A year ago, FLORIDA TODAY Editor Britt Kennerly shared a personal column about her father — a reflection on family, memories and the lessons he left behind.
This Father’s Day, we revisit the column that captured the bond between a daughter and her father long before it became a farewell.
Read the column in full below.
On Father’s Day, I think of all the questions I wish I’d asked my dad
To my daddy on Father’s Day, because we never talked about any of this. And because I didn’t get to tell you goodbye, and there was so much more to say.
It sometimes hits me, Daddy: There was so much we never talked about. Things you don’t bother to discuss because you’re too busy living … until you’re rifling through a pile of faded photos of lost loved ones one day and the woulda, coulda, shouldas set in.
I’m sorry I didn’t listen and watch more often when it came to how to do things like build a good fire in the fireplace, strategize in Scrabble and make the world’s best, flavorful, just-this-side-of-greasy fried potatoes. You did all that as easily as breathing.
I wish we’d spent time talking about your childhood, which I know was miserable at times. I know about the mismatched shoes you had to get from a church one time as a kid because they weren’t giving away two that fit your feet. Maybe you didn’t want to talk about it, or to dump that misery on a kid of your own. But what did you want to be when you grew up, besides not poor? You were so busy working your tail off in a factory and on a farm, taking care of us and some of your relatives as an adult … but what did you dream about when you were a boy? Where did dreams take you? Or did fantasies never materialize in the dark for a kid whose parents moved again and again, grubbing away as farmers in the 1920s and ’30s?
Do you remember how cool it was when we moved into the new home I hope you’d dreamed of, and you built a picnic table? Do you remember scaring my friends when they came for slumber parties by making spooky noises, and us laughing as we ran past you in your chair in the den, fake-screaming because we knew it was really you? And making another friend think a lobster was screaming when you dropped it into boiling water? And convincing 4-year-old me that the courthouse in our hometown, then a white building, was the White House, and a great place to stop and use the bathroom? And that a group of transmission towers off an old country road was a bunch of spaceships ready to take off?
I loved doing the TV Guide crossword puzzles with you. And cutting out coupons with you. And watching really awful TV comedies with you, and hearing you spin tales that captivated people. And hearing you whistle. You were a killer whistler. People don’t whistle enough now. I do. Every chance I get.
When you left Kentucky for Florida to work at the Hollywood Hotel in your early 20s, why didn’t you stay longer? What did Al Capone look like up close? And tell me about Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable and the other pin-up girls of the 1940s, the ones whose tinted, glossy pictures you kept in a big envelope that I loved to look through.
What was it like to serve in World War II — you, a country boy who was drafted once you were back in Kentucky — and fly on your way to battle in Italy and North Africa? You never talked about it and didn’t join any veteran groups. What happened that you never wanted to fly again, ever? I remember seeing you, from the plane on the runway in Louisville and Cincinnati, waving to me from behind glass windows in the terminal. What were you thinking as you pressed money into my hand as I kissed you goodbye? Were you secretly happy that I was finally living the life I chose?
The things that go unsaid still reverberate
When you think of me, Daddy, and I hope you do, do you smile? Do you laugh out loud in that all-consuming way that filled the room as you regaled people with those wonderful stories, and made your eyes look less tired and far-away? I never told you: You made me want to be a storyteller.
Are you still disappointed about the times I had to come running home to the farm, broke and broken? Or can we agree now that even when I made a mess of everything, the only person I really hurt was me, and that maybe you could’ve been more supportive when I wanted to spread my wings? It’s OK. I figured out all of this as an adult. I know you wanted so much for me; for me to be a person who could come to you, openly, with my problems and stupid life decisions … but geez, from the time I was 10, you could make being open so hard. (And don’t lie, mister. If you’d had your way, all of your kids would have lived a mile from you as adults, and buried one day right there beside you and Mommy at Pythian Grove cemetery. P.S. Doug and I are going to be cremated. I can see Mommy’s face now. Give her a hug.)
Do you remember giving me a kiss on the cheek before I went to bed, every night of my life, until I left for college? And carrying my trunk on your back up the steps to my first dorm room? And sneaking a hot plate into one of the dresser drawers, though you knew I wasn’t allowed to have it, and telling me to lock my door at night? And paying for the refrigerator when Doug and I bought our first house in Arizona, and smiling through the phone when I told you I decided to buy one at a scratch-and-dent store and use the rest of the money you sent on food? And calling me almost every day when I was on my lunch break on my first reporting job, walking me through your day and asking me what I was writing about? I felt the pride, old man. You can’t fool me.
Do you still wear Old Spice? Do you know that I can smell it in my dreams, and feel your scratchy-beard-stubble cheek against mine, and that I still don’t know all the two-letter words I should know to excel in Scrabble?
And that I can see you now, 31 years after your death, waving from behind a see-through cloud that’s almost like an airport terminal window?
You’re shaking your head, with happy eyes and a half-grin on your face, wondering why I’m writing all this garbage but loving it, and me, anyway … and whistling as you head home.
People really don’t whistle enough, Daddy. They just don’t.
Britt Kennerly is education/breaking news editor at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Kennerly at 321-917-4744 or bkennerly@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @bybrittkennerly Facebook: /bybrittkennerly.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: So many questions I had for my dad, so much left unanswered | Opinion
Reporting by Britt Kennerly, Florida Today / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Britt Kennerly, Florida Today | USA TODAY Network
