A Father's Love

By Amy M. Wales

Seattle, March 2, 2002

One of the miracles of the love shared between a father and a daughter is that it gives, to both, the power to see through the enchantments of love without ever succumbing to disenchantment. This was the love - the kind of love - I shared with my father, a man who in life transcended the everyman father figure to become not only a true mentor but also one of my best and closest friends.

Convention may praise the man; indeed there is much about my father to praise. It would be wrong, however, to allow one mere idea of him to triumph. The greatness of my father, the greatness of any man, is not solely defined by the noble causes for which he so tirelessly worked. To leave at bay the diverse impulses that created and made real his life is to simplify the man. Much as he campaigned for safer gun laws, as well as a fairer and more even-handed criminal justice system, Tom Wales was also a steadfast father and hero to his children. Tonight, to illustrate the kind of hero he was to me, I share with you glimpses into the life of a man you may have known as Tom Wales, but I knew and will forever know as Pa.

My father engaged me in dialogue from a very early age. We spoke of anything and everything. And sometimes we spoke of nothing at all. As heartfelt as his wisdom was, ours was a dialogue not contingent on words. It is more than five months now since his death. Death, as a word, is difficult to learn. As a reality, it is even harder to accept. Which is one reason why, when I look up into the night sky - most recently into a rather somber canopy of London fog - I tend to envisage millions upon millions of stars. For if I were allowed to search them and the vast space which they occupy, is it absolutely certain that I would nowhere find his face, hear his voice, or feel his touch? Surely I can appreciate that what I want most, a life force returned, is something impossible. But still, must the conversation stop?

Such questions frequently go unheeded into the empty air and I find myself staring blankly into the night. I suppose it is the intensity of the longing that makes me feel that I am staring into a void. Passionate grief does not link us with the dead, it shuts us off from them. I tell myself that I must therefore turn to him as often as possible in gladness. Smile and say hello to him in the only way I know how.

In grief, however, nothing stays put - a staid sorrow is the only constant. Pa so much enjoyed the gift he called life. And now he is no longer able to either take pleasure in the small things that put a skip in his step or marvel at what he considered the closest suggestions of God's presence here on earth: the soft sound of rainfall on the roof, the murmur of a distant foghorn, the steady purr of crickets in the late evening, the red orange and pink colorings of sunrise - a few of the many evocative wonders he thought beautiful. A few of the many he is no longer able to experience, that we are no longer able to experience together.

I remember how we would walk along the low tide shore of Vinalhaven, Maine and search for crabs under blankets of seaweed. How we would brave Mill River in a leaky red canoe to picnic on a forsaken island of purple wildflowers. How we would troll for mackerel in the Big Boat, and then spend hours detangling the line from a snagged lobster buoy. All part of the adventure of life, he'd laugh. I remember Pop's laugh; the manner by which he would sometimes have to take his glasses from his face so as to be able to wipe the happily felled tears from his eyes.

People often take life for granted. My father did not. Every minute of every day, he embraced it. And he encouraged me to do the same. In a letter written to me following my graduation from University, my father wrote: "Mic, be present in your own life." In seven words he had summarized the lesson perhaps of a lifetime. My father believed that we are given but one life and it is a life to be truly lived. He truly lived his life.

An everlasting asset of our human relationship, it is this dialogue, more than any image or specific memory, which endures in his absence. I need not search the night stars to find him anymore. He is still momentously real to me because our dialogue indeed continues. To reassure myself of this, I need only gaze into my open palm: first, to remind myself that his hand is also part of mine and, second, that when I enclose one hand within the other, I am effectively holding his - forever with me, even though he is gone.