Dear Dad,

 I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, more and more as I get older.  Your birthday is coming up, Aug. 24^th, when you would have turned 87. We’ve never celebrated it, but I always remember the day.  A few weeks ago, there was a McCormack family reunion in East Dorset, VT, close to St. Jerome’s cemetery where you are buried next to your parents and grandparents.  When I stopped by, they were mowing the grass; I’m the one who left the tiny rosettes.  I’m sorry not to have gotten there more often in the 47 years since you died. It’s such a beautiful place, nestled in the Green Mountains, close to the marble quarries. But it’s remote and it’s not always an easy trip.

It’s not neglect, and it’s not lack of caring that we haven’t visited more often.  Or that, as a family, we never really gathered to honor you, or spoke much of you, or got to know much about you besides the basic facts.  When we grew up, Mom was not able to talk about you; nor the McCormack relatives, either.  Your death was, I now know, the elephant in the room, so large and impossible that it could not be dealt with directly. Part of it was logistical, all the business of coping with the untimely loss of a parent and bread winner. Part of it was the bitter disappointment that a golden boy was gone — the eldest son who’d gone far, a Navy man and doctor of medicine - of all ironies, dead at 39, leaving a widow and six small children. Another part of the silence, I believe, was faith shaken to the core: why would God do this? Was it punishment for aspiring too high?

The black out, so to speak, is no one’s fault. But still, the result is to know so little of you as a person, beyond the dreams and accomplishments. Instead, there has been a mythic image of someone high, noble, pure and remote. But not a flesh and blood man, who loved and suffered, and made mistakes. More recently, Mom has been willing to share things about you, but out of her traumas, much memory is lost. Your time together was not very long, and full of babies.  Some of the aunties, your sisters, offered a few memories of childhood, including your escape to the hills for a break from so many siblings.  But when I asked Aunt Tesha about when you were diagnosed with cancer, she said, “I was abroad, and they didn’t want to tell me, thinking he would get better. By the time I was called home, it was terminal and hope was lost. I prayed to God to take me, a single woman, and leave him to raise his family.”

Now that I’m an adult and a parent, I know that you must have been devastated to leave a family behind. That, too, may be part of the silence – how angry you were at dying – not one who “faced a courageous battle” but who raged against leaving promises unkept. Made of the same serious, conscientious stuff, I think I would, too.  I wish I could let you know that life went on, we survived, and things turned out OK. We’re a pretty diverse lot now: Dutch, Armenian, South African, German and a cute little boy named Patrick McCormack, your grandson, who is half Vietnamese.  All of us graduated from college, and have gone on to make our ways in the world. Your two sons had Navy careers, like you, which they might not have, if there were more options.  All have married and all have become parents – somehow, in spite of sadness, grief and money problems, there was always a love of family and children. What I feel most badly about, in some ways, is that you missed the grandfather years.  No question, being a single parent was hard for Mom. But she has had sweet times as a grandmother , enjoying 11 kids who love her warmth and acceptance, and think she’s funny.

And me, your second daughter?  In some ways, probably a lot less secure and accomplished than I might have been.  And yet, I’ve had quite a few adventures myself.  Plus, funny thing, I seem to have turned out the writer and teacher I always wanted to be, from the time I was so desperate to learn to read, asking you words over your shoulder as you read.  And, it’s you I remember as the book reader and storyteller to us “older” children, while Mom put the wee ones to bed.

At the reunion, some of the aunties brought pictures and mementoes from your youth.  I’ve got pictures now on Facebook, both of the reunion itself, and some of the pictures and documents I got of you, now posted in your honor.  I’m going to put down what I know of you, and find out more.  I’m going to track down that picture of you and me in a pond when I’m about four, and show it to the world. Because it’s important to me. You are important to me. And I’d rather have knowledge and memories of a man who loved me than a saint in this world or the next.