D
ear Dad,
I am writing this to you although you have been dead for many years. If you can see these lines, I feel I must say some things I didn’t know when I was a boy - things I was too immature to say.
It’s only after passing through the long, hard school of hard knocks - now, when my own hair is graying - that I understand how you felt.
I must have been a bitter trial to you. I was such a fool! I believed my own petty wisdom, and I now know how ridiculous it was compared to that calm, ripe, wholesome experience of yours. I now know that wisdom truly is the gift of the elderly. I realize there are two ways to see things: with eyesight and insight. And your insight was right on the mark.
Most of all I want to confess my worst sin to you: I was convinced that you didn’t understand. When I look back, I know that you did - perhaps better than I did myself. Your wisdom flowed around mine like an ocean surrounding an island. How patient you were with me. How full of longsuffering and kindness, filled with unconditional love. How constant were your efforts to get close to me - to win my confidence, to be my pal.
I wouldn’t let you. I couldn’t. What was it that held me aloof? I was too hard, too macho, too self-centered. I believed in the tough image: I wanted to be a big boy and not cry.
I wish you were here across the table from me just for an hour, so I could tell you there’s no wall between us any more. I understand you now, Dad, and God knows how I love you; how I needed you to remind me to remember who I am.
I now know what I could have done to make you happy. I know how you felt.
It won’t be long, Dad, until I am over on your side of the veil. I believe you’ll be the first to greet me, to take me by the hand and help me comprehend the new life that awaits me. When I see you again, I’ll spend the first thousand years making you realize that not one moment of your concern and yearning for me was wasted. It took a good many years for this prodigal son to come to know himself and his ultimate destiny. But I’ve come now. I see it all.
I know that the richest, most precious thing on Earth, and the thing least understood, is the mighty love, tenderness and craving to help that a father feels toward his boy. For I have a boy of my own. And it is he that makes me want to go back to you and get down on my knees to beg your forgiveness.
Up there somewhere in the stillness, hear me, Dad, and believe me. I did need you and still do. The ultimate compliment I ever receive is when somebody says, “You’re a lot like your dad.” I’m lucky to be your son.