if not for you.

manufactured marketing days don't mean much to me and "Father's Day," being no exception but I do pause now and then and think about the guy who played a role in my life knowingly or not.

So Happy Father's Day to those who find these "special days," more special than others and now that I got that out of the way I'll address those like me who don't need a day on the calendar to remind me that I grew up differently.

The older I get the more time I spend or waste, wondering what might have been. Living a life of solitude is a choice that I made for myself. The idea of getting married again after my divorce 45 years ago was not to be and all my failed experiences had everything to do with that. You're welcome ex-girlfriends.

I had one son when I was a kid at seventeen and that little boy with bright eyes and future is now 44, over 6 feet tall and with a beautiful little family of his own. From all accounts that little boy is doing just fine no thanks to me but for being lucky enough that I chose a beautiful loving and nurturing mother that he ended up being raised by. Not one day gets by me that I don't thank God for the person she was and still is.

I wonder sometimes if my father knew his father? I never knew mine and how would my life have been any different if I had? I'm not in the habit these days of wasting a lot of time on things that won't go anywhere but I have thought about what it might have been like if I had some funny ass stories to tell about the time I spent with my dad and some of the stuff he might have said or done. That wasn't to be a part of my life story and I'll just have to talk with my father when we see each other again one day and maybe some missing pieces will fall into place. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

So here's a thought from someone who has been really successful at things that won't matter in the end like a business and finance, and who has failed miserably at everything really important for those of you who have had it all the entire time I was failing. You can walk around a crowded world knowing that every person you see has a story you know nothing about and that one kind gesture from you can re-direct a lonely thought or sadness on a day like this. I know what I'm talking about.

Save me a seat at the table old man we've got some stuff to talk about and we're gonna laugh our asses off. You aren't going to believe half of this shit.. or maybe you will..

someone else.

I started this blog it looks like 6 years ago in 2012 and then added 2 or 3 entries in 2013 then it stops. For one reason then another I didn't push forward towards what I was looking for. It's 2018 now and time and loss have brought me back to this place. Mom is 91 my sister in her 70s and so many of the people I have know are either experiencing serious health issues and some have passed away. It gets very quiet and sad when I drown myself in these thoughts about how time has taken its toll. While I know how to lift some of the weight of these thoughts off my mind I'm finding it more and more difficult to engage the process. My mom would tell me the quickest way to feel better is to go out and make someone else's day. She is the smartest person I will ever know.

To chronical a journey for what may turn out to be one without any clear destination isn't accomplishing anything worth spending time on and yet it feels like the only thing i'm capable of doing at this moment. I'm deeply saddened to hear my friend and Santa to everyone Alan Lundgren has passed away from a hard fought battle with cancer. My mom battles her issues and doesn't feel very well most of the time. My uncle passed from Alzheimer's my cousin from cancer and a friend who shouldn't be facing heart issues at such an early age is. My sister has had cancer and is doing alright but the time I feel I can actually see flying by is, and it makes me very sad.

I don't like worrying or people who spend a lot of time doing it and yet I'm doing it a lot these days. From as far back as I can remember the death of others has had an extreme effect on me and when it's close to home or in my mind when I think about the future it affects the foundation of everything I knew to be or thought I knew about what it would be like to live with this crippling fear. I do not fear my own death even slightly but the weight of fear of those I feel close to passing away while I live is unbearable.

From a blog to document my search for the beginning to a post describing what it is like towards the end. These days for me feel challenging and compared to those who are experiencing life and death issues daily my own fears and issues seem selfish and trite. I'm used to coming up with answers to figure out how and where to go to get things sorted out but as time goes on I find those answers don't come as often and as easy as they once did. Now I'm faced with the real possibility of having a ton of questions that matter to me going unanswered forever.

My mom has it figured out, I really need to get up and go do something for someone else while I still can.           

Love Dad-

As this trek continues it takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Two days ago while talking about my discoveries so far I learn or re-learned as it turns out, that my father and I had corresponded through handwritten letters back in 1976 the last being January 1977. How could I have lost that time? I was married, had a 2-year-old son, living in East Point Georgia with a marriage, a job, and a life completely falling apart. Maybe why I blocked that time out of my head.. Got married when I was 17 and here I was just 20 with my entire world crashing down on me.

