Gone a Long Time

 

"Be happy while you are living, for you're a long time dead."

                                                                        ---- Scottish proverb

My dad died from pancreatic cancer 27 years ago today. 

This year has been a bit different when thinking about his passing. It isn't because I miss him -- quite the opposite. It's because I realized, as the years have gone on, how I think about him less and less. Lewis is no longer present. That may sound like an obvious thing to take note of regarding someone who's been dead for almost three decades, but it's true that our deceased loves ones often continue to exist within our own psyche. We tend to think of them often, and it doesn't take much for their memories to rise to the surface.

This week on the campus where I work, the vehicular and foot traffic has increased dramatically, as parents and their kids arrive/return for the start of the 2024-25 school year. Students become acclimated (or re-acclimated) to college life, and the sudden influx of people has been, at times, overwhelming.

This reminded me of when my mom and I would have lunch together on a weekday. She would drive onto campus, picked me up in front of the student union, and we'd go off-campus somewhere for the hour. Mom was a student here during the 1960s, but that was a long time ago, and she often avoided campus as an adult. Driving to meet me for lunch proved very stressful for her. There are a lot of pedestrians going about their business in the campus town area, and you have to be hyper vigilant as a driver. It all proved too much for mom and, one day after dropping me off after lunch, she said how she didn't think she wanted to drive onto campus to do lunch anymore. I understood.

So yeah... this week almost immediately reminded of those lunch days. I thought, 'Yep, mom would not like this at all.' That, of course, made me a bit wistful. It also reminded me how those kinds of thoughts about my dad have become rarer and rarer.

Lewis was my dad. Of course I will never forger him. But, as I made an inevitable comparison between him and my mom -- now both dead -- I thought, 'He's been gone a long time.' That may sound callous, and it isn't meant to. It's just... 27 years is a long stretch in human lifetime perspective. Mom, on the other hand, only died last year. Those lunch times we spent together were just a few years ago. Those memories are much more immediate. Meanwhile, when I think of my dad, those memories seem just ever so frayed around the edges, and almost sepia-toned at times.

I love my dad. I will always remember him. But, as the years go by, it becomes more inescapable that he's been a long time dead.