December 14 1965

What he’s missing

My father was assigned to Communications. In this letter he mentions a new technology where messages are transmitted and received simultaneously from other countries. He marvels at this – and it made me sad because it just hit home the myriad things that he never got to experience. The internet. Email. Mobile phones. GPS. Netflix. Cat videos. The 1986 World Series Mets. Digital music. Online anything. Meatless meat. On demand EVERYTHING.  

For anyone who’s lost someone you were close to, there are times when you could find yourself saying “Oh, So-and-so would have loved to see/hear/do this!” But it’s never happened in my family. We never discussed what he may have thought, or how he might have reacted to…well, pretty much anything. It is too painful to wonder. To let in the mind space that there could have been more life with my dad in it, is to open back up the grief for a life cut too short.

Entertaining even a notion about what my dad would have thought about driverless cars just was too much to bear.

One thought on “December 14 1965”

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