Lessons From my Parents—2/3

I knew my father for sixteen years before he passed away. On a seemingly random Sunday in November I lost the first man who showed me unconditional love and at the time had no earthly clue the impact that would have on my life.

Sixteen years is a long time but not enough to run through the full circle of a father, daughter relationship. I can’t imagine what it was like for him watching me grow up, knowing he alone had to balance protecting me from the world with my demand to grow older and into someone who wanted to protect themselves. He never faltered in his loyalty to me it was in his eyes as he looked at me, in his voice as he taught me, in his example as he relentlessly showed up for those in our life.

Today, as I watch the men in my life grow or effortlessly fall into fatherhood, I see what he must have battled — that constant push and pull, that force that a parent must protect their child. Layer on to that an ever fiercely present fear that fathers of daughters hold in their heart, as they know what the world holds for her, and it haunts them. He had to watch me fail, fall, break my heart, try again, scream and cry in the middle of a mess of my own making, as I doubted myself. He had to remind me in those times of heartbreak, fear, loss, doubt that I had the things I needed to bounce back stronger.

How did he know I had them? He had given them to me.

My father, in his own quiet and equally loud way, helped me define what loyalty means to me and I hold that teenage definition still to this day in my heart of hearts. He modeled what it meant to show up for me, with me, in spite of me, proving that my mother’s ability to love people through it would merge with his power to show up within me. I would become the best of both of them and it would be these examples compounded over time, that in the dark or confusion I could pull on to know where love and loyalty would heal a hurt, find a friend, mend a fence.

He never said “today, I’ll teach you what it means to show up for family, friends, or people.” He simply showed me time and time again. I only had a brief period of my life to look for these examples from him … so now I turn to those he knew, to his friends, to their friends, to say tell me more. Teach me about my parents in their youth, when they were wild, and carefree. When they had only the love and loyalty that they built to offer one another or the world.

Those stories have become his remembrance for me. A way to compile another layer, facet, idea of him. He isn’t a saint because he’s gone, the opposite, in some ways he is more real because I see him through their eyes. They have no filter through which they see him like I do, no clouded experiences of a teenager who lost something she never thought she could. No, they simply provide a bridge and connection to him because now they feel his drive to show up for me, to teach me about him.

You can’t quantify the importance of loyalty. It isn’t numbers or even words on my page, it’s a feeling that my father taught me to send out into the world for better or worse. Loyalty is love.

That’s what he taught and continues to teach me … loyalty is the love that that my mother uses to see people through the awful or joyful. Loyal is what sets the mark for a life well lived and those who will help with your remembrance.

Lesson two: Loyalty is love.

Love Ray