faults and forgiving them because you were only a man. Nobody is perfect. 

I know that I am not yet the man you wanted me to be. I can only hope that I wasn't too much of a disappointment. But I want you to know that I am not done growing. I am not done trying to be the best man that I know how to be, that you taught me to be. Every little boy grows up with a desire for validation from his father. I am no different.

Thank you for all that you were and all that you taught me. I want you to rest easy. You're not in pain anymore. Although myself and my brothers still have a lot of growing to do, I have faith in our abilities. I hope you did too. 

Death is an inevitable part of life. But, I was not ready for yours. And I will forever think that you deserved a better end than you recieved. But, life isn't fair. And I want you to rest assured that I will continue to strive for better, for myself, for my brothers, for my friends, and for my family. 

I am going to try hard to remember you for the man that you were for the first 28 years of my life, not the last two. You were better than your end.

I love you dad. You will be missed. If I can be half the man you were, I'll consider my life a success.

With tears and sadness,

Cody

P.S. I know this letter could never convey all the things I want to say or the emotions that I'm feeling. But, it's a start.

Mammaw

I was at my father's house today. We were reminiscing over old times and going through a stack of old papers, documents, newspaper clippings, etc... that he has collected over his lifetime. Some of them were amusing, some of them were nostalgic, some were thought provoking, and some of them were insanely uninteresting to me. 

This is an activity that my father and other family members and I have been known to do on occasion.  Most of the time it only spurs conversations that the members of the nostalgia party would be interested in. Today, however, I was struck with a thought that might be a little more universal.

Tucked into my grandfather's old bible was some yellowed letters written by his pastor, a few comic clippings from various newspapers and other random roadsigns you'll find on memory lane. The thing that fluttered out from among its pages that caused me pause was a picture of my grandmother.

I never knew my grandfather on my dad's side. He died many years before I was born and is not even spoken of very much amongst my family members. He and my father had a tumultuous relationship during my father's youth and I've only ever caught glimpses into the man that made the man that made me.

My grandmother, on the other hand, is a completely different story. She lived within 6 blocks of every place I lived before I grew up and moved away from home. And for most of my life, she lived across the street. I could see her house from my bedroom window. Claire Morris was her name if you don't want to go by what my brothers and I called her, Mammaw (or Mammaw Claire if we were speaking about her in the third person).

Don't get me wrong, my parents raised us. But Mammaw was always across the street and we spent many days hanging out over at her house, playing in the basement and out on the seemingly hundred year old swing set in her back yard. 

Mammaw was a kind and giving old bird and was unintentionally hilarious. But, she had her quirks. She smoked Camel non-filters and drank Jim Beam almost up until the day she died at the age of 88 in 2006. 

Her death was hard on me, as is the passing of any grandparent is on a grandchild. Her service was one of the few times in my life I've seen my father cry and that's an image I'll never forget. 

But, as I picked her picture up off of the table top this afternoon I smiled. I realized that her memory had become a happy one for me, no longer a point of sadness. I remembered her for calling the radio and "idiot box" and referring to my uncle as being "rather large in girth." I remembered her for the half stale spearmint gum she always had in her purse and those gross, sugar coated orange slice candies in a bowl on her counter. I remembered the popsicles she always had in her fridge and the living room in her house that nobody had set foot in for years. 

Mammaw's freezer was old and as such had to be defrosted regularly. In the automatic ice box, a few times a year, was a giant block of ice that had been individual cubes at one point but had melted and refrozen enough times that it had become one solid block of ice that was completely useless for her Jim Beam. As children, we would take this block of ice out to her black tar driveway and smack it around with hockey sticks as it melted on the million degree blacktop. Sometimes it's the simple things in life.

I remembered Mammaw for how she took care of my brothers and our friends. She was even referred to as Mammaw by my best childhood friend. He and his girlfriend went to visit her in Florida one spring break without any of our actually family members even being there. 

She was Mammaw Claire, everyone's Mammaw.

As I looked at the picture of Mammaw, yellowed and curled with age, I remembered all of the great things about her and the great times we had at her house and I smiled. The memory of her death is still painful but the memories that I have of her are overall positive. At this moment, I wondered when that paradigm had shifted. When did the mention of my grandmother spur memories of the good times and not memories of her passing?  

Apparently it's true that time heals all wounds. I'm glad that I can think of her and remember all the wonderful memories I have of her without first thinking about how she is no longer around to help create new memories. And, it gives me hope and solace that any trials life throws at us, given enough time, will become memories without pain. 

Hopefully the pain from all the struggles we go through on a daily basis will eventually fade and leave behind only the happy memories of the people we love whom have endured the hardships with us. 

Claire McGannon Morris 

1917-2006

RIP

I Love You Mammaw

-Cody