My father was 36 when I was born.
I was 36 when he died.
He gave me his name: Joseph Groff. I’m a junior. My name is Joseph Groff, Jr. People call me Joey.
After I was born, he lived with us for 18 years.
He took me to baseball. He coached soccer. He watched me play hockey. He let me hold the wood as he sawed it and the sweat dripped from his nose. He smoked cigarettes. He read the paper. He listened to oldies.
And he took pills. And he screamed at people. And he scared people. And he hit people. And he hurt people.
And then he left.
He left my family. He left my mother. He left with another woman and moved from New Jersey to Florida.
And I never saw him again.
For 18 more years I did not see my father.
When I found out he died, and saw the obituary that I assume was written by his new wife, I was struck by something: his name was listed as Joseph Groff, Sr.
Senior was part of his name in the obituary.
That was odd to me.
He was only senior because I was junior. Senior was not part of his name. It was not part of his legal name. He was only senior to separate his name from mine. It’s an odd thing to include for a man who left the son he named after himself. When that woman wrote the obituary and shared details about how he liked to take walks and swim, she typed a comma, an S, an R, and a period after his name. When she typed that, did she think of me? Did it register that those letters were attached to his name because a 36 year-old man existed as a result of him and his choices?
She wrote that he was survived by “three grown children.”
That’s my sisters and me.
We were the three grown children.
No names. No details. Just children. Three of them. Grown ones.
But as she wrote his name, and those letters, did she think of the boy? The boy who was given the name of his father?
I wonder if she thought about why he gave his name to that boy. Was it because he wanted him to carry it with him through his life. Was it a special name? Did it mean something more than simply being a way to identify a person? Did he want the boy to honor it? To do it justice? To make it famous? To improve on it? To pass it on to the boy’s own son? A son the boy will never have.
There was a day when he decided to call this boy the same name as his own. There was a day when he gave that boy his name. There was a day when he added a comma, two letters, and a period to the end of his own name. That day was 36 years after he was born and 36 years before he died. That was the day he altered his name. The day I became Joseph Groff, Jr.
It made me wonder if he always wrote his name as Joseph Groff, Sr. When he applied for a mortgage on the house he bought with the woman he had an affair with, did he write it? Did he add the Sr.? He didn’t need to. It’s not a legal thing. But if he did, did he think of me? Did he think of me whenever he wrote the comma, S, R, and period?
I think of him every time I add the comma, J, R, and period to my name. I don’t do it often, but some forms ask for it. So I add it. I add the “Jr.”. And every time, every single time, I think of this man. This man who had a boy when he was 36 years-old. This man who died 36 years after that. This man who named that boy after himself. This man who altered his own name and created two new names.
This man who had anger in him.
This man who had violence in him.
This man who had the capacity to hurt the people he loved.
To beat them.
To smash things in the house.
To scream.
To scare the people he loved. To scare the people who loved him.
To scare the boy. The boy with his name.
The boy who wasn’t born with the same impulses as him. The boy who feels disconnected from his own anger. From his own rage. Who fears his own fear. His fear from this man. His fear of this man.
There is a boy who arrived 36 years after the man was born. And 36 years before the man died. He is a boy who shares a name, shared an age, but shares little else with the man. He was a boy, now a man, and he has a name. He has a name that will never be his own. A name that means he doesn’t fully exist on his own. A name that means he will never simply be. He will always be the other. The created. The copy. The junior.
There is a boy who is now a man. And that boy has a name. It’s a name that will always include the man’s name. The man’s name, a comma, two letters, and a period.
Well written, hard to read, but real. Good. Thanks for sharing your writing with the world.
I have never once thought about the weight that accompanies those two letters. As if the genetic code embedded in your cells isn’t enough.
You are me, but you’re also not. I have expectations for you, but I will not tell you what they are, and I will disappear before you’ve had the chance to work it out.
I wonder if this man, and others before and after him, considered these things at all when bestowing those letters, or more importantly, much later on when their implication(s) made themselves known.
I love this and I love you.