Reminders

I've had several references during the past few days to Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll; higher in frequency than I would normally notice.  The written book of Alice in Wonderland (actually called "Through the Looking-Glass" if I remember right) always reminds me of my father's best friend Bill Kruger.

Bill was a Children's Literature professor at the University of Millikan in Illinois, a private university.  I didn't get the chance to meet Bill until I was in my mid-twenties, but I'm glad I had the limited time I did have to meet him.  Bill and I turned out to be quite similar in thinking, and got along very well, often disagreeing with my father in the same ways on the same points.  But more to the point, any time I was in the area, I would stop by and visit with Bill for a few hours.  This turned out to total about 6 hours in a few less trips.  After one such visit, I returned home and received in the mail a week or so later a copy of "Through the Looking-Glass" from Bill.  He had handwritten a note to me, stating the book was well worth my time, but more importantly, that he really believed I would enjoy the book.

At the time I thought it was a children's story, though of course one that could be mined by adults for insights.  I resisted reading the book, and it sat on the shelf for years.  Bill died a year or so after that last visit, and the mailed book.  I never did get around to reading it, and I am sorry I never read it.  I would feel better about it if I had made and effort, but I actively avoided reading it.  I don't remember if he actually asked me to read it and tell him what I thought, or if my guilty mind is tacking on that admonition.  Now I feel a twinge of guilt every time I think of the book that collected dust on the shelf for so long.  I've since lost track of the book, and that adds another twinge.  I hope to find it some day, and I hope that I had the forethought to put the handwritten note into the cover of the book.

It occurs to me writing now, that this is a fairly unique experience.  How many other twenty-somethings would search out and meet with their father's best friend from another state for chats?  And if I didn't write this here, who would ever know of this experience?  Or the tasks I feel I owe Kruger?  I saw that Kruger's children had moved on; they were not close to him in later life, and I wonder how much his death really affected them.  Granted, there's no real way of me knowing, but I find the bonds of family to often be arbitrary.  As the saying goes, friends are the family you choose.  I wonder if Bill is remembered for his position as father more than his abilities and personality.  Father is fine, but it seems a sad loss to forget the other aspects of the man.  My father and Bill's other contemporaries certainly remember him as 'Bill,' or 'Kruger' rather, more than 'father.'  How long will I remember him?  How long will I feel I owe him a debt?  If memory of a man is his form of immortality, how long will Bill be remembered?  Is my memory of him the furthest reach into the future Bill will have?  Is there anyway I can pass his memory on?  Or should I look to my own legacy?

These are reasons I've tried to realize my father and other dear members of my family for who they are, not only their relation to me.  I feel it's my responsibility to remember them for who they are.  I think children often develop a deep respect for their parents as they get older, precisely because they learn to see them as the people they are in addition to the parent they were.  I count myself lucky I seemed to be ahead of the curve.