LJ Idol Season 7: Week 27; Noumenon
People have often told me that there is no way I should still be carrying the grief of losing my father. It’s as if the fact that I never really knew him somehow diminishes my reason and ability to miss him. Those people don’t understand just how cheated I feel for never having the chance to know my dad, or having the ability to hear his stories or feel his hugs. None that I can remember at least.
I have very few reminders of my dad. He died when I was 4 years old, and honestly, my mom knows very little about his past. The few items that he had left me? What wasn’t stolen over the years by my greedy extended family mostly burned up on the house fire that claimed my childhood home.
What I do have, I cherish. My mom and I often like to go through the old jewelry box together, holding the few small, personal items of his that we still have. In the box are the cuff links he wore to his high school reunion, the place where a sudden heart attack took his life. There’s a very ornate ring which is said to be worth more than $10,000. Selling this ring would easily help my family out financially. But my mom refuses to let me part with it. It’s a man’s ring, stunningly gorgeous with hundreds upon hundreds of diamonds covering the surface of it but she said if I ever gave it to a man other than a son of mine, she would kill me. I trust that she means it too. My dad wore that ring every day of his life and now after his death, it’s one of the few objects I have left to hold on to.
Aside from that though, there’s something else in that jewelry box that for the longest time, I never paid much attention to. It’s my dad’s college ring. When I was younger, I picked it up countless times, rolling it over in my hand, absorbing every last detail. The gemstone is a sapphire, which was not my dad’s birthstone. I’ve asked my mom why he would pick such a stone and she doesn’t know why. But it’s always something that’s stood out in my mind given that sapphire is my birth stone as well as my favorite gemstone. I love sapphire so much, I had the diamonds taken out of my wedding band and had them replaced with natural sapphires instead. Perhaps my dad had felt the same way about the deep blue stone since he randomly chose to place it in his class ring rather than his own birth stone. It’s something that’s always struck me as oddly coincidental since I was born many years after he’d left college.
Just as oddly coincidental is the college name etched into his ring. It’s a name I had seen many, many times without ever really catching the significance of it. Not until much later anyway.
The Missouri School of Mines.
The name wouldn’t register with many people. When I was younger, it certainly didn’t register with me either since the name was completely unfamiliar.
It was unfamiliar because there was no Missouri School of Mines any more. No, that school had been replaced with the University of Missouri-Rolla. The school that by chance, out of all the schools I’d been accepted to, I chose to attend. I was totally surprised when I realized that by sheer chance, I had picked the same school that my dad had attended. Some children aspire to this on purpose, following in their parents footsteps. I know a girl at graduate school who went to Clemson merely because both her parents had, and she wanted to share in that tradition. Without realizing it, I also made a choice to follow in my father’s footsteps.
I was walking the same campus and sitting in the same classrooms that my dad did in his youth. Words cannot express how happy and excited I was to share this with the father I hardly knew. I felt that a bond was there, something no one could see, touch or explain since I lost him so early in my life. But one that was there nonetheless.
He never did graduate from the college. He took a semester off because of an illness and was drafted and sent to Vietnam after that. Knowing that he’d never finished out his degree, when I walked across the stage to accept my diploma, I thought of him. I thought of how proud he would be to see me graduating from the same university he had chosen to attend
As I survey my life and my world, I realize that I share a number of other quirks with my father. I’ve always considered the number 17 to be my lucky number. Some might say I have a strange obsession with it. Whenever numbers need to be picked, I will always choose the number 17. It’s something I don’t usually share with anybody because I felt it was silly. My mom recently mentioned that my dad’s lucky number was also 17, a fact I don’t recall ever knowing before. How could I have known a random tidbit such as that?
The similarities don’t stop there. I changed my major several times in college, each one totally different than the other and represents the careers of my dad and his siblings. My final choice? A Masters in Real Estate Development? I share with the grandma who died before I was born, and whom I never met or had any knowledge of until halfway through my graduate degree.
That is only the beginning too.
He may not have been there to watch me go to prom, or graduate college. He may not have been there to walk me down the aisle on my wedding day or to comfort me through my divorce. He never even got to know me as a person, and as a result, I never got to know much about him. There are so many questions I wish I could ask him and it breaks my heart to know that I can’t.
But the older I get, the more I learn...I find out that I am more and more like my dad everyday. My personality, my interests, my aspirations, even my quirks. Everything. People that knew my dad often tell me that not only do I look exactly like him, but that I act just like him too. The man that barely had an impact on my young life before he was taken away has somehow helped make me into the person I am today. All I have are fragments scattered here and there, bits and pieces that my mom can tell me, and the knowledge that somehow, without me being able to explain it, there are parts of him that are still very much apart of me as well.
I can’t see, taste, touch or smell those familial bonds. But they can still reach across time and space to help me, to guide me and to comfort me.
While not much of a Nickleback fan usually, this song and especially this video is one that has reminded me of my own life without my father. It’s one I can’t watch without breaking down into tears since this video very well could be about me.
