Finding the words

I decided to post as a blog, the letter I wrote in rememberance of my father, which I spoke at his funeral. While much of it is personal to me and our relationship, I hope someone can draw from it the idea that we are all complicated people and that maybe we can take a second and reflect on ourselves rather than taking the time to critique others. Peace and Blessings...


My father was a man. Not a good man, not a bad man, rather a man. A young man. A Black man, a man. My memories of my father vary because his life was complicated. It would be easy to stand before you and tell you fantastic stories of a great man, who worked hard and accomplished his dreams, and provided for his family etc, etc etc. Some of those things are true of my father. But some of them are not. He wasn’t an amazing man, but he was a man.
One of my fondest memories of my father was when I was about 9 maybe 10. He and my mother took me to Carol Park to play tennis. I had no idea how to play, and neither did he. For a few minutes, he’d hit a ball across the net to me, with the tennis rackets hed bought from the thrift store. I’d slam it back across, way over his head into the fence behind him. My mother looked on. After a few frustrating minutes, he said angrily that that was enough. We were done with tennis. But I wasn’t mad. I too had realized tennis probably wasn’t for me. The reason that memory sticks out to me is because it symbolized my father’s love for me. He was always willing to let me try things out, figure out what worked and what didn’t. We did it with baseball, we did it with basketball, rollerskating, tennis. Some worked out, some didn’t. But he was always there to let me try and to try it with me.
A part of me always felt, that Baltimore was my father’s hell. He was a country boy through and through. I could see it whenever we visited South Carolina. He’d get this boyish grin on his face, become excited. The stories would just roll out. “Mama, you remember the club that used to be over there?” My mother had no clue what he was talking about. “Awww man, I remember such and such used to live down there”, “Oh yeah, such and such always had the best barbeque”, “We used to cut down that path to get to such and such’s house”. He’d be looking at some random field. Where the path actually was, only God really knows. But he was home. I sometimes wonder how different his life may have been if he had never left there.
But the reality is, he did move to Baltimore. He had a good life with a wife and sons and grandkids. But sometimes I felt the city was just a bit too fast for him. Too many hustlers, too much drugs, too much alcohol. He got caught in it. The reality is, that was part of my father too. He couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. I always felt like he wanted to, but it was like he was caught in a hurricane, and trying to hold on to a palm tree. For much of his life, it was a losing battle.
But it was a battle he never quit fighting. You see that was part of who my father was too. He was a fighter. He fought his addictions. He fought to live, up until his dying breath. He fought for the people he loved the most. He was 5’7 with shoes on, but in my mind he was a giant. I was never afraid of anyone, any neighborhood when I was with him. He taught me to never be afraid of anything. I only fear God.
Sometimes we get caught up in who we think people are supposed to be. We look at other people’s lives, we look at tv and we compare our lives to there. The truth is that we are living the lives we are meant to live until we aren’t meant to live it anymore. My father was only meant to have 53 years on this earth. I cried to my wife when he died, that “he wasn’t ready”. But it doesn’t matter if he, was ready, God was.
And so I’ll cry because I miss him, and I’ll cry when I want to hear his voice again and I can’t. But I wont cry about him not being ready. God was ready for him and who am I to question. Instead, I’ll see him everyday. When my son, hears music and starts dancing: I’ll see my father. When my brother smiles and sits by quietly: I’ll see my father. When my daughters laugh, I’ll see my father. When my mother says I loveyou, I’ll hear my father. And when I look in the mirror: I’ll see my father. Because Silas Levern Smith lives on. His body failed him, but his spirit will never die. I’ll talk to him everyday. And I’ll tell him I love him just like he told me everytime he saw me. That’s the man I’ll remember. Not a good man, not a bad man, because I’m in no position to judge him. Only heaven can do that. I’ll remember a man who loved and who fought and who taught me how to do both.