For three consecutive Father’s days, I have attempted to write this column. Ever since my father, John Wilger, fell ill, I wanted to write something to show my appreciation for the way he raised me and say how much I loved the man who was my dad. Every year, I stopped, closed the document and did something else, including this year.
I suppose I thought he wouldn’t like it.
We were never a pair to be openly appreciative of each other, and that’s really a function of how we are as people. I knew when I did something that my dad liked a lot, because he would tell other people, not me. Sure, he would do it when I was able to hear him, loudly talking on the phone about how much he liked it when I took him and my mom to my cousin’s wedding, parking in front of the doors because my mom has MS and he was recovering from a broken hip, but he didn’t actually tell me this. He just told other people. That’s just how we were, our conversations were much more focused on other things, whether it involved his extensive knowledge of local history or we were comparing the weather and crop conditions of the towns where we lived. The only thing about the floods in this city I can recall with fondness are finding an excuse to call my dad in the middle of it, because he would want to know what was happening.
I also wanted to convince myself I had more time.
That’s the problem, even though I knew he probably didn’t have long left, I wanted to believe he had years ahead of him. I didn’t always understand my dad, especially when I was a teenager, but as I get older he makes more sense to me every day. I begin to see more of him in myself every day, and it always felt unduly cruel that he got sick right when I felt I knew finally him. I wanted him back to normal as much for myself as for him.
In the past couple of weeks, I realized I can hear him in the way I talk, the way I turn a phrase, the way I say certain words, the way I greet cats and dogs by saying “kitty” or “puppy,” using the same inflection he did. I find myself grateful for strange things, like our shared hatred of ice fishing - “at least with regular fishing you get a boat ride” I remember him saying - or how he would always take me along when he had the car serviced so I could wander around the dealership looking at cars. I’m grateful that he was someone who appreciated the value of a story, something that he has passed down to all his children. I’m grateful that he always encouraged his kids to do what they believed was the right choice, no matter what outside pressure there might have been. He didn’t want me to take over the farm, he knew I would hate it, even with my grandmother trying to push me into doing it. When I had to pick schools, he let me decide, even though he had an entire town pressuring him to do otherwise. It would have been easier to make decisions for me, but he didn’t do that.
He died two days after father’s day, and I can’t think of a more appropriate time for a father of six to go than right after a day intended to honor him. I got to see him that Sunday, and rushed home to spend the afternoon with him again on Tuesday. He didn’t say very much in those last two days, but I was still glad to have them.
When I left the nursing home on Tuesday night I knew that it was the last time I’d see him. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. And yet, I didn’t have a big speech, I didn’t have a big emotional moment, I did the same thing I did every time I left home, I gave a wave and said the words below. I wanted to leave dad the way I always left, it felt wrong to do it any other way. So the following were my last words to him:
Bye, dad.