Why I reached out to my father who for all practical purposes was a stranger to me I couldn't say. He was in California and we hadn't seen each other since I was a little kid and I was in Georgia trying to keep my life together and failing. The letter writing between us I had forgotten about and considering what all I was going through in my life at the time blocking that part out was probably understandable. 

I have 4 hand written, 3 to 4 page letters from my father. Inside those four envelopes are some of the answers to questions I've had for decades and wouldn't have had to ask if I had been paying attention to the important things in life. Perhaps if I had been focusing on the right things I wouldn't have lost my marriage, my family, and the only life I knew. But for some reason, I wrote to my father, the man I never really knew, and he responded with care and concern both for me and my wife and son that he never met. It's all there, written in his hand, and unmistakable.

He started out each of the four letters I have telling me how happy he was to get mine and saying we should keep writing and asking about my health and that of my little family. My father had a massive heart attack and lived through it in 1973 and at the time of our writing back and forth I knew nothing about it. By asking about my health and that of my wife and son this man I only knew by name was sending his care and concern the only way he knew how. He was teaching me about what the important things in life were. (health and family) I'll likely not forgive myself for not acknowledging the love he was offering in his own way and I regret not saying something-

My father retired from the Navy after 30 years of service in 1972 and in 73 when he had his heart attack he spent 30 days in the hospital. He spent the next 3 years working with his brother in construction just to pay off his hospital bills that weren't covered by his service. This doesn't surprise me at all because my mom is that way too always paying her own way. 
He bowled on Tuesday and Thursday nights in a league and had a 152 point average. He golfed on those days in the mornings and said he wasn't very good but he enjoyed it. In most of those letters, he asked for pictures of myself and my family and voiced concern because I had apparently mentioned my troubled marriage. Ironically he told me "divorce can only hurt one person, your son.." How "unfair it would be to him," is how he put it. Oh was he ever right and wrong all at the same time as my divorce came extremely close to killing me as well- 

The father I never really knew was trying to get to know me the only way he knew how and encouraging me to keep my family together If I could something he wasn't able to do himself. 

One interesting thing that I will never in my life get to experience is calling someone Dad. How odd it is that for years that was insignificant to me and how sad it makes me today as old as I am. His fatal heart attack was many years ago and I remember being told but not who it was that told me. My memory is that I was angrier than sad and then sad beyond what I wanted anyone to know. I took great pains in making out like it was just the death of a stranger and not a huge thing. It was and is to this very second writing this, a huge thing. His letters to me as I read them today are filled with clues that I see that he cared about me and how I was. At the time it didn't seem to mean much and all these years later it means the world.

Even though I will never be able to call someone Dad, it was how my father signed each letter to me that I still have. He got to say it and I'm happy he felt that is who he was to me. I'll see you one day again and we will know each other and all will be alright. 

#6213015 - Harry N. Zukerman CPO E8, USS Coral Sea HC1

After three to four decades of on and off again searches and questions, an email from a complete stranger put a few missing pieces into the puzzle.

"zuke's gooks, USS Coral Sea. HC1 crew member. Flew with your dad." 

This was the simple message that popped up on the screen. In my mom's living room as she was talking to me I look down and this msg stared back at me. Fixated and in shock I began to write to this man who had just opened a space in my soul.  

Mr Owen I said, are you saying that you knew my father? I wrote back without saying a word to my mom. 

"yes I flew with him from July 1967 to April 1968 off the coast of Vietnam."

Flushed with all sorts of emotions I carefully constructed something to tell my mom who I have purposely kept from knowing throughout the years that I wanted to know about the other side of who I had become. Don't know why I kept that to myself but it's part of who I became, closed off.

I sent Mr Owen my phone number and waited.. My phone rang and I could see it was an area code in California but I wasn't ready. This was going to be an emotional thing for me and one of the secrets closed off people like me try to keep out of site is our deepest held feelings. 

I came home and wrote out a long thing with some questions and decided the next day I would call Mr Owen and get this started. 

