Dad Was Never Silly

My wife, Amber, and I drove out in the country yesterday to visit a little with my Mom and Dad. For whatever the reason, it felt especially good to be close to them for a while. I can be with them anytime or anywhere, and share the emotional bonds of the past, but the quiet energy of their final place of rest, seems to draw life's scattered memories into a focused recollection of life's events that can stir my emotional state for days.

Mom and Dad died on August 27th seven years apart.  They now rest in peace in Mullin, Texas.

Dad was seventy-five years of age when he called Mom's name for the last time. I am rapidly closing in on sixty-four years. I began comparing me now and in the past to my Dad and the visions I have etched in my aging mind. One thing in particular has occupied my thoughts and that is the fact that I still have a silly side to me. I enjoy having fun, I like funny and what it brings with it, but I still have uprisings of silliness which some feel is a juvenile version of funny. I don't spend a lot of time thinking of silly things to say or do but they always seem to be lurking near just in case a reason for their use should arise.

I like loud music, games, jokes and sports. I would like to say that my feelings toward all these things have mellowed or matured with age, but that's not true, I feel exactly the same about all that stuff that I did when I was a kid. I still like to act silly and I do have some silly friends. Things can get out of hand when I'm with silly friends because the fear of possible embarrassment is shoved  back, after all, silliness loves company.

I'm not saying that my Dad didn't have a sense of humor because he did. I know that he had fun. I'm simply saying I don't recall my Dad ever being silly. Even when Dad drank he was never silly, embarrassing sometimes, maybe a little louder, his false teeth might clatter, but he was never silly.

I'm not concerned about Dad's possible lack of silliness, I guess I'm just hoping that he felt the joy and energy that I sometimes draw from silliness. Sometime silliness is only in the eye of the beholder. It could also be that silliness itself, or at least it's perception, changes with time. I know the nights where a little darker when Dad grew up, the dust a little heavier, and childhood a little shorter. Dad was never silly, he played, he loved sports, he loved his music, and he laughed.