So, here I am, writing another blog post about my father.
When Lewis was born on a Wednesday he arrived in a world notably different from today. Back then, a dozen eggs cost .56 cents. Today, they can cost as much as $7.00. World War II was still going on, though winding down, and President Roosevelt would die three weeks later of an intracerebral hemorrhage. Five days before dad was born, the Sherlock Holmes movie The House of Fear was released to North American theaters.
Lewis grew up in Mississippi, though lived for a time in Missouri, before moving to Champaign-Urbana. There he worked construction jobs, and met my mother, who was a student at the local university. They eventually married, and had yours truly after a few years. Lewis continued improving his construction skills, and started his own company. His work often took him away from Champaign during the week, as he worked on paving and repaving several Illinois interstates, among other things.
At one point, dad badly burned his hand while at work. It fell into some hot tar, and he was rushed to a burn unit in Springfield, IL, where he stayed for several days (perhaps longer - the passage of time is a bit indistinct when you're a kid). Once he was home, I remember mom having to change the dressing on his hand pretty regularly. It wasn't a pleasant sight, and no doubt felt even worse for him. Apparently, he wasn't an easy patient for my mom to play nurse to, as she told me years later.
After my parents divorced in the late-1980s, dad moved into a condo in what was then south Champaign. He remarried, and a year or so later, moved to Springfield. There he lived in another condo, eventually divorcing again. Lewis bought a house, and married his fourth and final wife a few years later. She wasn't much older than me, and they had a kid together - Lewis's fourth, a son. It should be noted here that dad had been married and divorced before he met my mom. From that union he had two daughters.
Lewis died from cancer in 1997, aged 52. My younger half-brother was only two-years-old at the time. I was 21. My two half-sisters were in their 30s. We'd all lost a father. His fourth wife had lost a husband. My grandmother, then 89-years-old, nearly fainted when she saw dad in his coffin. Dad died on a Thursday, and his funeral was the following Tuesday. Those were solemn days, filled with tears of sadness. They were no doubt the antithesis of that Wednesday in early Spring of 1945, when Lewis arrived into the world.
So it goes.
Earlier I mentioned how this particular birthday anniversary hits a little harder this year, and that it was probably due to my mother's recent passing. That's been on my mind a lot lately -- the randomness of our existence, and the series of opportunities, life choices, chance meetings, and chemistry of attraction -- everything that has to come together for two people to meet, fall in love, decide to get married, and have a child. This last bit is much more self-focused, but then how we think of people is situational, isn't it?
Lewis was many things to many people: a son, a brother, a friend, a husband. But to me he was a father. I owe my life to him, and to Sally. Now that they are both gone, I've thought about the stochasticity of everything, of how very, very brief our existence is within the grand scheme of things, and how lucky I am to even be here, that two human beings from two different backgrounds - alive on this earth for but a speck of a moment in the totality of time - found each other. And now, here I am, remembering them, remembering my dad on what would have been his 78th birthday.
I am happy to be here, and happy to remember him.
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