My yesterday destination is 1165 S. Williams. I walk past the light-brown brick house a few times a year, thinking of the days when seven Ramseys crammed into this cozy 1930s Arts and Crafts bungalow in south Denver.

On each walk, I linger in the driveway and return to a Saturday morning from late 1996. We had said goodbye to my mother two days earlier in a bitterly dark funeral. She died, only 65, in a car wreck on I-25 on the way to her mother’s 98th birthday party. Mom had been destined for 98 years, at least. She was healthy and radiant.

I was catching a ride to the airport with a friend, and it was time to say goodbye to my father. Mom was a talker deluxe, and you never needed to guess her mood. Dad went long stretches without talking and revealed almost nothing. I talked four or five hours a month by phone with my mom. I had talked four or five hours on the phone with my father during my entire life.

He was something else. When dad went to the dentist to get a tooth pulled, he waved off any painkiller. “Just pull it,” he said in his East Texas drawl. One night, while we worked at a rental house he owned, a power saw caught the end of his finger. He held up his bloody hand to show me, and he was laughing. He wanted to keep working. I demanded we head to the emergency room.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d leave you alone, but mom would never forgive me, or you. You want to tangle with her?”

He reluctantly allowed me to drive him for stitches.

As a child, my mother would tell me how wonderful I was and of all the big things waiting for me just around the bend. I knew I was nowhere near as special as mom said but treasured her exaggerations.

A couple times, I saw dad’s stern eyes from across the room. I realized, even at 10 years old, his eyes were the eyes of reality. Dad knew life was tough, and that’s why he was so tough. Dad’s eyes told the truth: I would have to work for everything.

On that gloomy Saturday morning in the driveway, I moved to hug him goodbye and halfway into my lunge remembered dad was not a hugger. I tried to find the words to let him know my heart would be with him, and I guess he was trying, too, but we failed to say anything.

For a long moment, I looked at my silent, crushed father and wondered where we would go without mom to guide us. I loved him deeply, and never doubted he loved me, but at the end of the worst week of my life we were lost. It was a long drive to the airport.

And then, from nowhere, joyous surprise after joyous surprise.

Dad stunned me, and probably himself. He called often, full of questions about my job and his grandchildren and projects at my house and on and on. I realized dad always had been intensely interested in us but utilized mom as his reporter. With mom gone, he became the reporter.

The next summer, I flew home by myself to see dad. He cooked a big dinner each night, and at the end of the meal he leaned back in his wooden chair and started an epic conversation. Dad examined the Old Testament and old movies, the fall of Rome and the fall of Adolf Hitler. He talked of his childhood and his days as a soldier in Japan immediately after World War II. I didn’t truly know him before mom’s death. At his dinner table, I finally met my father.

Dad died 10 years, to the day, after we buried mom. In those years, he transformed from the stern and precious anchor of my life to cheery confidante. We talked about everything, no matter how uncomfortable. We laughed so much. My mighty father had long silently challenged me to be tougher. In his final years, he challenged me to grow in tenderness and generosity.

It’s so hard to change. I sometimes wonder if I can discard a slice of my personality that troubles me and troubles others, and then I remember my dad’s late-life transformation and quit wondering and start working. When mom died, dad knew he had to embrace mom’s role as the nurturing, affirming, uplifting center of the big family she had suddenly departed. It wasn’t his nature. It didn’t matter. He discovered, along with the rest of us, a fresh side of himself.

This afternoon, on My Father’s Day, I will visit that driveway at 1165 S. Williams. I’ll hear his drawl and his laughter and honor the rock of my life. Dad never cried. It wasn’t his thing.

I promise you, I’ll do my best not to weep.

David Leon Ramsey opened up to his family in his last decade.

Courtesy photo