Ninety-seven years ago on this day, August 2, my father was born in the little town of Cave Spring, Ga. Cave Spring is about eight miles as the crow flies from where I now live with Leah. The house where he grew up in Rome would be about the same distance by crow, if it still existed. The house where I grew up would be about a mile closer to us than that house, if it still existed. The house where my father spent the last years of his life is three or four miles further out. A new family is in that house now.
At this point, my father’s life exists only in memory or imagination. The memories seem real, but distant. They’re like postcards from the past. I can remember my father coming to my bed to say goodnight when I was a little boy. He would kneel and lean over me silently for a few moments. It was only many years later that I realized he was praying. I remember standing with him and my brother on the railroad tracks, throwing stones into a little pond. I remember him standing in the driveway when I pulled in from Huntsville, and I remember the scratchy, day-old stubble on his cheek as he hugged me. I remember hiking on the Appalachian Trail with him and my brother. I remember him lying in the hospital bed on the last night of his life, worrying that he wouldn’t be able to help me build the house where Leah and I live.
There are a lot of things I will never know about his life. I can’t ask someone at the Post Office about what happened when he worked there, because he retired 40 years ago. Lots of people have started and finished their postal service careers since he retired. Some of the men who served in his Army reserve unit are still around, but not many at this point; he retired from the reserves even before he retired from the Post Office.
It’s a little jarring when I think that he died over 14 years ago. For a long time after he died I would catch myself thinking that I was going to show him some little thing I had done while working on the house. These days I just feel cheated when I find something he would have been interested in.
I’ve written before about how I feel like both of my parents’ lives are receding into the past, out of my reach, and soon enough out of the memories of any living person. That’s a shame, but it’s the fate shared by billions of us who don’t rate a footnote in the history books.
There’s some small comfort in science fiction. Even reputable physicists don’t reject the possibility of time travel as physically impossible. Leah asks me what in the laws of physics says that time travel is possible. I reply, “Nothing, at least as far as I know.” But that’s the point, at least as I understand it. Nothing in the laws of physics says time travel is possible, but nothing says it isn’t. So if time travel is possible, that means that the past still exists.
I believe that I am cut off entirely from that past, even if it does still exist somewhere. I will never see my father again, but I can at least imagine that somewhere he’s still throwing stones in a pond, hiking the Appalachian Trail, and doing everything else he ever did.
My parents soon will pass out of human memory, too. Thank you for this essay raising the possibility or not impossibility that they exist on some plane inaccessible to me.
I have really wonderful memories of my father (who died in 2012), too, Mark–many like those that you relate.
However, as my father neared the end of his life, he let slip that one of my uncles had molested his own children. In addition, my father made an off-handed remark about “things that he had done when he was younger about which he was ashamed.” And, my brother told me that my father had cheated on my mother.
I didn’t/don’t want to hear these kinds of things about my father. I don’t know any details, and I don’t want to know any details. I think of my father in a generally positive light, and I don’t need to know these kinds of things about him. I’m not trying to bury my head in the sand–he was human, not a saint–but what’s the point of besmirching his memory now?
Minnie — Yes, the not impossibility. It’s odd to think that it could be true, but there are a lot of things in physics that seem pretty odd in the ordinary, commonplace world.
Scott — I agree about not wanting or needing to know that kind of thing. I don’t see how it would do anyone any good.
A beautiful, loving memory of your dad. Sometimes I think of all the ones who came and went before us, how everlasting life is the essence of memory and the saying names of those who won’t be forgotten. Your father lives on in you, in your heart, and in the hearts of all who loved him. His cells and breath still mingle with the universe. In that I have absolute confidence.
Thanks, Robin.
Thanks for this, Mark – I really like reading about people’s experiences with their parents. Those close feelings with a parent are not mine, and I now know they never will be, but it makes me feel a lot better to hear the testimony of those who were close.
I’ve also enjoyed reading Chet Raymo’s ongoing recollections of his father, who actually strikes me as being very much like me – a collector of data. Science Musings blog. I purchased his astronomy writings in book form, many years ago, long before I discovered his blog.
Wayne — I’ll have to read some of the earlier posts on the Science Musings blog. What I read strikes me as quite open and honest.