Like Father, Like Son
Like Father, Like Son
The photos I’ve attached show two simple moments—just a son and his father sharing a meal, a smile, a slice of pepperoni pizza. Yet these were not ordinary moments. They were sacred ones. In a way that only makes sense when you have walked someone home, these pictures capture what might have been our “last supper,” and they hold a story of reconciliation, redemption, and the quiet holiness of caregiving.
For much of my adult life, my relationship with my father was strained. After I left for the military—following in his footsteps as he once served in the National Guard—our paths separated. He struggled with addiction, went AWOL, and drifted into long seasons where he only called when he needed something. The hurt of those years sat deep within me. I had spent my childhood looking up to him, and spent my adulthood trying to navigate the ache of being a son who sometimes had to act like a father to his own father. Those experiences pushed a wedge between us, and for a long time, we lived estranged.
But then came the call. He wasn’t moving. Something was wrong. As his healthcare proxy, I initiated the wellness check. That one decision opened a door I didn’t know God had been holding for me all along. From that moment until his final breath six to eight months later, I became his primary caregiver. And something changed—slowly, quietly, tenderly.
Those last months were some of the most painful, yet the most precious, of my life.
In the military uniform I had earned over three decades—now a Colonel, the Senior State Chaplain—there I stood not as an officer or a minister, but simply as a son. I fed him, held his hand, cleaned up his messes, reminded him of the day of the week, answered his anxious questions, teased him lovingly when he got cranky, and sat beside him in bed at night just to help him feel safe. I rediscovered the man behind the wounds, the stories behind the failures, the father behind the brokenness.
One day as he ate pizza—the meal in the photo—he looked at me with childlike gratitude and asked, “You’ll be here tomorrow, right?”
And without hesitation, I said, “Yes, Dad. I’ll be here.”
