Can such a small hospital room possibly be the focus of such a torrent of tender feelings? Ask any dad who goes there to get his first child placed in his arms. The day my ring went on my wife's finger my world changed - who I was, changed and that day when my son was born it happened again! Andrew who'd been a son, a friend, a pupil, a driver, a soldier, was a husband and a father. I was a young dad who still felt a boy inside. I struggled without model or memory to be the dad I should be.
I was there when the boys were tucked in bed with teddies for the long nights. I was there when the tooth finally worked loose. I was there when the bikes broke, when the team lost, when the prefect's badge was awarded. I took the photos, told the bedtime stories, and listened to opinions from those two boys about almost every subject under the sun. I explained how their Heavenly Father loved them and yearned that my life might somehow offer proof.
I was an involved dad. I shouldered the responsibility and I felt the joys. I wrestled on the carpet and I bathed the dog with them. I was driven with a passion to be the father mine never seemed able to be. There were those nights I came to bed late after a long discussion held seated, backs to the wall, on the floor of a son's room. I lay awake wondering why my father never could share in the turmoils of teenage love problems.
My conversations with him have been so superficial. This man who had worked so long and so faithfully to put food on our table and to put me through school could only, at best talk to me about the weather or the car. I know he loved me. I know the things I accomplished brought him pleasure. If only some strange aloofness and need to remain the father - never becoming vulnerable, never giving or asking for hugs.. if only this man and son status quo had not been so iron clad.
And now the coming of a stroke changed all that. I went to his bedside. The father has become the child. The hands that toiled to provide my infant needs, the hands that held mine as we crossed the busy roads are now stretched out to me in helpless need. The mantle of caring decision making has shifted to my shoulder.
How right the Old Testament scripture is: "To everything there is a season....."
Yet I got to thinking about his life. The main event in his formative years was the great depression and the focus of his young adult years was the Second World War. He was born in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and grew up in the tiny railway junction of Nouwpoort. He was the youngest son in a very large family. There would have been 18 children had all the offspring of the Scotsman Andrew JJ Paton and his American wife Alice survived. Bearing his father's middle names John James was an active boy with a quiet nature.
The family bought a home in Ambrose Street, Port Elizabeth and it was from that home that my father left to join the South African Armed Forces. He trained in the 1st Special Services Battalion under a fearsome instructor nicknamed Pappa Britz. Years later I was mustered to the Officers Training School of the SSB at the School of Armor in Tempe, Bloemfontein. Our military paths were very divergent. I was attached to the advanced armor training wing at HQ (updated training manuals for tanks & armored cars) in a desk job while he was in combat.
After training he was attached to the Witwatersrand Rifles Delarey. This was the unit with which he saw action in Ethiopia when the South African Forces reinstated the Ethiopian empire of Heili Sellassi. The Italian Army was no match and was soon routed.
The war moved further North into the dessert. When the German North Africa Corps executed the capture of many South Africans at Tobrook my dad was among the retreating soldiers who escaped at the last minute. He told of the mad flight in which the road was strewn with trucks & supplies while all feared an air attack by the Luftwaffe.
At about this time my father trained on the new Sherman Tanks that had been acquired from the USA for the war against Field Marshall Erwin Rommell in North Africa. He served under Montgomery and was part of the El Alamain counter attack that became a turning point in the war.
He described the healthy respect our tank crews had for the Desert fox ( their name for Rommell) and I once heard him describe how the Germans ambushed them with an 88mm gun buried in the sand as their Shermans advanced. The lead tank took a direct hit and was destroyed the following Sherman literally rolled over the gun emplacement killing the gun crew in their dugout.
His 21st Birthday was celebrated in the North African Dessert.
R and R time was spent in the bars of Cairo. He did manage one trip to Israel (Palestine - is what he still calls it) and it was his description of the traditional spot of Calvary that I had in mind when I visited there.
Once on a foot patrol my dad's unit came under enemy artillery fire. He was wounded in the legs & in the eye by shrapnel and spent months in hospital. He irony is that a captured German doctor removed the sight threatening metal from his eye socket.
Upon discharge my dad returned to the 6th Division for the assault on Italy. His memories were of mud…plenty of mud. The fighting was very fierce in places because progress was from village to village.
Once he was appointed to guard four German prisoners of war at a street fountain in a small village. As the prisoners sat smoking a band of partisans arrived in a jeep. Before anyone could respond the partisans machine gunned the prisoners
He concluded the war in the North of Italy. Returning to South Africa seemed such an anticlimax and the next decade was spent in menial jobs and bars. There seemed to be nothing to life that got his attention or inspired him.
At the age of 35 he married my mother.
When I consider these influential years I begin to understand why he had so little ability to be a warm responsive father. The double sadness is that he spoke little even of the war years. There was so little meaningful conversation.
Then a meeting with the Salvation Army changed our lives forever. He found in this movement an acceptance, a new circle of friends, a ministry (he cleaned the building) and I too had my life forever influenced.
The years have passed so swiftly. Our relationship never seemed to deepen. Everything was very mundane. I could never discuss my complicated, hectic world. Telling people about pastoring is tough at the best of times!
This week for the first time, and he's nearly 82, in response to me saying that I loved him he said those words I'd longed to hear, "I love you too".
If you have children - tell them you love them, tell them often. It matters little if that's the one thing they remember you always said. It matters plenty if you never "got around to saying it".