DAD, ME ... & MY SON

I guess I'm surprised at how painful still remains the grief over my father's passing a few years back. I'm surprised. It's not like, after I graduated from college and the house I shared with my parents, that I tried to spend a lot of time with him. I'm surprised at how much I miss my father (I think of him daily when, while he was alive, months could pass without a thought of him!). I suspect now that I'll spend the rest of my life missing my father.

And so I wonder about Michael -- I wonder how in the future my son will resolve (or just address) his loss.

I think I was about Michael's age in this picture with my father (the same shot of him that would come to be replicated in the book cover of THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES...):



The parent-child relationship is so fragile -- there are just really too many ways for adulthood to become defined as distance...