This has been my latest entry for
therealljidol. Considering there are only 14 of us left, every vote counts. If you enjoyed this entry, please consider heading over to
the poll and check out the other 13 fantastic writers left in the competition! You won't be disappointed! It's a community only vote, so while you're there, why not join in the fun as well!
I have very few reminders of my dad. He died when I was 4 years old, and honestly, my mom knows very little about his past. The few items that he had left me? What wasn’t stolen over the years by my greedy extended family mostly burned up on the house fire that claimed my childhood home.
What I do have, I cherish. My mom and I often like to go through the old jewelry box together, holding the few small, personal items of his that we still have. In the box are the cuff links he wore to his high school reunion, the place where a sudden heart attack took his life. There’s a very ornate ring which is said to be worth more than $10,000. Selling this ring would easily help my family out financially. But my mom refuses to let me part with it. It’s a man’s ring, stunningly gorgeous with hundreds upon hundreds of diamonds covering the surface of it but she said if I ever gave it to a man other than a son of mine, she would kill me. I trust that she means it too. My dad wore that ring every day of his life and now after his death, it’s one of the few objects I have left to hold on to.
Aside from that though, there’s something else in that jewelry box that for the longest time, I never paid much attention to. It’s my dad’s college ring. When I was younger, I picked it up countless times, rolling it over in my hand, absorbing every last detail. The gemstone is a sapphire, which was not my dad’s birthstone. I’ve asked my mom why he would pick such a stone and she doesn’t know why. But it’s always something that’s stood out in my mind given that sapphire is my birth stone as well as my favorite gemstone. I love sapphire so much, I had the diamonds taken out of my wedding band and had them replaced with natural sapphires instead. Perhaps my dad had felt the same way about the deep blue stone since he randomly chose to place it in his class ring rather than his own birth stone. It’s something that’s always struck me as oddly coincidental since I was born many years after he’d left college.
Just as oddly coincidental is the college name etched into his ring. It’s a name I had seen many, many times without ever really catching the significance of it. Not until much later anyway.
The Missouri School of Mines.
The name wouldn’t register with many people. When I was younger, it certainly didn’t register with me either since the name was completely unfamiliar.
It was unfamiliar because there was no Missouri School of Mines any more. No, that school had been replaced with the University of Missouri-Rolla. The school that by chance, out of all the schools I’d been accepted to, I chose to attend. I was totally surprised when I realized that by sheer chance, I had picked the same school that my dad had attended. Some children aspire to this on purpose, following in their parents footsteps. I know a girl at graduate school who went to Clemson merely because both her parents had, and she wanted to share in that tradition. Without realizing it, I also made a choice to follow in my father’s footsteps.
I was walking the same campus and sitting in the same classrooms that my dad did in his youth. Words cannot express how happy and excited I was to share this with the father I hardly knew. I felt that a bond was there, something no one could see, touch or explain since I lost him so early in my life. But one that was there nonetheless.
He never did graduate from the college. He took a semester off because of an illness and was drafted and sent to Vietnam after that. Knowing that he’d never finished out his degree, when I walked across the stage to accept my diploma, I thought of him. I thought of how proud he would be to see me graduating from the same university he had chosen to attend
As I survey my life and my world, I realize that I share a number of other quirks with my father. I’ve always considered the number 17 to be my lucky number. Some might say I have a strange obsession with it. Whenever numbers need to be picked, I will always choose the number 17. It’s something I don’t usually share with anybody because I felt it was silly. My mom recently mentioned that my dad’s lucky number was also 17, a fact I don’t recall ever knowing before. How could I have known a random tidbit such as that?
The similarities don’t stop there. I changed my major several times in college, each one totally different than the other and represents the careers of my dad and his siblings. My final choice? A Masters in Real Estate Development? I share with the grandma who died before I was born, and whom I never met or had any knowledge of until halfway through my graduate degree.
That is only the beginning too.
He may not have been there to watch me go to prom, or graduate college. He may not have been there to walk me down the aisle on my wedding day or to comfort me through my divorce. He never even got to know me as a person, and as a result, I never got to know much about him. There are so many questions I wish I could ask him and it breaks my heart to know that I can’t.
But the older I get, the more I learn...I find out that I am more and more like my dad everyday. My personality, my interests, my aspirations, even my quirks. Everything. People that knew my dad often tell me that not only do I look exactly like him, but that I act just like him too. The man that barely had an impact on my young life before he was taken away has somehow helped make me into the person I am today. All I have are fragments scattered here and there, bits and pieces that my mom can tell me, and the knowledge that somehow, without me being able to explain it, there are parts of him that are still very much apart of me as well.
I can’t see, taste, touch or smell those familial bonds. But they can still reach across time and space to help me, to guide me and to comfort me.
While not much of a Nickleback fan usually, this song and especially this video is one that has reminded me of my own life without my father. It’s one I can’t watch without breaking down into tears since this video very well could be about me.
This has been my latest entry for
therealljidol. Considering there are only 14 of us left, every vote counts. If you enjoyed this entry, please consider heading over to the poll and check out the other 13 fantastic writers left in the competition! You won't be disappointed! It's a community only vote, so while you're there, why not join in the fun as well!