On Saying Goodbye
There are a couple of them that have been in my care for over two decades. Inside one of them is a canceled check that my dad wrote which helped me pay for a speeding ticket on the SIU campus. It is the only remaining signature I have of my father. I was sixteen years old. We had a car full of guys, and a floorboard full of pumpkins, stolen from the front porch of homes around our neighborhood, and destined to be pitched out the window of our rolling car just to view the chaos that an exploding pumpkin would make when hitting the street. Lucky for us the policeman didn't check the inside of our car for anything.
There is also a picture of my son, Ben, on the day he was leaving College Station, Texas for Tucson, Arizona with my ex-wife, Mary Ann. It's just a picture of the two of them, but right before that picture was taken, I had to say goodbye to my boy. He was taken to Tucson, Arizona where he lived out his remaining public school years with his mother and newly married husband. I realized, from that day on, I wouldn't be able to see him grow up much anymore. Back in the 80's the laws in Texas did little to protect fathers from their ex-spouses taking their children hundreds of miles away from the biological fathers, essentially breaking the family apart from all visitation rights and participation in helping raise their own children! Needless to say, it was a very difficult thing for both my son and I to bare. As I told him I loved him, he gave me a little brown sack and said “goodbye.” When they drove off, I went into my apartment, sat down on the couch and reflected on how life can be so difficult at times. When my tears dried and I could muster up enough courage to open the sack, I looked inside and there were my boy's favorite little toys. A GI Joe figure, a bone that he painted while he was at the summer camp, a Star Wars figure and a little monkey he got from Grandma Pankey. Ben has never been very good at expressing his love for others, but his choosing to give me his most prized possessions without ever asking for them back was good enough for me. That picture of my ex-wife and son always brings back the touching moment that I experienced when Benny and his mom moved away forever.
During my visits to see my son once or twice a year, or when he would come back to Texas and stay with me a while, I always cherished our excursions. Cherished them so much that Ben and I would always pick up a special rock that we would look for on the beach or hiking trail, and keep it with all the others that we'd found along the way. I would mark them with a date and place them in my silk bag in my treasure box. I still do that every time I get the chance to visit him today. He's turned out to be a great guy, played all the sports in public school and later earned a college scholarship playing baseball. When he made it to the minor leagues after college, I would go watch him play and was amazed at the maturity level my son developed over the years, in spite of me not being around to help him through his tough times. One year he started a Charity Drive during his summer league baseball season, and took a big five-gallon plastic jug and put a sign on it titled “Benny's Pennies.” He would have the audiences put all their pennies in the jug during the game and when the games were over he'd take the pennies to the local hospital and give them to the Children's charity. When asked why he was doing that, he just said it was kind of like his way to “pay it forward!” As Ben's athletic career ended, he retired and joined the Armed Forces where he is now a Navigator in the Navy. Despite all the difficulty he had growing up without his biological father and my input into his growth and maturity, Ben turned out just fine, which probably says something about the way that my ex-spouse and her husband was able to raise our son along the way!
When Ben was taken, I would soon learn that once you move a child away from their father, it hurts worse the next time you have to say goodbye. When I get to missing my boy, I can always go look at him in my treasure box through my pictures.
There is another notebook that has a few pictures portraying my new life as a father and husband. For years I had felt that such a lady as my wife, Jill Pankey, didn't exist out there. I remember a time that I was inclined to think that I would probably have to settle to be “with” someone rather than be “in love” with someone. For years I dated others, but with my dating scene I always felt like I was a dog chasing my tail. I even dated one lady that literally drove me to drinking due to all those “helmet haired” preacher types that my girlfriend would take me to church to see. When she asked if I would be willing to tithe to the church, 20% of my income, so I'd be assured to find some automatic blessings in my life, I decided to leave out the back door, and like Paul Simon would say, “take a new stand, man.” It was on my move to Corpus Christi that I met my wife unexpectedly, and we might not have ever found each other or fallen in love had it not been for our friends. At that point in my life, I decided to just quit chasing my tail like an ignorant little pup, and have faith that Jill would eventually become the right on. You know, it's funny when you have those moments in your life when you decide to have faith, when you walk away from all the struggle and urgency in trying to find the perfect match for you, like a dog walking away from chasing his tail, a funny thing happens,…. the tail of that dog just seems to follow, without any struggle or urgency!
There is a picture that shows Jill and I at our wedding when Jill was saying that she would take me for better or for worse and in sickness, health and sorrow. She also was crying at our wedding ceremony in this picture! It was a beautiful wedding at Jill's best friend's home, with Christmas music by the fireplace when our Pastor asked her if she was really ready to do this? And Jill looked up with crocodile tears, shook her head yes and replied that it she had “cried at all of her own weddings!” In that serious moment, even the Pastor got choked laughing so loud. So in the wedding picture, Jill has these big tears in her eyes, the kind of tears that come from being happy, but unsure. I promised her then, as I do today, that I would always love her and live up to her expectations of me.
There are other pictures and memories, in yearly albums, but few as special as these mentioned. Those that make it to my box are my treasured pieces of the “good stuff.” I'll always cherish them and keep them with me until my dying day. I just hope that I don't have to start going to church to listen to those “helmet haired preachers” trying to get their 20% from me before my journey on this planet is over!
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