A three and a half hour conversation ensued the next day with a man who helped me put together "the image of my father." Strange as it may seem the similarities between the father and the son who only met once or twice many decades ago was like looking in the mirror and seeing him instead of me.  

There are people now to contact and more information to be had, and then there will likely be the question at the end of, OK now what? This all will only matter to me and to what end I don't have a clue. 

Already I know I think I would have liked this guy my father, and this is how Mr Owen put it to me: 

"I can tell you that I would not be alive today if it was not for your dad. He made sure his men were taken care of. I know nothing about his family life. I search the Internet for guys that I deployed with to Vietnam. My search came up with your name and the picture of the Chief with his dog. I recognize his face. I read your blog and there were things in there that only a person that was deployed with your Dad in HC 1 would know. I can tell you he was a no-nonsense person and he called everyone a Son Of A Bitch.. You did not want to get on his bad side. He would get in your shit but he loved us. We use to say that the Chief was in the Navy so long he was a cabin boy on Noah's Ark."

"We saw the Chief as our father figure. He would do anything for us."

Thank you from the bottom of my heart and sanity Mr Owen, the journey for me will continue-

where

Like the shattered glass that can never become whole again. I can't get my mind away from searching for where you rest- I forgive you yet can't forgive myself... Wasted time. We could have laughed some. Maybe found common ground. Who knows you might have liked me. Maybe taught me how to like myself. My soul will never heal. My heart aches for what feels like will be an eternity. How can I find a way to forgive myself and be OK. Damaged. Where can I find peace- I need to know where you rest. 

When will it end.

More and more these days as I get older and have less to do, I think about the image of my father in many ways. Not just the photo I have here on my desk, but the time that is going by for any hope that I might find a shipmate of his or a family member who might tell me who he was, how he lived, and where he is buried- Before I die I feel I have to find someone, or his gravesite, and do some personal soul purging. Tonight I wrote to a memorial website for those who served on the USS Coral Sea in hopes that he by some miracle, could push me in the right direction. I'm not quite sure why this has become so important for me to do, but it has and I try not to question it much. Not sure I can add a link in this post to a very poor video that was put together by a sailor on board the ship in 1989. How weird for me during this terrible video to get as emotional as I do thinking that my father probably walked through this ship and saw the same things I'm seeing in this video. The flight deck that I know he walked on for years and when I see it I wonder like a little kid if my father walked over any spot I'm seeing. How bizarre for a man of my age to get emotional all these years after my father died not knowing anything about me, and yet I would give the rest of my time on earth to get one solid day with him-

VIDEO

Next Move. No Photo Available.

The uneven road I've been on has taken me back where I began yet again. My dog had to be put to sleep when I was a little kid and the look of the deepest heartbreak and horror on my mom's face as she crumbled into the back seat of my sister's car holding the life of our friend who had taken ill and now had to be put down, still haunts me to this very day. It's was that same look I had on my face after a failed marriage where my life had come full circle from a kid with a lost soul to an adult with a broken heart. I drove with a few belongings from Georgia back to Texas and knocked on my mom's door and fell apart. I would never fully recover..

Every turn I've taken in my life has felt and looked like a different journey. The people had different names, the scenery along the way I had never seen before and there were laughs and sadness and different outcomes where I would land in places I didn't recognize. Or so it seemed. Now with reflection as my guide, no matter the success or failure, no matter the people who have crossed my path or the turns I made, all roads have taken me right back to where I began and it doesn't feel right.

In the company of the famous and the infamous, on stages and in arenas with thousands and sometimes millions looking on, what in the hell was I doing there, is all I come away with. Presidents, music and movie legends, sports superstars, and me? Having tricked people into thinking I knew what I was doing 20 years ago in television and photography until I actually learned, I carry a certain level of guilt knowing the work and sacrifice others made and are making to get here while I just kicked the doors down and went in..    

I never felt much like I've ever known where I was going and here I am now after all the miles I've racked up feeling like I haven't accomplished what I feel is important. Like a carnival bumper car ride where you go here and there and get turned around a lot but eventually you just end up back where you started. The ride has a time limit and needs to be worth the price you pay because the memories might be all you get to take with you and you can never rewind the tape- Now what.