Search
Close this search box.

I Heard My Father Laugh Today (A Grief Legacy Lesson)

I heard my father laugh today.

I was doing some work with the TV on, and as often seems to be the case—a Golden Girls rerun was playing. I wasn’t paying very close attention, but occasionally I’d lift my head from the computer long enough to catch a few moments of dialogue. One such time, something Dorothy said to Rose (delivered with the pinpoint precision and complete incredulity that Bea Arthur was an absolute master of), struck me funny and a laugh exploded involuntarily from my mouth.

And I heard it.

It was the sound of my father. 

It was the booming, buoyant, staccato noise I’d heard over the phone or across the kitchen table or from the other room for the first 44 years of my life—and all of the sudden, he was there again, sitting with me and laughing. I smiled and felt my eyes watering.

My father passed away four years ago, and one of the truths I’ve learned in that time, is that there are moments when those you love and have lost revisit you through your very life. The way you laugh, the shape of your hands, the lines around your eyes, all become sacred places, allowing you surprise reunions when they reappear and share space with you. Your parents are partially resurrected in you.

More and more I’m aware of the ways that I am replicating parts of my father; as I raise my kids, move through the world, do my work, and use my gifts, there are specific pieces of him that I get to carry into the world that would be here in no other way. I am entrusted with a bit of his memory through my resemblance to him. I suppose this is how we really do become our parents’ legacies whether or not we are conscious of it. In ways we’re acutely aware of and in ways we’ll never realize, they are present here and now because we are present. We perpetuate their lives as we live, and their love outlives them through us. This is the gift we are given as we grieve: those reminders of our dear ones that we hold in our very marrow, that allow us to remember, reflect, and visit with them in ways no one else can.

One of the unique experiences of being a parent, is seeing this truth from the opposite pole; noticing the bits of yourself you start to see in your kids—physical traits, personality quirks, and behavioral tendencies. Depending on the things revealed, this is at times wonderful and other times extremely distressing. As a result, we often spend much of our time as parents, in certain ways hoping our kids will be exactly like us—and in other ways, nothing like us.

And it may sound a bit morbid, but I find something sweetly reassuring about knowing that one day I will be gone, but my children will have these similar, specific pieces of me that they will carry with them too. Hopefully many years from now, they may be watching TV and they will find themselves laughing—and they will hear me. It will catch them by surprise, and in that moment it will be as if we’re still together in that room again laughing—and they will smile and feel their eyes begin to water.

May you who grieve, relish those unexpected reunions with those you’ve lost; the meetings that come in the way you laugh, the shape of your hands, and the lines around your eyes, and may you be encouraged.

I think I’ll put down the computer and watch the Golden Girls with my dad for a while.

 

 

Share this: