Father's Day / Perspective

Yesterday was Father's Day. Many more people than usual reached out to me with messages and wishes for a Happy Father's Day. I'm sure most of them presumed yesterday would have been a hard day for me. It was my first Father's Day since Sofia passed away, after all. A reasonable assumption to be sure but, yesterday was not hard. Or at least no harder than the day before; or the day before the day before. Yesterday, instead, was filled mostly with gratitude.

I had spent the day before, on Saturday, with Carter and Sam in Seattle enjoying Carter's first ever MLB game. It was a perfect day and it was so nice to get away together for a weekend in between Carter's spring baseball season ending and his summer all star season starting. Yes I do recognize the irony in taking a break from baseball by going to... another baseball game. Carter had so much fun and I really enjoyed talking to him during the game about the players on each team and speculating on what strategies they may employ. He has really enjoyed playing baseball this year so it was really cool to see him experience big league baseball in person for the first time.

We have a trailer near Seattle so we stayed there for the weekend. On Sunday morning, I awoke to a message on my phone waiting for me from Kaitlynn, my oldest daughter who lives up in Fort St John (about a 1.5 hr flight away), wishing me a Happy Father's Day. Not long after Carter had woken up and joined me in the bedroom to say Happy Father's Day as well. And then a couple hours later, another Happy Father's Day message from my oldest son, Jacob. Did I wish I had just one more Happy Father's Day yesterday? Absolutely I did. But I'm very grateful for the 3 I got.

Yesterday, I had a choice. I could choose to be grateful for what I have or I could be angry about what I've lost.

I've thought a lot over the past two months just how powerful these mental choices we make can be. And how influential perspective can be in how we interpret the world around us. As someone dealing with a profound loss every day, my own perspective has forever been altered and how I now see and feel almost everything is so different than just a few months ago. It’s one of the gifts I’ve received through the pain. When my mind is right and my perspective is properly aligned, I care almost exclusively for the things that truly matter the most. For me yesterday though, I had to summon the mental strength to choose the perspective I would have. To live the day through a lens of someone so grateful to have 3 amazing kids all tell me they’re happy that I'm their father.

Luke Combs released a new album last week and the album is about being a father, himself, to a couple of young boys. There's a song on the album called The Man He Sees In Me. It's a song about how our young children see us parents as super heroes, as people who can do no wrong and are capable of anything. And how then we, as parents, aspire to live up to that. The chorus goes:

"I hope he never finds out that I didn't hang the moon
And I've never scared a monster out the closet in his room
One day between him leavin’ home and drivin' on my knee
Maybe I'll finally be, the man he sees in me"


As I listened to it, I thought immediately of Sofia. And how she must have felt about us. To Sofia, we were flawless. We gave her everything we had to give. And she gave us everything she had. She was perfect and, to her, so were we. She loved us with a force I’ve never known before. You can see it in the pictures. The way she looked at us; as if everything else around us vanished.

Our friend Mel sent me this photo recently, along with a few others. This was one taken during one of our first few days in the hospital last summer and this is the look I'm talking about. She stares so intently at you with a genuine warmth that would carry you away for a moment.

Sofia died at 3 years old; 3 months shy of her 4th birthday. The perspective that dominates my mind most days is one filled with intense anger. I feel she was stolen from us and I know we don't deserve this. So I'm angry. That's a reasonable perspective to have I think. And yet, for a moment, as I listened to that song, my perspective changed. 

This is why perspective is so powerful. Sofia lived an entire life and we never had even a disagreement. She wasn't wise enough yet to see my flaws as a person or as a father. She loved me intensely without even a whisper of doubt that I was worthy of it. And she knew with absolute certainty how much I loved her. There's a beauty in that for me. And as my perspective changed listening to the lyrics and thinking of her this way, my anger went away. Instead, now replaced with comfort and a little smile.


Now the challenge for me is to live the rest of my life aspiring to be the father Sofia only knew.