Sometime on November 22nd 2011 I will out live my my father's too short life. It is both an uncomfortable feeling and a relief. My dad, Ned Sander died during open heart surgery on April 25th, 1972, at age 50. Open heart surgery was new and almost black magic at the time. What killed him I am told is easily avoidable now. I was ten years old at the time. Through the miracle of mathematics I have figured the date that I will pass him as 11/22/2011, yes I figured in leap years. When I think of the last 40 years with all the changes in society and all the upheaval in my family, my marriage to Laurie, my kids and how comforting it would have been to have had him all that time, I get angry at him. Like most American men, probably men anywhere, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to live up to his mythologized existence in my mind. In his 50 years he lived through the depression and world war two, a successful career in the savings and loan industry, four kids and the accumulation of property and status that I will never know. I wonder what he would think about my strange adolescent choice of a career in TV, I wonder what he would have thought about the greed obsessed raiders that tipped his own industry over 15 years after his death, what he would think of our present world where the same sort have stolen our country blind. I don't know what he would think of me. I didn't know him as an adult. All I know is on November 22nd, 2011 I will have lived longer than he was allowed to live. If I live to 100, I hope that I am half the man he was.
We named our first kid "Ned". I feel like with our Ned, I can give up the old one. Thanks Dad. I hope we can get to know each other someday.
