Seventeen

I mentioned that over the weekend my friend and I saw the movie Away We Go, which, if you haven't seen it, is worth the $10.50 plus the price of popcorn. There's a scene where two sisters, one who is pregnant, are sitting in a giant bathtub (in a bathtub showroom) talking about their parents who died when they were in their early twenties. And the younger sister makes a comment about the pregnant sister "bringing them back" in a way, referring to this yet unborn baby girl. The next day on our hike my friend asked me if I think about my dad very often. Every day. That's the deal. Your parents die when you're of a certain age and you think about them every day. Every single day. And especially today - the day he died seventeen years ago. And it occurred to me that I've been living without him almost as long as I lived with him.

It's true what they said about "bringing them back". My son looks just like my dad and he knows it too. You ask him who's eyes he has and he'll tell you my grandpa's. And so he feels connected to the grandpa that he'll never know and we feel reconnected even as the days and years continue to pass.