Pop Culture

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Today, for Father's Day, my brother and I took our father out for lunch. It was a rare opportunity for the three of us to spend some time together. I guess the only real difference between my relationship with my father and my brother's relationship with him is the names we call him — I call him "Dad," and my brother calls him "Pops."

I don't want to dwell on the subject too long. I'm grateful to have both my brother and my father in my life, and I hope they'll both be around awhile longer.

I have no reason to think that they won't — but I know anything can happen at any time.

For some reason, lately I've been thinking about a time in the weeks after my mother's death in 1995 when I was having a conversation with my father. He had been temporarily disabled in the flash flood that took my mother's life, and he was experiencing one of the mood swings he went through that summer. I told him how important he was to my brother and me.

And then, I remember telling him that I wasn't ready to lose both of my parents.

Well, here I am, nearly 15 years later. I got caught in the economic meltdown last fall, and I've been unemployed ever since. And you know what? I'm still not ready to be without both my parents. I've missed my mother terribly since losing my job. I can only imagine how much more of an ordeal this would have been if I hadn't had my father. He's kept me grounded and focused as I've tried to find an answer. Answers are elusive these days, but I can't imagine them being any easier to come by if he were not around.

So I'm glad the three of us had lunch together today. And I hope, if your father is living, you were able to spend some time with him.

Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. In a couple of hours, I will be joining my brother and my father for lunch.

I am fortunate, in that respect. I realize how lucky I am to still have my father on this day. He is 78 years old, and I don't know how many more Father's Days I'll be able to share with him.

I say that only because of my awareness of family heredity and typical longevity. He appears to be in good health, my father, but I'm sure that, with a touch of bewilderment in their eyes and voices, the widow and son of Tim Russert said the same thing on Friday after they were informed that the 58-year-old host of "Meet the Press" had collapsed and died.

The appearance of good health is no guarantee.

I have many friends who no longer have their fathers. Some lost their fathers early in life, others lost them long after they had left the proverbial "nest" to marry and have families of their own.

I can sympathize in my own way. I lost my mother in a flash flood in 1995 so Mother's Day is for me what Father's Day has become for some of my friends.

For them, it is an early summer Sunday, nothing more. Unless they have children of their own, there probably will be no observances of the day, no Father's Day gift, no greeting card. If they are married, their spouses may take them out for a meal, but that's probably the most that will happen today.

There isn't much that can be done to lessen whatever pain you feel over not having your father here on this day. That is especially true for those like Russert's son, who will forever live with the knowledge that his father's death came only days before his special day.

(On that point, I can also sympathize. My mother died about a week before Mother's Day.)

The only real wisdom I can offer is this:

If you still have your father, be grateful and spend time with him whenever you can. Today, for sure, but whenever you can in the other 364 days of the year.

And if your father is no longer living, treasure his memory and honor him by remembering and living by the insights he shared with you as you were growing up.

As Colin McNickle does in today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

McNickle lost his father in 2002, yet he observes, "I again think what a shame it is that his brain -- ever working to maximum capacity -- could not have been transplanted into a far younger body.

"For so much was left untaught and there's still so much I have to learn."