Visiting With My Father

One activity I forgot to mention the other day about the things I've done on my vacation was that I had a chance to go see my father, or more accurately, his grave. My father passed on in 1999 and his latest wife (he's been married at least seven times that I know of, I've written about this before) didn't want my aunt and my dad's twin sister to let his children know. You see he had married her after leaving my Mom and then all those years later he had returned and married her again. Anyway, she didn't want his original firstborn children to know anything about his passing on I suppose so that we wouldn't show up at his funeral and spoil the little myth that they had built up about their marriage and life together for all of the people that thought they knew him.

Anyway, I'm getting far too off track here. Since the Ft. Indiantown Gap National Graveyard is right off of the highway that takes you to Hershey, Pa we decided to stop by on our way back home, after we had all of our fun. When they do a burial there you do not get to see them put the casket in the ground. They have a spot where the do the whole military ceremony thing with the folding of the flag and the twenty-one gun salute and then you go on your way. So the first and only time I had been there I never actually knew where he was to be buried. I was able to look up the information online and it didn't take very long to find his grave.

Once the grave was found my wife, son, mother -in-law and her husband stood there for a few minutes and then they gave me some personal time to do whatever I wanted. I'm not sure I believe that a persons ghost or soul or a piece of it or whatever lingers on at their gravesite. I think it can for the place they died, especially if it was a violent demise but I'm not convinced about their final resting place. Still, there were some things I never got the chance to say to my father face to face that I needed to get off of my chest.

I won't get into the details but I was the one who stayed with him from the middle of my junior year of high school until I dropped out of college, I had his back in a manner of thinking. Then he treated me worse than everybody else and it took some time to forgive him but because of the situation there was no closure over what he had done. I forgave but didn't forget which was the sensible thing to do when dealing with him. Now I finally had a chance to get some things off of my chest in the only way that remained. It probably worked out better this way, at least now I didn't have to hear any lies.

It only took about two minutes and I was done, with as much closure as I'll ever possibly be able to have. That's the way it goes, I can't change any thing that happened so I just have to deal with it. Life goes on and hopefully lessons are learned and not repeated. Hopefully.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.