What I can tell you now …

Thursday October 2, 2008

Meters: 6,000
Time: 28:34
500-meter pace: 2:21-2:24
Strokes Per Minute: 22-23-24
Total Meters Rowed: 38,088

Here’s the rest of the story about my row on Tuesday. The workout exactly 39 years TO THE DAY OF THE WEEK since my father died. Call me too-old-school Irish, but I coulnd’t bring myself to type the following until AFTER that day was completely behind me.

A couple of weeks ago it struck me that not only was I coming up on the 39th anniversary of Dad’s death, but it was going to be on a Tuesday, the same day of the week. That chilled me, and got me thinking even more — clearly too much. We have moved to York for Patrick to do a senior year at York Catholic High School. Dad died September 30, 1969, at the beginning of my senior year of high school at YCHS. What if … What if …  What if …, I started to think … What if I died on this coming Tuesday, September 30, with Patrick a senior at York Catholic High School?

Yeah, I know, dumb, crazy, stupid. And of course the more I tried not to think about it, the more I did. I talk in “My Father’s Heart” about how the night Dad died he had been in a really good mood at dinner. One of the reasons, our family legend has it, is because upstairs in the drawer of Dad’s bedside table was a letter dated October 1 — the next day! — addressed to his boss at Cole Steel Equipmment Company, where Dad worked a high-powered executive job that I still say helped to kill him. It was a resignation letter. Obviously, he never got to deliver it. Like I said, this is as much legend as fact — though my sister, Kathy, insists it’s true, and I’m not saying she’s wrong. But here’s my point: Either way it makes a GREAT story, doesn’t it? Too perfect, perhaps, but still. And that’s what I couldn’t help thinking about as this past Tuesday loomed — 39 years to the day, me now the York dad, Partrick a senior in the SAME school.

The only thing to do was to get on the machine and row.