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My older brother, Mike, and I once struggled for hours trying to remember PLAYING with our father, as children. We struggled because it never happened. Never once, did our father ever play with us. As parents, with our own children, we made it a point to PLAY with our children. As an adult, PLAYING may be one of my greatest challenges, even though I think of myself as being very creative. At the age of eight, I was awakened to the sound of my father’s pickup. From the gabled, upstairs bedroom window, I saw him drive away from our old farmhouse in rural Idaho. I never saw him again. He abandoned four children. Twenty-four years passed. Not far from death’s door, my father contacted one of his eight sisters in Iowa, hoping to speak with his favorite sister, Nell. He was too late, Nell had passed on a few years before. His sister, Joanne, contacted me by letter, to let me know of my dad’s heart condition. He was living in Washington State. I was living in New Hampshire. The fatherless void of nearly a quarter century silently rolled across my memory. I drew a blank and called my brother, who was living in Oregon. We were both numb. Due to distance, Mike made initial contact. My father was living in an apartment. His final effects were worth about $750.00. No friends or family came forth to pay for his funeral. Mike and I split the cost of his funeral. We decided to have him cremated. Then, we made the decision to share Dad for the next 24 years, so that we would know where he was at all times. He would never drive away from us again. Through the years, DAD went to ballgames, met Watchtower ladies and other religious purveyors who knocked at the door to chat and shifted his location from place to place, depending upon where my family was living. We wrote silly poems and PLAYED with him as we Fedexed, UPSed and mailed him back and forth. We exposed all nine pounds of him to our world. The 24 years was up awhile ago. Before the end of this year, Mike and I plan to scatter his ashes over Grand Coulee Dam, where he labored for seven years of his life. Perhaps, in the next life, he will learn to PLAY, as we did with him in his afterlife.
