My father died thirty-seven years ago. I didn’t eulogize him at his funeral. I couldn’t.

As a young man, I was too filled with rebellion and resentment to see what he was trying to show me. I only saw what he lacked, and his sad efforts to inflate what he thought he had to offer by aggrandizing parts of his life story. It was hard for me to determine what was true and what was not, which blinded me to the fact that no aggrandizement was necessary. I gathered from the little he said about his childhood that his father died when he was young, and that he never felt that his mother saw him as good enough. Standing on that foundation, he never seemed to see himself as good enough. What must have compounded his self-doubt was that his eldest son, in turn, failed to see him as good enough. I didn’t realize until recently that my refusal to grant him amnesty for his flaws might be interfering with my ability to make allowances for my own.

My father exaggerated the peaks in his biography to compensate for a life he seemed to perceive as failingly ordinary. In turn, he felt he had to elevate the peaks in my own life as well. So even my accomplishments needed to be unnecessarily elevated to the point of absurdity. Thus, the very good had to be the greatest, leaving me feeling unseen for whom I really was. What I failed to see was that his pride in me could only be expressed in his own, flawed way.

In the intervening years—between his death and the present—I have seen close friends and family members die, all of whom were very good people and many of whom were loving but imperfect parents who still managed to raise good children. Their children appreciated their parents as human beings and were grateful for the blessings they received from them while accepting their limitations. Feeling so distant from my father, I never pushed through his wall to try to get to know him better, despite my natural inquisitiveness that led me to pursue a career in clinical psychology.

My father occasionally talked about, but never at length, his service in the army in Europe during World War II. Barely across the threshold of manhood, he demonstrated bravery that I am not sure I would have been capable of. During his time in Europe, he got separated from his unit and hid out in a farmhouse, and he also climbed a tree to avoid detection from a Nazi funeral procession. Did he feel helpless? Frightened? Lonely? Or did he handle it with the stoicism and humor I had come to associate with him? I will never know because I never thought to ask.

Erwin “Jack” Jacobs, I don’t remember you ever telling me you loved me, but maybe I just wasn’t listening to the ways you said it:

—you came home every night after a hard day’s work;

—you never shirked your responsibility of providing for your family;

—you took us on vacations and road trips, and to fun activities, when finances were a constant worry;

—you might not have said the words, “I’m proud of you,” but your impish smile and the twinkle in your eye conveyed the message;

—you showed up—to birthdays and celebrations, and, on one occasion, when a gang that hung out near where we lived was harassing me, you came down to physically defend me if necessary;

—you gave me reassurance when something went wrong; and, perhaps most importantly,

—you put up with a rebellious and resentful son who gave you much to worry about (and, oh, the things you never found out about!) without going overboard in pushing back. You let me find my own way around my self-created obstacles, with one notable exception. When I announced that I was thinking of taking a year off from college, a college I had worked so hard to get into and for which you had worked so hard to finance, you did push back . . . hard. I now know that you were afraid that I would ruin my chance of getting an education—an opportunity not to be trivialized for a relatively poor kid from uneducated parents—and struggle in life like you had. With all your work and sacrifice to make sure your three children received college educations, my announcement must have come as a shock. That was something I can tell that you were afraid of. I have always been grateful that you and Mom talked me out of it.

Dad, from a pretty gruff, black and white kind of guy, who was given to occasional salty language before the wrong audience, I learned from you the nobility of hard work. I learned that, in a life fraught with conflict and compromise, there is nobility in commitment, as well as in bearing one’s burdens with resolve and steadfastness, in treating everyone, from peers, to superiors, to the waitstaff at family restaurants, to the guy who parks your car, with respect and dignity, and that there is nobility in just showing up and doing what you’re supposed to do.

It took raising my own children and reflecting on my judgment of you to realize that, when it comes to parenting, most of us are punching above our weight. And some are doing so while balancing on soft sand shifting beneath our feet, while inside, loose screws, stripped gears and mismatched parts are clanging around. And that’s quite a mixed metaphor. But isn’t life just that?

So, I know it’s rather late in the game, and that you will likely never hear this, but I wanted to thank you and say, with love and pride, “Well done, Dad.”

E.H. Jacobs is a New England-based psychologist and writer. His debut novel, Splintered River—a literary political drama—was published this fall. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a PhD in Psychology from Temple University. His work (short stories, poetry, memoir) has appeared in Hippocampus, Penstricken, The Writers’ Journal, Libre, Glacial Hills Review, Best of Choeofpleirn Press, Streetlight Magazine 2019 and 2021 Anthologies, Abandoned Mine, Coneflower Café, Santa Fe Literary Review, Permafrost Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Storgy Magazine, Streetlight Magazine, Aji Magazine, Bryant Literary Review, The Bluebird Word, and Smoky Quartz. He has participated in fiction and poetry workshops with the Kenyon Review, Carve Magazine, and Tupelo Press. He has published two books on parenting, professional papers in psychology, and articles for the general public on psychological topics, and he has been a contributing book review editor for the American Journal of Psychotherapy. He has served on the clinical faculty of Harvard Medical School. He was a finalist in the Derick Burleson Poetry and the Phil Heldrich Nonfiction Contests and was a nominee for the Nina Riggs Poetry Award. His work can be seen at www.ehjacobsauthor.com.