Day 8: My daddy's 98th birthday

Bob Harris and Lloyd Harris
20-plus years ago at a family reunion

On March 19th, 98 years ago, a blue-eyed boy was born to Rose and Jim Harris.  He was his mama's favorite.  He was the favorite of his two sisters and his two brothers. He was, in fact, always everybody's favorite.

When he first spotted 13-year-old Carlene, he made a point of getting up and walking to the front of the church to adjust the lighting so he could finagle to sit beside her.

While Carlene attended the Georgia State College for Women, he (along with his two brothers) joined the Navy during the War.

He taught Morse Code to the sailors while she worked on the college literary magazine.  The Corinthian--of which she was editor and Miss Flannery O'Connor her assistant.

Betty's daddy took this picture of us one Easter morning

My daddy had sturdy hands that milked cows, peeled potatoes, planted vegetables, fixed and built things, played the guitar (he sang just like Jim Reeves), hugged and patted people. and held a fishing pole on the banks of ponds all over the state of Georgia.

Years later, when he got himself a boat, Carlene sat with him in the boat and cross-stitched and crocheted while he pulled in the fish.  They were very happily married, like two playmates, for 57 years.  One of them would start up a song and the other would join in, then we'd improvise road trip soundtracks all the way to wherever we were going.

March 19th always makes me think about my daddy, but really there's never a day that I don't.  I'm always wondering "What would he think about...." or "What would he do about...?" To Bob and me, he was the kind of man who always knew exactly what to do, and if he didn't, he'd look it up. We didn't have to worry about much of anything.

Seventy plus years ago
Lloyd and Linda Gayle

Lloyd Harris was the kind of man that if we had more like him we'd have world peace. He loved people, almost all people as far as I could tell, but especially us. And he had a saying for everything.

On one of our last visits, he said, "Linda Gayle, you just let the raw side drag."

What it meant, basically, was: You're doing your life your way and I approve.  He always approved.

He died too young, at 80--with a twinkle in his eyes all the way to the end.

It takes a long long time to get past the awfulness of someone not being where they should be--which is here, close by, reachable by phone. At first, you can barely stand to look at their favorite chair because its emptiness breaks your heart.


I am a member of the huge tribe of us who have lost a beloved parent or grandparent, child or spouse or friend.  Anne Lamott describes it better than any other writer I know:

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”