Justin Bates

The Lessons I Learned from My Dad I am not the man my father is. I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther. He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them. Show up. The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer. Show up. Most days that’s the whole job. My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him. I learned that grief doesn’t make you special. My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs. A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother. He always noticed. I learned that power is not the point. The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves. My father never did. Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man. The title changed. He didn’t. I learned that family comes first. The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism. It was every night. He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost. And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it. Most of all, I learned that love is not soft. Love is discipline. Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching. Love is answering the phone. Love is staying. Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow. That love saved my life. I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways. He loved me anyway. That’s the last lesson. I am not trying to become my father. I am trying to carry what he gave me. And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough. Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

In recovery we learn the whole point is service. Showing up for somebody besides yourself. That’s leadership too. Setting the tone. Right now the tone is vengeance and yeah, I get the anger. But anger isn’t leadership. It’s tyranny. We can and should reach for each other. Demand better.