Just once, no more : on fathers, sons, and who we are until we are no longer / Foran, Charles
Charles Foran offers a brief meditation on fathers and sons, love and loss, even as his own father approaches the end of life. Dave Foran was a man of few words, seemingly from a different era than his sensitive, literary son, Charlie. Among other adventures, Dave had lived in the bush, been snow-blinded, hauled a dead body across a frozen lake on a dog sled, dodged a bullet during a bar fight, and gone toe to toe with a bear. Aspects of his life were like tall tales while others were more somber and enigmatic: A decent father to Charlie and his siblings, and a devoted husband to Charlie's mother, Dave was a tough, emotionally distant man, prone to gruff cynicism and a changeable mood. When Charlie turned 55, his father began a slow and, as it turned out, final decline. And Charlie felt something he'd never imagined before: a mysterious desire to write about his relationship with his father. On the surface, the motivation was to help lift an inchoate burden from his father's shoulders, to reassure him that he was loved. But there was also another, more personal motivation.