On being happy

My father was happy. He made himself so.

When people would ask him how he was, he would say, "Happy!"

One day he and I went into the stump woods in central Florida where he had a crew working harvesting pine stumps miles from anywhere, just miles of private dirt roads.

When we got there, my father started visiting with Fox, a crew boss and a dear friend. My father loved him like a brother.

All of a sudden, for no discernible reason, Fox clutched his chest, turned white, began to pour huge globs of sweat and fell to the ground. He died with his head in my father's lap.

No EMS, no ER. No cell phones in that day. We were miles away from anywhere. We laid him on the grass in the shade of an old live oak and then we got in the car to go get help. My father cried as he drove. His heart was clearly broken.

We came to a dirt road, then a hard road and, eventually, to a service station. He got out and called the authorities. Then he came back to the car to wait for them to come.

While he was standing there, a local rancher, an old friend, drove up. He got out and came towards us, saying, "Hey, Clint, how you doing?"

My father paused in his grief, straightened his posture, turned towards his friend, smiled through tears that continued to fall and said, "Happy." And he was. He made that conscious choice. He became happy.

Of course he grieved. But he stayed happy.

I was a child. I didn't get it at the time.

Now I do.