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He Was My Best Man · After the Signal

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is After the Signal.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go a little farther down the road.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Two days from now,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: my oldest son is getting married, and he's asked me to officiate the ceremony.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've said that sentence quite a few times lately.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It still gets me.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because three days ago, October 19th, Allie and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And 30 years ago, when I stood there preparing to marry her, my father stood beside me.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was my best man.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday, I will stand in front of our son while he begins a marriage of his own.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: My father won't be there.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: He died 26 years ago.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Chad was barely more than a year old.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: They met once.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the closer I get to Saturday, the less simple the word there seems to me.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've been talking this month about inheritance.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not money, not property, the other kind.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: The things people leave inside us.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: A sentence, a standard, a habit, a story.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes even a ridiculous little song nobody remembers correctly.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's the strange thing about family.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: We spend years becoming ourselves.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then every so often we open our mouths and hear one of our parents come out.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are entire commercials built around this.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: We laugh because we recognize it.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're standing in the hardware store complaining about something
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: and suddenly realize, good Lord, I've become my father.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe progressive can't stop us.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe nobody can.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm beginning to think that's not necessarily a problem.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: The question is not whether we become our parents.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: The question is which parts.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: My father was not perfect.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Neither am I.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Neither is Chad.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's another thing age does to inheritance.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: When we're children, our parents can seem enormous.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then we become adults and discover they were people.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: People making decisions without knowing how everything would turn out.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: People carrying things from their own parents.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: People getting some of it right.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: People getting some of it wrong.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: People passing both forward.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, if we're paying attention, we get to choose.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Keep this.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Change this.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: End this.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pass this on.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's one of the most important forms of adulthood.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not rejecting where you came from.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not worshipping it either.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Examining it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's become one of the deepest questions in the executor's discovery.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Elias Ward has inherited something from his father.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: But inheritance does not create obligation merely because it came from someone you loved.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's too easy.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Love doesn't make every lesson correct.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Respect doesn't require imitation.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And honoring your parents doesn't mean surrendering your judgment to theirs.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, Elias has to ask a much harder question.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: What becomes my responsibility once I know it exists?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've been asking myself versions of that question for most of my life without realizing it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now, two days before my son's wedding, it feels different.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not only somebody's son anymore.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the father.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the one standing where the older generation once stood.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that changes the question.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: When Chad and his bride, Amanda,
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: stand in front of me Saturday,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to be thinking about whether I've prepared him for marriage.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: That work is over.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least my part of it is.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's a grown man.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is their marriage, not mine.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's important.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Parents sometimes have trouble recognizing when love has to change shape.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: For years,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: loving your child means making decisions for him,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: protecting him, teaching him, correcting him, picking him up when he falls.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then, slowly, if things go the way they're supposed to, your authority diminishes.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: His increases.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, love requires something very different.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: You let him live his life.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You remain available.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You tell the truth when asked, sometimes when not asked.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still his father.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't end.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But fatherhood cannot mean ownership.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you've done the job well,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: eventually the person you spent years raising no longer needs you to run his life.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there is something both painful and beautiful about that.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think my father understood some of this.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not all of it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I certainly don't.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But 30 years ago,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: he stood beside me while I made a decision that would determine almost everything
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: that followed.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Allie.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Our marriage.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Chad.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ben.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The family we built.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The life we lived.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: My father didn't know any of that.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: He could stand beside me.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was all.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've come to think there's enormous wisdom in those words.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Stand beside.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not ahead.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not above.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Beside.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's what the people we love need from us more often than we realize.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not an answer.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not a plan.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not control.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Presence.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday, my position will be slightly different.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, I'll be standing in front of Chad.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have words to say.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a ceremony to conduct.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, Chad and Amanda have decided I can be trusted with this.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm deeply honored.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath all of that,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still doing what my father did for me,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: standing there,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: witnessing a choice, watching my son begin something I cannot complete for him.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in that moment, 30 years will collapse.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be the groom again.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be the son again.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll remember the man standing beside me, and then I'll look at Chad, and I'll be the father.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: All at once.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's the circle.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not that life repeats perfectly.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The people change.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: The circumstances change.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some chairs are empty.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Some people arrive who didn't exist when the circle began.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: The circle isn't repetition.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's continuation.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is the part of internet culture I hope we never lose.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: For all the foolishness online,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: and there is an impressive amount of it,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: the internet lets us do something previous generations couldn't do quite this way.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: We can leave our voices, our stories, our mistakes, our memories.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: My father left me a few photographs,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: stories, things he said, things other people remember him saying.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I can't pull up hundreds of recordings of him talking about what he believed at 60.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Chad and Ben may someday be able to do that with me.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe their children will.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's a strange thought.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a humbling one.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because it means some of what we throw
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: into this enormous digital river may travel farther than we do.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's another reason boomers need to participate in internet culture.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have something younger people don't have yet.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not superior knowledge.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Mileage.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've lived long enough to see some consequences,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: long enough to change our minds,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: long enough to discover which things mattered and which things merely seemed urgent
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: at the time.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: We ought to leave some of that behind.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Two days from now, my son will marry the woman he loves.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll officiate.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if I do my job properly, the day won't be about me.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It won't be about my father either.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: It will be about them.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I know I'll feel him.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not as a ghost.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not as some sentimental claim that people never really leave us.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: People do leave us.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's why grief hurts.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll feel him because some of what he gave me is still here.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: In me.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Chad.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: In Ben.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: In choices.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: In stories.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe even in the way I stand beside the people I love.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: My father was my best man.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday, I get to be something else.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dad.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's enough.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is After The Signal.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, strengthen the things that remain.