(NOTE: My dad, Bill Muir, died on Oct. 13, 2004. At the time of his death I was working at the Southern Illinoisan as a reporter/columnist. This is the first column I wrote two weeks after his death. I have been accused, and not always at pleasant times of writing from my heart and not my head. I think this column proves those critics correct. I hope you enjoy as I recall a man that had a huge impact on my life.)
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Each week when I sit down to conjure up something for this space I have a good idea of the audience I’m trying to reach. However, on rare occasions what I write is more for me than anybody else and in those instances I simply invite you along for the ride.
Today is one of those days.
For nearly four years I have met with you, the readers, every Tuesday morning in this space. During that time I’ve joined you at your breakfast table as you enjoy a morning cup of coffee, on your way to work, during lunch and in some instances at night when you finally get a chance to sit down for the first time that day and rest your aching feet. In many instances you are nameless and faceless and many of you I’ll probably never meet. Yet, for some reason I still feel like I know you and that there’s a connection between us.
And it’s that kinship that I feel that prompts me to open up a window to my life occasionally and share the amusing, the sad, the good and the sometimes bad things that happen.
As many of you are probably aware, my dad Bill Muir passed away on Oct. 13. He was a good moral man, a good father, a family man, a man with a tremendous sense of pride, a man with a keen sense of humor, a great storyteller, a devoutly religious man and a pillar of strength to his family. He will be missed.
When faced with writing a column – the first since my dad died – I was a little torn about how to handle it. Should I go a totally different direction and not mention it? Or, should I share with readers my thoughts about a man that had a huge influence on me and a man that sometimes seemed larger than life? After posing that question to myself it took me about five seconds to come up with the answer.
Mark Twain once wrote: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant that I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in only seven years.”
I thought of that quote by Twain shortly after my dad died and even used it in a eulogy I gave at his funeral. I think it summed up our relationship quite well, except I could plug in other ages because my opinion of my dad changed dramatically for the better the older I got.
When I was a teenager I thought my dad was perhaps the meanest man I’d ever met and I also thought his sole purpose in life was to make me work. I imagined back then that he woke up every morning looking for ways to prevent me from having fun. Of course looking back I can now see that he was just trying to keep me alive and out of jail, while teaching me that there is no such thing as a free ride in life.
The one item that my dad and I fought about regularly was mowing the yard. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to mow it, it was the fact that he was nearly impossible to please. He would have me mow it one way and then mow it crossways to scatter the grass. We butted heads on numerous occasions and since my dad was a firm believer in the old adage of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ many of those confrontations ended with me on the receiving end.
To show that life really does go full circle sometimes, the past three years as my dad’s health declined I started mowing his yard for him each week. And just like those days 35 years ago I mowed it both ways, however this time it wasn’t at my dad’s suggestion it was my own doing.
Following those mowing sessions – always on Thursdays — my dad and I would sit at his kitchen table and visit and talk sometimes for more than an hour. And it was during on of those visits, less than a month before he died, that he volunteered a comment that really surprised me.
“If I had it to do over again I wouldn’t be so hard on you,” he said. “I didn’t cut you any slack at all and I was pretty tough on you.”
Remembering well those days and I how at times I couldn’t stand him, my answer back to him surprised me also.
“I don’t think you hurt me by being tough on me,” I said. “And in fact I think in the long run you helped me.”
To add to the tongue-in-cheek quote made by Twain, I can say with certainty that my dad not only got smarter when I turned 21 but he also got smarter when I turned 31 and 41. And next week I’ll have birthday number 51 and I can say – despite the times we butted heads through the years – that Bill Muir stands alone as the smartest man I’ve ever met.
Thanks for spending some time with me this morning as I try to come to terms with the death of my dad – a man that had a huge impact on my life.
