If you blink, you miss it...

I posted this on myspace in early October after my father-in-law passed away on September 30. I wanted to share it here.

My father-in-law, Harold, passed away last Sunday.

It was not a shock. To be perfectly honest, it was something we had been expecting since I first met my husband. He battled every health problem known to man, often spending weeks in the hospital. And even though he never talked about dying, it was always the cloud that hung over our visits. It was coming, we just didn't know exactly when.

I loved Harold. He was nothing like any member of my family. He was blunt, funny, smart, and he thought my husband and son hung the moon...so we pretty much stayed on the same wavelength.

All that being said, I always had a hard time figuring out where my husband's personality came from. He has worlds of patience, he's the consumate romantic, and he makes me laugh in a thousand different ways (sometimes with him, often at him). I figured his mother contributed most of that to him, but I really didn't see his father in him at all.

Until last week.

As we were making arrangements for the funeral, my mother-in-law pulled out old pictures to use in a collage. I always enjoy looking through old memories, and seeing where people come from...and even though I knew most of Harold's stories, I had never really stopped and looked at the man he was. When you know someone had a rough childhood, you just assume it makes them hard and sometimes bitter. I knew Harold wasn't bitter--whenever he talked about the past, he talked about it with a smile or a laugh (sometimes I thought it was a "how could anybody live through that" laugh, but still...). But Harold had definitely developed a tough exterior that didn't complain and didn't suffer fools lightly. I admired that.

So when I saw the picture, I had to stop for a minute and do a double-take. It was most definitely Harold--30 years younger, 75 pounds heavier and with more hair--but something about him was decidedly different. He was standing with his father-in-law, and they were both wearing mischievous grins and cotton/polyester coveralls that only old men wear.
Harold had this twinkle in his eye that I'd definitely seen somewhere before. It was the kind of look someone gives you when there's an inside joke. The kind that my husband gets on his face when he sees an old man wearing coveralls, and he laughs and says, "I can't wait to be old enough to wear those!" Instinctively, I knew that the smile on Harold's face was from the sheer joy of being like his father-in-law...being a "cool old man"...and knowing the rest of the world might not get the joke, but that wasn't the point. He was having a great time.

And for a brief second, I saw my husband in his father. The way Kevin finds humor in everyday conversations and the way people have of speaking. The way he looks at me and grins every time he sees this man at our church, with a wide tie and an equally wide smile...not because he's making fun, but because he can't wait to be old enough to wear that sort of tie and smile the entire time he's wearing it. The way he finds happiness and laughter in the most unexpected places...the way he will take an inside joke and share it with the rest of the world--if they're willing to look for it.

There's no doubt about it...he's his father's son.