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We were at the South Carolina game last weekend. There was a man sitting in front of us. He said, “I wish my dad would’ve taken me to a Tennessee game when I was your age.” Sitting just in front of us, he had found in my youngest son the perfect conversation partner, especially since the topic was Tennessee football. There was plenty for them to talk about, even if there was little to celebrate.
I enjoyed listening to their conversation. Given the general lack of action on the field, their banter was a welcome diversion. It was their conversation — until he mentioned his dad and his desire to have his dad take him to a U.T. game. He was talking to my son, but his words spoke to me. I answered immediately, “Me too.”
I had experienced something like that. September 16, 1972, was the first night game played at Neyland Stadium. We were sitting in the end zone bleachers with the field in front of us and “The Hill” at our back. Penn State was the opponent. They had two great running backs, Lydell Mitchell and Franco Harris, who would go on to play professional football. The best thing about the night was that Tennessee won. It would have been better, though, if my dad had been with me — but he wasn’t.
There were other times and other places during my growing-up years when Dad wasn’t around. My parents divorced before I was two years old, so he did not live with us. We lived in the same small town though. I am pretty sure Dad’s absences at important times had more to do with his alcoholism than with logistics.
Through the years, I have spent a fair amount of time working through my issues with Dad. I have read books, gone to counselors, and met with groups of men with similar issues. When I first realized that I had some unresolved childhood issues, I found it difficult to work on them. The very idea was altogether new to me. I had spent my whole life avoiding the subject. Dealing with it was painful. I cried. I yelled. I cried some more. It took time. There were no quick and easy answers.
One of the factors that complicated my working through those issues was that Dad died just a few years before I realized I had issues that needed work. I remember being at the funeral home the afternoon before we were to receive friends that night. I wanted to cry. Just five or so years earlier, when my grandfather passed away, whenever I saw his casket I started sobbing uncontrollably. I stood in the room with my dad’s open casket wishing I could cry; but I couldn’t. I tried to make myself cry, but no tears came that afternoon.
They came later. In my own journey as a father, when my children reached milestones, I would at times feel a deep sense of grief. Sometimes it felt more like anger, sometimes it just hurt. Somewhere along the way, I realized — with a lot of help from caring souls — that I was grieving not what I had lost, but for what I never had.
There were all kinds of simple questions that helped me get in touch with the places where I was hurting.
Where was Dad when I took my first step or said my first word?
Where was Dad on my first day of school?
Where was Dad when I needed a ride home from practice?
Coming to the realization that for most of my lifetime, the answers to those questions and others like them were “not there” was a painful undertaking for me. At the same time, it was a starting point, a beginning, the first steps toward some kind of healing.
When he said, “I wish my dad would have taken me to a U.T. game,” I heard not just with my ears, but with something deeper. Somehow his words touched those old memories. That surprised me and caught me off guard. It was almost like I had forgotten they were there.
There was a time when getting in touch with those kinds of memories was always emotionally painful. Saturday night, as I was answering, “me too,” I felt a twinge of sadness. That was very different from what I would have experienced in the early days of working through my issues with Dad.
I imagine there are ways in which each of us has been wounded through the course of our lives, the difference being to what degree? The good news is that the wounds do heal with time and due attention. We may always have the scars, but the scars do not have to dictate our response to memories of the past or possibilities of a new day.
I bet you thought it was just a football game.
Joy and Peace,
Ed
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