I have been an orphan since 1997.

My father died when I was 19. My mother passed away 29 years ago. Both were ill for many years before their lives had ended.

Their deaths meant very little to me; in fact, I felt relieved. No more did I have to visit my father in the hospital or drive my mother to the cemetery to place a pine branch Christmas blanket upon the grave of a man I had never really known. No more did I have to take time from my busy life to visit my mom and wash her windows, take her grocery shopping, cut the grass or force a conversation while she opened another bottle of beer.

Whenever I visit my girlfriend’s 95-year-old father, I listen to him tell stories about his life growing up on a farm. I realize that I know more about his childhood than I ever knew about my parents when they were growing up. That reality should not bother me at my age.

But it does.

I have one photograph of my dad. He’s 15 years old in 1932. He’s wearing a baseball uniform and holding a glove. Having played and coached the game for many years, baseball is my favorite sport. Was Dad a pitcher? Was he a good hitter? He looks so healthy, nothing like the hunched over man who struggled to breath for five long years after he was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers and emphysema.

In the only photographs I have of my mother, she is wearing a gorgeous white wedding dress, looking elegant, beautiful. I only saw her looking haggard and tired after ironing rich people’s clothes all day while wearing a faded flowered house dress, one of maybe three that she had owned.

Mom grew up in Hazleton. She quit school when she was 17 to marry my father, and the rest of the story is a sad history of joblessness, empty liquor bottles and late Saturday night arguments with finger-pointing about who was to blame for our family living on welfare and food stamps.

I was 11 years old during their battles, in bed squeezing the pillow over my ears to stifle their yelling at each other.

I wish I could ask them questions that I have no answers for today.

“Hey Dad, you were an orphan. How hard was it growing up in Beaver Meadows and taking care of five siblings after your mom and dad died?”

“Hey Mom, how did you feel when you read the love letters that I found in a shoebox Dad wrote to you before you were married that you never told me about?”

For much of my childhood, I was an orphan living in a house with two strangers. I had a moment of being an angry teenager, shouting at my mother that the man walking around the house in his boxer shorts was no father to me.

She narrowed her eyes. “You have a roof over your head, food on the table, and clothes on your back. You should be grateful.”

My reply was, “I can get all of that in an orphanage.”

There’s a hole in my heart, an emptiness left there by the two people who brought me into this world. They left little impression, and virtually no guidance that sent me out the door a shy, insecure young man.

Author Kazuo Ishiguro wrote, “Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.”

On my visit to Mom a few months before we had to check her into a nursing home, I asked, “Why do you never lock the back door? Anybody can walk right in.”

She said, “I’m good with anybody walking right in.”

She was 75 and living alone. At a time so long ago, that unlocked door welcomed Mrs. Weikert and Mrs. Bogus, our neighbors, and my high school friends with just the holler, “Come on in!” Then when Mrs. Weichert moved away, Mrs. Bogus died, and my high school buddies moved on with their lives, that unlocked door was as good as locked shut with a shut-in living inside.

It’s taken many years of reflection to forgive Mom and Dad for what they didn’t or couldn’t do for me. I understand now what I didn’t before.

After his parents died, Dad, the oldest of six, had to be a father for his brothers and sisters when he was still a teenager. After he died, any hope for Mom to restart her life was lost inside old love letters and empty beer bottles. Forgiveness has left me with peace of mind and an acceptance of their shortcomings that has inspired made me to try to be the best dad I can be for my children.

I wish I could clean Mom’s windows once more. Together we could look through the glass. I’d show her how beautiful the world is outside. I wish I could go fishing with my father. We’d sit on a dock under the light of the summer sky. I’d seek his advice about life and say something I had never said to him.

“I love you, Dad!”

Author Marlowe Granados wrote, “It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to help see you through it.”

If I could wave a magic wand; If I could turn back time, I’d open the unlocked back door to the house I grew up in and there would be Mom and Dad, healthy and happy to see me.

And I’d never be an orphan again.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com