Dad

The photo was old and it had faded into those peculiar colors that only exist in old photos. It was creased down the middle where it had been folded, tucked away and hidden for years. On the back, the faded ink made it official — “Herbert Jaworski, 1962.”

Bert. Dad.

He was a young man in a T-shirt, full of life, grinning ear to ear, so unlike the old shell of a man Doug had met. Doug had been just a baby when his father had left, and it was Doug who had tracked him down decades later. He was a pitiful, old man living alone in a dirty room in Scranton, so ashamed of himself he had tried to lock his only son out. Doug bought him some food, bought him some soap and new clothes, and refused to leave. Eventually, they sat together, the dutiful son and his father, a man broken by life, a total failure.

Bert answered Doug’s questions in a monotone, saying as little as possible, his story painful to tell, his shame painful to witness. Nothing but bad choices and bad luck. Doug prodded and probed, searching for something he could hold onto that showed this old man had once had something, anything, to be proud of. He hadn’t found it. Bert’s life had been one sorry excuse after another.

A few days after they’d met, Doug arrived to find Bert’s final mistake, his last failure. The bullet had entered the roof of his mouth and exited through the top of his head. Even that had not gone as planned, and he was still alive, barely conscious when Doug found him. He couldn’t speak, but the shame on his face said it all. He’d died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Now Doug had the unwanted task of cleaning out the old man’s room, a lifetime of disappointment going piece by piece into trash bags. That’s when he’d found the photo, stuck in the back of a drawer and folded so that the beaming face wouldn’t show. He looked at it now, this vibrant young man, grinning and proudly kissing a shiny, brass trophy.

The image was faded and blurred. There was writing on the face of the trophy, but he couldn’t make it out. What was it? What could that young man, so full of life, have done to impress others so much that he’d earned that award? Doug sat on the edge of the old bed straining his eyes to make out the words, dreaming about his young father, a winner. The mystery was almost too much to bear. Eventually, he had to get back to the task at hand. He folded the photo and slipped it into his shirt pocket and began again to throw everything else into bags.

It didn’t take long. Anything of any value had been pawned long before, so it all went into the bags, and those went into the dumpster. A chest of drawers, a closet, a few shelves. The mess under the kitchen sink was the last space to clean. It all went straight into the trash. Tucked as far back as possible, Doug found a tattered brown paper bag. Whatever was in it had some heft to it, and when he pulled it into the light, he saw the yellow glint of metal through a rip in the paper.

Holding his breath, he reached into the sack and pulled out a shiny, brass trophy, the very one from the photo. The engraving was in a flowery cursive hand. It proudly announced, “Best Dancer Waldorf Ballroom New Year’s Eve 1962.”

From that day forward the trophy lived on Doug’s mantle, and if anyone ever asked he would beam and say, “My dad won that! He was a good man and one hell of a dancer!”