{"id":261,"date":"2014-09-07T22:26:11","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T22:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=261"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:57:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:57:24","slug":"a-mans-life-my-dear-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2014\/09\/07\/a-mans-life-my-dear-son\/","title":{"rendered":"My Dear Son"},"content":{"rendered":"
Visiting a friend, I see a framed letter on his wall\u2014not an unusual thing, for there are several framed\u00a0letters there; but this letter is handwritten, whereas\u00a0the others are typed, some on renowned letterhead.\u00a0I lean in closer to the handwritten letter and see\u00a0that it is signed by his father. I cannot make out the\u00a0scrawl well, other than the salutation (\u201cMy Dear Son\u201d),\u00a0and I turn and ask my friend about it, and he tells\u00a0me it is his father\u2019s suicide note.<\/em><\/div>\n
\n

\u2014by Brian Doyle<\/strong><\/p>\n

I HUNG IT THERE for many and complicated reasons,\u00a0says my friend.<\/p>\n

For one thing it\u2019s the last\u00a0missive I ever got from Dad, and for another it\u2019s a real\u00a0sweet note. He poured more of himself and his feelings\u00a0into that note than he did in all the other letters I ever\u00a0got from him combined.<\/p>\n

Not that there were many\u00a0letters from Dad. He wasn\u2019t the kind of guy who wrote\u00a0letters. Or said much about how he felt. Even his compliments\u00a0were stern and gruff. But you knew he was\u00a0inside there somewhere. When I was younger I was\u00a0angry that he couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t come out of himself,\u00a0but when I got older I realized he was who he was and\u00a0I ought to either appreciate that or leave him alone.\u00a0I tried to appreciate it. We were never close but we got\u00a0to be respectful with each other. That sounds cold but it\u00a0was a lot better than the beginning. And he finally wrote\u00a0down that he loved me and liked me and was proud of\u00a0me and thought of me every day,\u00a0he wrote that down,\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0it means the world to me.<\/p>\n

I read that letter every day. It\u2019s\u00a0like a window for me or something. My mom died\u00a0years ago and they never had any other kids so it was me\u00a0and dad, and to have him finally say how he really felt,\u00a0even in this context, it means the world to me. He was\u00a0real old and real sick and he wanted to leave with a\u00a0shred of dignity intact, so he did. But he left this letter\u00a0for me. His lawyer delivered it by hand. Traveled all this\u00a0\u00a0way to hand it to me. Remarkable. He said he suspected\u00a0that my dad had something substantive to say and he\u00a0didn\u2019t feel he could trust a letter like that to the post.<\/p>\n

For a while I kept the letter in a bible, said my friend,\u00a0but after a while I wanted to see it every day, and protect\u00a0it, and celebrate it, you know? Salute it or something.\u00a0I know it seems weird to have your dad\u2019s suicide\u00a0note hanging on the wall but who\u2019s to say what\u2019s weird\u00a0with anyone else\u2019s complicated life, you know what I\u00a0mean? To me it\u2019s a love letter that took a real long time\u00a0to arrive. I waited all my life for that letter. That\u2019s the\u00a0greatest letter I ever got, by far. Sure, you wish you\u00a0didn\u2019t have to wait your whole life for it, you wish it\u00a0wasn\u2019t necessary, you wish it wasn\u2019t a big deal, but that\u2019s\u00a0the dad I had, and the fact that he finally sat down and\u00a0wrote out how he felt in his soul, that means the world\u00a0to me.<\/p>\n

I know people who see it think the context is\u00a0weird or sad or macabre but I guess I prefer to think of\u00a0it as a terrific love letter. And every time I read it and cry\u00a0I walk away thinking, Why the hell do we not say how we\u00a0feel to the people we love, every day?\u00a0Why the hell not? Why\u00a0do we let ourselves get trapped inside the prison of our dignity?<\/em>\u00a0We ought to be speaking and mailing love letters all day\u00a0every day, that\u2019s what I think. I try to do that now, for\u00a0which I have to thank my dad, you know?<\/p>\n

I DO KNOW, I SAY,\u00a0 and we turn away to other matters,\u00a0but I went home that day and told my lovely bride that\u00a0I loved her, and I told our sweet tumultuous daughter\u00a0and our wild and surly and hilarious sons that I loved\u00a0them, and they made jokes and were uncomfortable and\u00a0slid off to pretend to do their homework, but when I told\u00a0my lovely bride about that letter on the wall, she said it\u00a0would be a prayer to tell you all about it, so I have.<\/p>\n

\u2014from A Man’s Life: An Ongoing Conversation About What it Means to be A Man in the 21st Century,\u00a0<\/em>WM Spring 2013<\/p>\n

\"brian<\/a>Brian Doyle was the College\u2019s visiting writer this past winter\u00a0and is the editor of\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Portland, the magazine of the University\u00a0of Portland. His most recent books are the novel\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Mink River,\u00a0the short story collection\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Osama bin Laden\u2019s Bald Spot &\u00a0Other Stories, and\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Grace Notes, a book of essays.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visiting a friend, I see a framed letter on his wall\u2014not an unusual thing, for there are several framed\u00a0letters there; but this letter is handwritten, whereas\u00a0the others are typed, some on renowned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-mans-life"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2014\/09\/01-briangoodlores.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}