My Father's Legacy

A friend of mine on Facebook commented today that one of her relatives has collected everything their grandchildren ever wrote in their lives. She was enjoying a trip down memory lane that took her back to the 1970s and a favorite family vacation.

The written word really is that powerful, as any of us who love to read books knows only too well. A great story can transport you into a completely different place and time, distracting you from the mundane details of your own sometimes boring existence.

One of my own great personal treasures consists of written words left to me by my dear father, who died in 1993 and whom I still miss every day of my life. Dad loved to write and did so frequently in a number of formats: letters to friends, letters to businesses, and even articles that were published in a trade newsletter. Dad was a man of great character whose strong opinions and quick wit practically jumped off each page he wrote.

Dad’s primary writing instrument was an old manual typewriter. I can still remember the feel of those keys and the smell of the cloth ribbons it used. It took strong fingers to type on that machine, unlike today’s computer keyboards or even the electric typewriters of the 1970s and 80s. Dad would lovingly sit for hours pounding out his messages on that machine, creating a rhythmic clacking cadence broken only by the ringing of the bell at the end of each line and the subsequent ca-chunk of the carriage return.

When my mother died in 1998, I had to quickly clean out the large old house in which she and my father had lived since the late 1960s. They were too busy with their lives raising children and making a living, and too frugal, to do all the meticulous cleaning and frequent remodeling that keeps a house ready to sell quickly. However, their middle class neighborhood was having a resurgence of popularity that resulted in a quick sale almost immediately after listing, before the family could even hire painters or start the cleanup.

Like many other children of the Great Depression, both my parents saved everything: every greeting card they ever received from their children, parents and other dear ones, every report card and school drawing by any of us kids, every news clipping or photo either of them had ever owned. At least that’s the way it seemed to me while going through two full floors plus basement of rooms with drawers, cabinets and closets stuffed to the brim with boxes of these goodies.

I remember hastily glancing through these paper treasures, trying to make quick decisions with eyes, body and mind tired and grief stricken. Anything that looked like it might be of emotional value or closer examination to me when I had more time was thrown into one of a large collection of those office storage boxes. My boyfriend at the time, shortly thereafter to become my husband, was very supportive of me throughout this whole process. He continued to be patient with me through the ten subsequent years those full cardboard boxes sat in our basement collecting dust as I considered, and procrastinated, going through their contents.

The time finally arrived, thanks to a pending cross country move following months of unemployment for us both, when I was forced to go through all those boxes, examining every item and making decisions about disposition of each one. Our new home was not going to permit us to have storage for a lot of “stuff”, so I took the opportunity to read and savor every item I could before it mostly went directly into the trash.

Within those boxes were stored thousands of pages of my late father’s writing: handwritten notes and postcards, letters typed on the old manual typewriter with lots of crossed-out “corrections”, and every copy of his monthly trade newsletter that he had ever received, most of which contained articles he had written.

I spent hours lost in memories as I read, or at least skimmed, every single piece of his writing contained in those dusty old boxes. Through his written word, I began to know my father in a deeper way than I had ever taken the time to do growing up or even as a young adult. Back then, in my youthful innocence, I just assumed he would always be around to tell me stories or give me advice.

Unlike most of the original copies, his printed trade newsletter articles were in good enough shape that I could scan them into text on the computer, and with some minor editing against the printed original, convert into Word documents that I could save on my computer. I spent hours lovingly scanning and editing each of these articles, ending up with over 300 pages of his writings I could keep, print, reread and share with others who knew and loved Dad.

I learned many things about my father and about myself during that process. Dad loved to write and was good at it. Whether or not I am any good at it would be up to the less partial reader to judge, but I have always enjoyed writing, whether it was published in a school newspaper or just in my own journals.

Lately I feel I have things to say that might be of value to others, or at least must be documented for my own reflection and catharsis. So, Dad’s written legacy to me forces me at last to pick up, on my relatively soft touch keyboard attached to my computer, where he left off in 1993 on his old, worn and beloved manual typewriter. Had he not been taken from this planet by cancer, he would be doing so himself, either on the typewriter or on a newer medium. But in his absence, I now feel compelled to do so, with him looking gently over my shoulder from the other side.

Thanks, Dad. I’ll always love you and miss you. I’ll try to do you proud with my words.