Woodruff Park

I had driven past Woodruff Park hundreds of times in the prior twenty years.

Considered a “pocket park,” Woodruff Park is a small but well landscaped patch of grass, trees, and winding pathways in the heart of downtown Atlanta. It sits on a busy stretch of Peachtree Street, surrounded by high rise buildings, retail shops, and the classroom buildings of Georgia State University. Because of its location, you never knew who you might see there on any given day. With its proximity to the Five Points MARTA Station, the city’s main public transportation hub, you could always count on a high number of folks who were down on their luck or homeless, making the park their refuge. Some would lie in the grass next to plastic bags holding everything they owned, others would gather at the row of immovable concrete tables in the center of the park, playing board games or just sitting.

City leaders tried all kinds of policies to reduce the homeless presence, but Woodruff Park’s reputation as a safe haven meant these members of Atlanta’s community were there to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

Although it was a convenient cut through for people living, working, or going to school nearby, most folks avoided the park because of its unpredictability. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually walked through it, but I drove past it regularly during my workday. My office was a few blocks north on Peachtree, and I’d pass Woodruff Park on my way to City Hall, sometimes as many as three times a week for legal work. In all that time, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone I knew in the park as I passed by in my car. So on the day in question, I was caught off guard by what I saw. 

I was stopped at a red light next to the park, already running late for a meeting at City Hall, when I glanced out my window. There, walking slowly through the park as if they had not a care in the world, were my brother Ace and my father.

I’d never seen Ace there before, but it wasn’t inconceivable, he was struggling with bipolar disorder, and sometimes he’d find a spot on the street to clear his mind. But seeing him and my father together was a surprise.

Pop had just returned from one of his regular trips to Egypt that morning. Usually, it took him a day to recover and regroup before he was fully functional again. It was also his routine, after coming back from overseas, to reach out individually to my mother, my siblings, and me, just to check in and make sure we were all okay. I knew he was returning that day, so I expected to hear from him soon. To look out my car window and see him strolling through Woodruff Park with Ace caught me completely off guard.

They were laughing. Not polite laughter. They were laughing the way people laugh when they have forgotten, for a moment, everything else in the world. And there they were, the two men who had taught me, each in his own way, what it meant to be a man, walking together through Woodruff Park.

I had no way of knowing that one day I would give almost anything to be back at that red light.

I honked several times as the light turned green, pulling off as they both looked over with big smiles. My father broke into one of those silly dances he would do when he was especially happy to see me.

“My brother, the lawyer!” Ace yelled, throwing his arm out toward me. “Come on!”

Pop was already dancing, that ridiculous little dance he did whenever seeing one of his children made him especially happy.

I pointed toward City Hall. “I’m late!”

Pop smiled and put his hand to his ear: Call me.

Then the light changed.

And I drove away.

The smiles on their faces showed they were as happy to see me as I was to see them.

Within six years of that day, both my father and Ace had died unexpectedly.

For years afterward, I would replay those few seconds differently. In every new version, the light turns red again. I put the car in park. I get out. I walk over to them.

But memory does not negotiate.

First, it was my father, who became ill and died while he and my mother were traveling in Egypt. He was just a little more than a week away from his 74th birthday and had been in perfect health when I dropped him and my mother at the airport one week earlier.

Ace took his life twenty months after our father’s death. I mostly attribute his suicide to the culmination of his twenty five year battle with depression. But in the time between our father’s passing and his own, Ace talked often about how much he missed our dad. And while I tried not to dwell on how important my father had been to Ace’s will to fight for his health, deep inside I knew that Ace’s struggle had become exponentially more difficult without our father’s calming influence.

When they were alive, I had never seriously imagined a world without either of them in it. Maybe that is one of the privileges of being loved deeply: you begin to mistake someone's presence for permanence. Even now, I’m careful to only conjure up memories of them in moderation, and for short periods, so the memories that make me smile or laugh don’t also make me sad and lonely. I looked to them for my sense of manhood and masculinity. Each knew me well, understood the impact they had on me, and found their own ways to speak to my spirit.

Because my mother and sisters are the only people on earth who truly understand what my father and brother meant to our family, and to me, I am grateful for their continued presence in my life. But I’ve also learned that grieving is a uniquely personal exercise, and their absence created an empty place in me that only God has taught me how to carry.

I have a million memories of my father and brother, but there is only one memory of both of them together that keeps returning to me, most often in my dreams.

It is always Woodruff Park.

I am back at the light.

There is Ace. There is Pop. They are laughing. Pop starts dancing. Ace is calling me over.

This time, I decide to stop.

I reach for the door.

It will not unlock.

I pull the handle again. And again. I can see them right there on the other side of the glass, but I cannot get to them.

Sometimes I wake up still fighting with that damn door.

All I wanted in the dream were the few minutes I had been too busy to take when they were still alive.

I don't remember what meeting I was late for that day.

I don't remember what happened when I got there.

I remember Pop dancing.

I remember Ace calling, “My brother, the lawyer!”

I remember the light turning green.

And I remember that I kept going.

As the years have gone by, I have still driven past Woodruff Park several times a week.

Every time I drive by, I still look into the park. I know they will not be there. I look anyway.

For just a second, I search the grass and the concrete tables for two men walking slowly together, one of them laughing and the other liable to break into a silly dance when he sees his son.

Sometimes, at that same light, I find myself talking out loud,

“Ace. Pop. I see y'all.”

Maybe some part of me still wants them to hear me.

I’m convinced my father and brother lived their lives with urgency. Some of the best evidence is that they were both wonderful storytellers. They filled my head with stories, all of which have helped sustain me in their absence, in large and small ways.

God has never filled the place they left in me.

For a long time, I wondered why He wouldn't.

Eventually I understood that perhaps healing was never supposed to mean filling it.

God taught me how to live around the empty place, to carry it without allowing it to swallow everything that remained.

And strangely, I am grateful He left some of the ache there.

Because the ache remembers.

Woodruff Park taught me something I wish I had understood while Pop and Ace were still here: love should have a sense of urgency.

Make the call.

Tell the story.

Sit down for a few more minutes.

Get out of the damn car.

Because we almost never recognize the last ordinary moment while we are living it.

Today, when I think about Woodruff Park, I think less about the minutes I lost with Pop and Ace and more about what those lost minutes taught me about being Asa Pearl's father.

Maybe that is why I pour so much into her. Why I tell her the stories. Why I call when I could wait. Why I sometimes linger when I could leave. Why I try, imperfectly, to make certain she never has to wonder whether her father understood the privilege of having one more minute with her.

One day, God willing many years from now, I will become a memory too.

And Asa Pearl may find herself trying to understand all the energy I poured into her, the conversations, the lessons, the stories, the times I showed up when perhaps she thought I was doing too much.

When that day comes, I hope she remembers Woodruff Park.

I hope she understands that her father once drove away from two men he loved because he thought he was late for something important.

And I hope she understands that I spent the rest of my life learning what important really meant.

Pop was dancing.

Ace was laughing.

The light turned green.

I kept driving.

I never forgot again.

That is the wisdom of my heart.