Bits of wisdom.

Y'all know that I teach college classes at the Prison in San Saba. Some of the classes they teach out there are designed to try to motivate the "offenders," er, criminals, inmates (ya know, losers) to walk a strait road when they get out and... Well, basically, stay the hell out of jail. It's hit and miss. Supposedly, the more education they get, the less likely they are to come back.

For the most part the classes are like traffic school. The offenders have to complete the classes before they get out of prison. My buddy Ellis teaches one called "Changes", and a few other folks teach a few others. They're totally different from the college classes I teach. More like high school, or, like I said, traffic school. It's all about getting them to think about how and why they got locked up. The choices and behaviors that got them where they are.

Anyway, when I teach my evening classes there Monday and Wednesday nights, I use one of the bigger, nicer rooms that houses one of these special classes during the day. The teacher usually has some motivational quote up on the board for the offenders to read and think about. This last Wednesday evening, I came into class and looked up on the board and this is what it read:

"When a door closes, look for an open window... But it may take a while to feel the breeze."

The author was anonymous.

Of course, I fully understood the meaning behind the words. You know, "don't let anything stand in your way. If you fail at something, pick yourself up and try again. It may take a while, but you will succeed if you keep trying... etc, etc, etc."

But I laughed when I read it. Maybe I'm just a twisted bastard, but I thought I saw something else in there. I went out to point out the message to my buddy John, the guard there at the jail. We both thought the same thing. "Hey, is she tryin' to teach them how to break and enter, or maybe how to escape?"

A while later, while I was lecturing about the Cold War, which will inevitably bring back memories from my life growing up in the Air Force in the 1960s and '70s, I saw another inscription on the teachers day time schedule planner. It's one of those paper desk top planners that also serves as a writing pad, where you peal off a month when it's over and the squares are big enough to write stuff in.

This one hit home. It said "A fathers love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible." The author was someone named Garrety.

Yea, that's deep stuff. It set me off thinking about a lot of things. Things you've heard before around here.

You know, Dad and I had an interesting relationship. It was negative and adversarial through most of my youth, but then it grew into a more loving one as both of us got older and I decided to forget about a lot of things. I say "decided", because that's just what happened. I remember the time very well.

I was going through a lot of shit then, mulling over lots of things that seemed to have derailed my life in one way or another. At some point, back in the late 1980s, I just got sick of it all. The resentment was becoming a crutch that I used to explain away my own faults. I guess I just got sick of it, and I decided to try to put it behind me and be positive.

Just about then, one of those windows opened for me and my life changed. I'd piddled around for over a year after getting my Masters Degree, unable to get a teaching job. Then, in March of 1990, I got a call from someone here in Killeen. Central Texas College needed someone to go out on a Navy ship and teach two classes. One was US History and the other was an Introduction to Political Science.

I thought about it for about 24 hours and then said HELL YES! As I said, I walked through that door and my life changed forever. I haven't looked back since. Not too much anyway. And it was amazing to me, how much my relationship with my father warmed when I got a real job and started to move my life forward. I actually started to feel like he respected me for the very first time in my life. That made it much easier to forget the old days.

That's what I was thinking about when I read that inscription. I felt that old tinge of regret. What if my father had been the friend to me in my early years that he became so much later in my life? What if I'd been able to feel something like that respect and approval in those early days?

That feeling of love and respect from your father is so important. It allows a child to feel confident in their own mind and respect themselves, even with all the troubles every kids has to face. Your father is super human when you're little. If he obviously doesn't think very much of you, or doesn't seem to care what you do, then how can you possibly grow up to have any confidence in yourself?

That's they way it was between dad and I, but none of that matters now. He's gone, and all those issues are dust. He's no longer with me on those Friday evenings at the Chinese place or the ball game, but he'll always be running around in my imagination, and in my heart.

I miss him terribly. I can't go out to the cemetery and visit his plot without balling like a baby, so I don't go there very often. I prefer to imagine him here with me now, still watching me as I move my life forward and enjoy the success that I've worked towards for these twenty some-odd years.

In the end, he knew how I felt. He knew it before he died, and that's the only thing that matters now.

Postscript: Well, there was a funny end to the message on the white board. The folks out there found my little sticky note on the board and the shit hit the fan. I put a not up there sayin' "You tryin' to encourage folks to break out?" They thought an offender had left it, and spent hours this mornin' tryin' to find out who'd done it. Then it hit them that I'd left it, and everyone started to get the joke. By the time I got there today they were all laughin' and tellin' me about it. It was hilarious.

My daddy.

I've had the pictures in this post for months now, tryin' to be smart and come up with a eulogy ahead of the event, thinking I'd be too torn up to do it after the fact. Well, here it is. The fact is a fact now. My daddy passed away in his sleep at the hospital at about 11AM today.

Mom had spent the morning with him and says that he'd gotten much better. He was awake and alert, and his mind was clear. When the food was brought in for him he surprised my mom by eating and drinking it all. When a nurse came in to ask him questions (they'd been told he was suffering from dementia), he gave her a sinister look, as if to say "Of course I know that. What the hell business is that of yours?", and answered all her questions accurately.

Mom was thinking everything would be Ok when dad gave her the signal that he was ready for a nap and she should go home. Within an hour of that the hospital was calling her telling her that his heart had stopped and they were trying to revive him. I was up in Gatesville, shooting my new carbine with my buddy Dave when they called me. They said mom was on her way to the hospital and that they were still working on dad.

Dave was sitting ready to shoot my rifle when the call came, so I told him to go ahead and blast away and we'd get the hell outa there. By the time we'd gotten the truck half way back to his house from his back 40 the hospital was calling me again saying they couldn't revive him and that my father was dead. I guess I was in shock, because I took the news very matter-of-factly. The reality of it didn't hit me for a while. I was half way from Gatesville to Temple before the sobbing and tears hit me, to the point where I was afraid to drive for fear of being blinded by the tears.

I made several calls along that 30 minute drive, telling relatives that he'd passed. I called Mushy, who's become the next best thing to a brother to me, and then he sent out the word to the rest of my blogging friends. The words you guys have expressed since then have warmed my heart, and I'll make sure my mom and sis hear them too.

I've got other stuff I need to do now, so rather than go on I'll just show you some pictures of dad, beginning with this one.



It's one of my favorites. It's a shot of him (in the middle) with his older brother Sam and his father, taken some time in the late 1920s while that sat in the cotton field my grandfather tilled as a Tennant Farmer (dad was born in July of 1922).



Here's dad and I, in 1960, taken in Bermuda where I was born.



This is Dad and his brothers in about 1978, at a Wilson Family reunion.


This is Dad and I after a golf game, some time around 1992 or 3.



This is dad, sitting in the kitchen of their house in Temple, reading the paper with his buddy Rascal in his lap. I think it was taken about 1996.



This is a shot I took with my phone on Fathers Day of last year, as we were waiting to get a table at The Outback Steakhouse in Killeen.



And this is one of my favorites. I took this Christmas before last. I think the look in his eye, the humor, the look of mischief, captures his spirit better than any other picture we took in many years.

He was still pretty clear headed then. He's young again now, sitting here at my side while I type this. He'll always be with me, wherever I go. I miss you daddy, but I've been missing the real you for a long time now. Now you can shine again. You can get together with your old pals and play golf again. We'll see each other again, and we'll do all the things you always wanted to do. You don't have to worry about anything. I'll take care of mama and Margaret. Everything is gonna be fine. You did your job, better than anyone else I know. Now I have to do mine. Rest. Rest in peace. You've earned it.