Words

From as far back as I can remember I wanted to be an author. Growing up I could often be found with my nose in a book whether I was enduring the hour and a half long bus ride to school, alone in my room, or in our make-shift tree house at home on the farm. That’s probably where my interest in writing came from. I loved writing short, fictional stories just to pass the time and was always dreaming of new plots and characters for the next one. Something could catch my attention and I would write it into a story, even if only a page or two. Later, I discovered poetry and by the time I finished college had almost 100 attempts at poetry composed. It was my goal to, one day, publish a book.

I never imagined, however, that the most meaningful words I would ever write would be the ones written in memory of my father. Significant and impossible. How do you express the profound impact someone has had on your life in a few short lines? How do you string together the words to contain all that embodies a person? A person that you’ve know literally your entire life, someone who shaped the very person you have become, that person who had a part in creating you. All words seem trite and incredibly insufficient. But they are the only tools you have. And they will be the words he is remembered by. I didn’t pause to recall my literature training; be verbs and ribbon principles were the furthest thing from my mind at this point. But we worked through the memories and grammar as a family even though eloquence seemed lost in the fragmented stories.

As I recall my aspiration of writing a book I realize that the notion itself is like a story. A story that was heard so long ago that the memory is faded and the ending forgotten. It’s likely that the childhood fantasy I kindled will never ignite into any action. The last honest desire to write something longer than a blog was way back in my first year of college. Since then I’ve turned into a realist and that optimistic adolescent has become jaded, less creative and more analytical. And in that journey I am able to embrace the fact that a novel pales in comparison to the eulogy that will live on in the legacy that is my life. Beyond the words, through what my father’s left behind, I hope it is a worthy story that my life will make.