After our son, Jack, was born a little over three months ago, a few close friends and relatives sent cards and messages that assured me that my father was smiling down from heaven, a proud grandpa passing out cigars among the angels, doting on every gurgle, every grimace, every red-faced shriek from an invisible corner of the room. Tammy says that she believes babies are formed in heaven and prepared for the world by these angels. I like this idea. I like to think that when Jack smiles at nothing in particular, his eyes not focused on any shape we mortals can discern, it is because he has already seen my father as an angel and recognizes him in a way I cannot. Why shouldn’t it be so? Belief in the improbable is the foundation of hope. Faith in the unseen has sustained us for 2,000 years, or longer.

Still, there are things I want Jack to know about his granddad while he was still here on earth. I want him to know that his granddad never allowed anyone else to pay for a meal when he ate with people, whether there were two people at the table or 12, whether it was an ordinary night out or Father’s Day. He would not let anyone else pick up the tab, under any circumstances. And we used to eat out a lot. Really, these were family meetings arranged around food. My brother and sister would come, and usually their spouses, and sometimes the kids. We would spend the time catching up, or hashing out problems, or making plans for the next holiday. The restaurant was our living room.

My dad was a truck driver, and in his last few years lived in a trailer on New River Campground, not an ideal location for entertaining, although I spent a lot of nights there during my single years. Most times, I would get in late, after pizza and beers with friends I saw only on my occasional visits home. But dad would come in even later, from playing cards with his friends, and if I was still up, watching whatever was still on at one or two in the morning, we might eat half a bag of peanuts in the shell, or I would eat a whopping bowl of ice cream and he would eat candy orange slices, glazed with sugar.

The conversations we had seemed always to reflect mutual concern and worry, with a good measure of understanding and acceptance mixed in. He worried that after my divorce, I had more or less given up on the idea of ever having a family, especially as I was well into my 30s and lacking even a serious girlfriend. What did this say about my prospects for having children of my own? I assured him that I still wanted a wife and children, and that it would happen one day, trying to conceal the doubt that had grown inside me with each passing year, with each relationship that ended in disappointment.

I worried about his health, of course. He had diabetes, and serious heart trouble, but he still refused to go more than five minutes without a cigarette, ate pretty much what he pleased, and seldom got enough rest. It had already caught up with him — triple bypass, regular grave warnings from his doctors, alarm bells ringing throughout his body in the form of aches and tingles — but he always claimed to be feeling fine and doing well. He had, long ago, made peace with the consequences of his behavior and knew that death was coming, not in any abstract or faraway sense, but in the sense that the ship had already set sail and was on the way to collect him right now. He knew it, but concealed his knowledge from the people he loved because he also knew that we needed it to remain abstract and far away.

So he placated us when we hassled him about the cigarettes, or the gravy and biscuits, or playing cards all night. He told us that he “felt fine” and would go to bed early that very night and that, damn it, he needed to give up those cigarettes once and for all, something like that. Although we knew it wasn’t true, we didn’t think of it as being a lie — we knew he was looking after our feelings the best he could as long as he could.

When his ship finally did arrive, four years ago, all we could do in return is wish him a good trip. Godspeed, something like that. And all I can do now, on this Father’s Day, is tell him that I believe I can see his good nature in Jack. Yes, I can see my father after all. I recognize him in my own angel, one I not only see, but look at all the time.

(Chris Cox lives in Waynesville and teaches. He can be reached at chriscox@prodigy.net.)