Yesterday, Alabama had their hopes dashed for a national championship by the Florida Gators. It was also the 11th anniversary of my father’s death from cancer. The memory struck me late in the fourth quarter of the game as Florida was celebrating their victory in the waning seconds. I have no clue why the memory hit me when it did. I’ve never been particularly good at remembering dates (in fact I forgot our 17th wedding anniversary last month).
My dad didn’t watch a lot of college sports. He liked pro football if the Cincinnati Bengals were having a good year. His favorite sport was professional golf and he watched countless hours of tournaments on his big screen television. He had an odd habit of watching the T.V. from the kitchen table, a setup that left him a good forty feet away from the tube in the family room. He was also strangely quiet and unemotional when watching sports. Unlike me or my younger brother, who would scream at the set like raving maniacs, you would never know by the look on dad's face if Jack Nicklaus had just sunk a long putt to win the Masters or if he was watching a Buick commercial.
Dad was a good golfer. He was good enough to play in the championship flight every year at the local country club, but never quite good enough to win the title. Golf was something that consumed him at times and defined his relationships with men. If you played the game and played it well, dad would let you into his life. His best friend, father and brother all had the same passion for the sport. I’m not sure if they would have been that close if not for the game of golf. Vacations and family get-togethers were usually scheduled around tee times and the number of rounds you could get in on a weekend cluttered with family commitments.
As I grow older, my memories of dad when I was a child are few and fleeting. He worked very long hours as a sales manager to provide a comfortable life for his family. His weekends in the spring, summer and fall were taken over by the game of golf. My mother was the person who watched me play little league baseball, tennis, or act in high school plays. It wasn’t until I got older and became more proficient at the game that I began to feel a real connection with my dad.
Once I had proven that I could break 90 on the golf course and not talk during his backswing, dad finally admitted me into his sporting sanctum. I was amazed at how much more I learned about him. Whether it was standing on the tee of a backed-up par three or eating a sandwich and drinking a beer after a five hour round, he suddenly became less one dimensional as a person and father. Over the next fifteen years on the golf course, I learned about his thoughts on love, marriage, family, religion, and so much more. I learned that he was a grudge-holder, deeply sentimental about love, an atheist/agnostic, had more regrets than I would have imagined for someone who had accomplished so much in his life, and was proud of all three of his children.
I still remember the last round of golf I played with my dad in 1996. We played on a local course, Max Welton, only minutes from his house on Lake Wawasee. It was a very warm day in late August and dad was still recuperating from a heart attack he had suffered in the midst of his last round of chemo. I don’t remember what our final tally was that day because the game that had brought us together became a sidebar on that last outing. Despite my forceful objections while getting loosened up on the first tee, he insisted on talking about his coming death.
He told me he was tired of fighting a disease that he couldn’t beat. With golf, you could practice whatever was ailing your game and have a better round the next day. But cancer, his cancer, didn’t leave you with anything to work with. It slowly sapped away your strength until you couldn‘t play anymore. He told me between swings and putts that he had lived a good life, accomplishing much more then he had ever expected. He wanted to be cremated and didn’t give a damn what we did with his ashes. Watching him gracefully swing his driver or expertly line-up a putt made it all that more painful to realize that this was probably our last time together on the golf course.
After putting out on the ninth hole, we drove the golf cart to his truck and unloaded our clubs. While dad waited and changed his shoes, I drove the cart back over to the pro shop and reached for the scorecard, still firmly clasped on the steering wheel. I looked at the card for the first time that day and saw that it was empty. We had been so absorbed in the moment that he hadn’t kept score. The only thing he had written in at the top of the card was our names, Dad and Jeff. Instead of taking the scorecard with me for sentimental reasons or chucking it in the trash, I left it where it lay... sitting in the cart overlooking the golf course, surrounded by encroaching shadows on a warm summer day.
