Depth is True Beauty

I had a conversation with my dad tonight that brought me to tears. The depth of a person is the most beautiful thing of all.

Tonight I began to talk with my Dad about an area of his life that I chose not to touch for 16years.

My father married a week after he turned 21. As a young newlywed, he knew that he wasn’t very mature. His wife was older and had a good paying job. With my Dad pursuing his career, they lived very happily and didn’t think about kids. This is the part of the story that gets deep. My dad takes his wife to the hospital one day and is told that she has months to live. She died of cancer later on.

The shock wasnt that my dad had a first wife, or that she died very early in his marriage. I knew this. The shock was in the depth. I never touched this area of my Dad’s life out of respect. I felt that it was too hot to handle. Tonight that barrier was broken. I just dived into it. What I got in return was a picture of my Father that smashed all my emotions. I can only say how badly that would devastate me if it were to happen. My Dad gave me something, genetically, that I can never be rid of. We are both very emotionally tied to our sensitive sides. It is with each passing day that I find more of myself in him than I ever thought possible. I am getting closer to the age when marriage is a very real possibility. I’m not saying it’s soon or anything, just that I have thought about it….and to hear my Dad describe what he was feeling, what he did after she died, his journey to recovery 2 years later, and then finally meeting my Mom…I saw my Dad, as if seeing him for the first time. I couldn’t help but tear at this new experience that I was sharing with a man that I have spent my whole live with.

To you who have made it this far in reading…find your parents and spend some time with them. Get to know them as people, not authority figures in your life. Deepen the story that is this life we live, and the people we live in it with. The depth of a person is the most beautiful thing of all.

Thanks for reading. I hope you take to heart my story and the story that every parent holds…good or bad.

–Eric