Hello Dad

"Can you help me? I have a broken chair leg."

My father’s name was Lyle. He would have been 105 today. Lyle died two days before his 102nd birthday. I know this to be true because I was holding his hand when he left.

My parents had adopted me when I was a 20-month-old toddler in foster care. I turned 70 years old the summer after he passed. We had been father/daughter for roughly 68 years. Yes, that’s amazing, and I know I am very lucky to have had a parent live that long. (My mother passed away in 2003.)

Losing my Dad has been like losing a leg on a chair from our beautiful dining room set, which he fashioned himself years ago in his garage woodworking shop.

It was a hobby he took up with great enthusiasm after he retired. In case you haven’t had enough numbers yet, Dad retired from DuPont Chemical Corp. when he was 57 years old - after his second heart attack. He had started working at DuPont when he was 23, and that was his only employer except for a couple of gigs in his early 20s. So that means he worked for 34 years, then trotted off into the sunset for 45 years of retirement. I don’t know this for a fact, but I would wager he was one of the longest DuPont pensioners on record. He certainly lived longer than most employees after retiring. I suppose it was the daily exposure to some really nasty chemicals (I see you, Formaldehyde!) that caused many people to die within a year or two of putting in their papers. Dad had been smart with his money, and Mom persisted. Together, they decided he wouldn’t stick around long enough for a third myocardial infarction.

So what am I to do with this missing chair leg now? Should I replace all the chairs with something I might find in an antique or second-hand shop? Or maybe replace one chair with legs that look a bit like my set? Or, I could take the chair in question to a woodworker here in town and ask him to make another leg that might come close to matching the others? I could also go DIY and replace the spot with a long piece of a solid something like a block, where the missing leg once joined the others. What could go wrong there?

I will eventually find a way to replace that leg, but I am too old to replace a father. I’ve had a person in my life who was not my mother, but she was like a mother to me, and I called her Mom. I have never found someone in my life who was “like a father to me.” So this guy was it. We loved each other for nearly seven decades, despite our respective stubborn streaks.

Of course, if Dad hadn’t died, he could have just made a new leg for that chair. And I wouldn’t be here trying to figure out how to fix the chair leg, fill the empty space I have had in my heart since he died three years ago.