Three-volley salute–and fathers and sons
A few weeks ago we buried my dad’s ashes. He had a fitting send-off for an old vet: A small, somber ceremony at Washington Crossing National Cemetery, including a three-volley salute and taps.
It has to be said. My dad was a misanthropic, isolated, enigmatic person. As far as I can tell, he had tenuous relationships with everyone he ever encountered.
Later in the day after the funeral, I was working on a few tasks in my office. My middle child, Nate, typically reserved, mild, walked into the office, cat draped over his shoulder, a move I think was meant to drain the moment of too much gravity. He paused, seemingly uncertain, and said in his quiet way that the day was meaningful.
Yes, this was his grandfather, but he had barely seen my dad through the years. Those tenuous relationships included family. My kids didn’t know him that well.
My son measured me as he said the day was meaningful, and I realized he was not thinking about himself at all: He was gauging how I was doing with this complexity.
So I told him what I thought I was feeling. I told him a little about the peculiar, crossed-up feelings that accompanied a strange day like this. How my dad had been difficult and we all knew it. How the military ritual was appropriate for U.S. Marine Russell J. Warnock. How it was a shame there was no big send-off funeral, but I was fine.
I suppose I was trying to be profound, as we are wont to do when we talk to our children about cosmic matters. We want to rise to the occasion.
My sons and I do not have Iron John-type relationships, but, still, I was struck when he nodded at my pseudo wisdom, said he hoped I was okay, made his way around my way-too-big desk and embraced me.
Then he said, in direct response to my desultory, discursive comments: “But he’s still your dad.”
That was it. You get one dad. And to hear that from my son at that moment meant that he was trying to understand me through his perception of how this man sitting before him saw his own dad. I think he had at a deep level glimpsed the powerful contract between fathers and sons, and while he had always seen me as Dad, he was now also seeing me as Son.
