On the loss of fathers. And the loss of mentors. I’ve lost both, but I had my father around for me a lot longer than Scott Carson had his:
When I was just seven years old, I waited with my mother on a cold November evening for my father to come home from work. He was an executive at Goodyear in Akron, Ohio, and we were living in Stow, which meant that we couldn’t really expect him home before 6:00, but on this particular night 6:00 came and went, and it got darker and weirder. Being only seven, I was getting bored waiting for dinner and started to get antsy, as bored seven year olds do. My mother began to give me the threat: “When your father comes home…”. On this particular evening, the good news turned out to be pretty bad. I didn’t have to worry about when my father came home. He wasn’t coming home.
Around 7:00 there was a knock at the door. It was my father’s boss and his wife. They didn’t live in Stow. There were some serious-sounding adult voices, and they went with my mother into the kitchen. Being ignored is the universal signal for all children to start acting crazy, so I ran around pretending to be Mighty Mouse, yelling “Here I come to save the day” and rolling around on the floor. My mother suddenly appeared in the entrance to the kitchen, looking down at me as I lay on the floor battling some unsuspecting, invisible enemy cat. Her face was very stern-looking–I thought I was in for it for sure. “Your father’s dead,” she said simply.
Read the whole thing. Worth keeping.