Ten Years Without Dad

Well sons they search for fathers

But the fathers are all gone

The lost souls search for saviors

But saviors don’t last long…

The confederacy’s in my name now

The hounds are held at bay

The axis needs a stronger arm

Do you feel your muscles play

-Bruce Springsteen, “Song for Orphans”

In the summer of 1972, my father Peter George Saharko turned 47 years old. Three months later, he would lose his wife after a long battle with illness. He continued working for the school he had honored with athletic brilliance and dedicated public service for more than 30 years, but the strain of all the responsibilities that the school placed upon him was taking its toll. He lovingly cared for his daughter Beverly but without any support. The mother who loved him so much and the father who abandoned him were both gone. He must have felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he must have felt so alone. And, unbeknownst to him, in his chest there was a ticking time bomb.

Within five years, he would lose his treasured brother Steve to a heart attack, and he would suffer his own massive heart attack. And he found away to manage it all- all the loss, all the bills, all the stress, all the demands- and yet put into the world only strength, kindness, decency, and grace.

I think about that time in my father’s life as I, now 47, face the extraordinary challenges of middle age. I still have so much to learn from his example and from the strength that he showed in the face of adversity. I just wish he was around to continue to teaching me those lessons and to see the ways in which I’ve grown into honoring his legacy.

My father died ten years ago today. Since then, I’ve had two children, my career has grown in remarkable ways, my mother has also passed, I’ve moved from my beloved D.C. to a lovely old farmhouse in the woods of New Jersey, and I lost two lifelong friends too early. As much as life has changed, nothing will ever change my life the way that January 13, 2013 did.

I’m still evolving and growing, but the person I was in 2013 did not have the maturity, grace, or emotional intelligence that I do today. I don’t want to get too spiritual, but it almost feels like so many of my father’s best qualities passed to me when I lost him. Or, more likely, he had been preparing me to be like him my whole life, and it just take time to get comfortable enough in my skin to embrace those gifts.

And how I need them. Every day is a challenge. Just this week, we’ve had both kids home at least one day, work has come in super-hot, and everything seems to be moving at a frenzied pace. To be honest, life has often just seemed off in these ten years since he’s been gone. Between Trump and the pandemic, there’s been a palpable malaise across the country, and everyone always seems stretched thin and stressed out.

To soldier on, I carry with me all the things that I learned from my father. I know the benefit of having a core set of beliefs and living my life by them. I treasure loyalty and offer it steadfastly. I recognize the value in being generous and selfless towards friends and family but also towards the vulnerable and forgotten. I understand the peace and joy that comes from successful hard work, whether it’s a work project completed or a fallen tree chopped into firewood.

I also know where I’m not living up to his example. I am not a man of faith right now, and I hope I find my way back to it in the next decade. I often don’t have his good sense of when to leave thoughts unsaid. I certainly don’t command the respect that he did whenever he walked to in a room.

But I also know that some of those differences are just fine. My father, for all his wonderful attributes, was walked over a lot in his life because of his passivity. I praise him all the time for his quiet dignity and how much everyone loved him, but if my aggressive, boisterous, conflict-friendly mother hadn’t fought like hell, he wouldn’t have gone to Texas to have Denton Cooley perform his heart surgery and he likely wouldn’t have been in my life those 37 years.

I think my father loved and appreciated the fighter in my mother, and I think he’d be proud of that aspect of my personality. There’s another path these last few years where I would have eaten some really nasty and aggressive behavior in various places and I would have come out of it with the highest of accolades for being nice, decent, and kind. There’s a duality to certain nominally bad qualities- you don’t want to live your life making enemies, but sometimes you need to stand up to someone who’s wrong. You sacrifice some likability and some respect to fight for what’s necessary in this cruel world. It’s a bargain I’ve made, and if that makes me more like Sally in that way, I suppose I wear it as a badge of honor. I believe my father would honor it too.

I know what I lost on January 13, 2013. No one will ever love me as purely or devotedly as he did. I still look to his example constantly and mourn his loss every single day. I treasured every moment that I got with him. And as I look back on where he was in 1972, I find a kinship I never before, and it strengthens me on those hardest days.

I love you, Dad.