I visited the family gravesite tonight, where Mother's parents, brother, and grandparents are buried along with my father.  I watched as the first leaves of autumn fell across my faather's grave.  Sometime when I'm up here, the lack of him is an almost physical thing. Not something I wake up at nights with or anything dramatic like that, but a sense of emptiness and sadness for the boys. I grew up close to my own granfather, althro not as close as my brother. He was born about the time Grandfather retired and was almost raised by Grandfather.  The presence of my grandfather in my life was a strong background to my youth and from that comes my Orthodoxy among other things.

I feel the lack of my own father especially when I think of that. The boys never really knew him and despite my attempts to keep his memory fresh, they don't remember that much.  They really don't know what its like to have an older wiser male presence than their own father, someone who will view their misbehaviors with a different eye, or who will challenge them to grow in different ways. This was especially true with Dad, who didn't get along as well with little ones as he did teenagers. They'll never really know how much better at working leather or metal he was than I am, at how much better a shot or a hunter he was, how he could read water or charm animals. They'll never hear his war stories or tall tales, nor will they sit in the shop and sip drinks, talking to him as he worked on some project. Nor come down in the morning and find he had fallen asleep reading.

Things fade so fast in life and so little lives up to its promise. I've made committments in my life to several things, science, martial arts, the faith and yet in each case, I have to ask what I leave behind. I've never been more than a second tier scientist and none of my activities there are earth-shaking. None of martial arts I learned have been past on to the next generation, and the lies there get harder and harder to tolerate each year. Everyone wants to study until it requires a cost and then they quit or pull back. I've seen the type of people that convert in and become priests in my faith and athesism starts seeming preferable to the Christ they preach. Meanwhile our society is doing its damnest to drive out the right, the honorable, the true by the dual influences of no social responsibilty and of no moral judgements.

I watched the leaves fall on my father's grave and wonder what is it all worth.