Father’s Day
There’s a scene in the movie Waking Ned Devine wherein through a convolution of the plot, a man is put in the odd position of having to give a public funerary eulogy for his best friend, who is in fact not dead, but sitting in the front row.
The man takes a deep breath, looks his friend in the eye, and begins to speak. He starts out by commenting that eulogies are such strange things, because we say all these things about the departed that we really should have said to them when they were alive. Then, with tears forming in his eyes (and the friend’s), he talks about how very dear his friend “was” to him. Though the word is not used, “love” is the best summary description of what he feels for the other.
This has long been one of my favorite character moments in a movie. These men are blessed by the bizarre circumstance of the one being forced to eulogize the other. This is no hesitant “I love you, man”, in that oft-parodied trying-to-stay-a-tough-guy manner; he opens his heart and says things that he has clearly felt for years, but has never expressed openly.
That scene stuck with me, and simmered in the back of my brain for a couple months. Then on Father’s Day, six years ago, I sat down with pen and paper and wrote my father a letter. Forgive me if I do not share with you the specifics of what I wrote (though I can practically quote it verbatim), but suffice it to say that I said a number of things that I have felt for my entire life, but had never fully expressed in words.
Now you should understand that ours is not a particularly “touchy feely” family. In fact, with the exception of my mother, we’re all pretty much a bunch of stoics. (Yet, at the same time, we are all quite close.) But once I had decided to do it, the letter wrote itself, and I meant every word of it, and still do.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you; and I am proud to be your son.
