And I'll say it again.
The older I get, the more I understand my father.
One of the things that I never understood about my father in his later years (the last 10 or so, anyway) was why he loved watching old movies and TV shows. And when I say old, I mean old - as in westerns from the 1940s and 1950s, and TV shows from the 1950s with a smattering of a few from the 1970s and 1980s. Whenever I went to visit my folks I'd spend the majority of my time in my father's den, sitting in his desk chair at the computer while he sat on his couch. We would talk and watch TV, and to be honest the TV part bored me to death because of what he was watching. It's not that I couldn't understand why he was watching them; he watched them because he liked them. It was WHY he liked them so much that I just didn't understand.
But now I do, because I find myself doing the same thing. Very few movies that come out these days interest me, and I lost all interest in network TV in the late '90s. So the time I spend watching TV is spent watching old movies from my youth and TV shows from the same era, and it has led me to finally understanding why my father did the same thing.
He watched what he did because it took him back to a time in his life where he was happiest and felt the most comfortable, back to a time when the world made sense. He was safe and secure in those days, and life was good. Watching those old movies and TV shows took him back to that time because he didn't feel comfortable or safe in today's world.
And I feel the same way today, so yeah, I get it now. The world around me is going to shit, and it seems like there's nothing anyone can do about it. Yeah, I know that times change, and I used to tell my father the same thing - only now I give the same reply that he did, which is while that may be true, there's nothing that says I have to like it.
It's been more than 4 years since Pop died, but he's still teaching me things about life that I never knew.
And I suspect he will until the day I die and can be with him again.
I love you, Pop, and I miss you. Thank you for being the man you were.
Deo Vindice
IHC