Three nights ago my son began screaming and wouldn’t stop. He was not hungry or cold or wet or dirty. He was simply sad because his father was deployed far away, and so he screamed. He screamed to fill up the hole left in him by his daddy’s absence. He screamed because he knew exactly how deep and wide the hole was, and he wanted to fill it with something, even if that something was air.

Now my partner is back home for two weeks — before going away again — and my son is happy but cautious. He will not let his daddy out of his sight. His concern and attachment is sweet and honest, and I suspect it will never go away.

I don’t think we ever fill the hole left by the loss of our fathers, whether we loved them ­­— or even liked them — or not. I think that there is a daddy-shaped hole in all of us, a fossil of the man who came before us that is carved while he is still in our lives. It is this hole that makes us look for dad in the crowd while performing in the school play or ask dad to edit a paper for class or feel guilty, or excited, when you date someone of whom he would not approve. It is this fossil that shapes our idea of the nature of a man, both in terms how to be one and how to understand one.

During the holidays, two friends lost their fathers. One was a bizarre shock and a medical mystery; the other was the result of a long fight with cancer. Both friends thought they would have more time to prove themselves to their fathers. Both had hoped at some point in their lives, however ridiculous, that they would achieve everything their daddies had hoped when they held their sons for the first time. I think there is a part in all of us that harbors that dream. We feel that we should have played football. We should’ve made the dean’s list; we should not have made the same mistakes. Making peace with what we imagine or know to be our fathers’ expectations is no simple task, especially when all to soon we find ourselves without our fathers.

As students, it is easy to imagine our growth in a vacuum. At school we grow stronger and smarter and more socially adept. Through our failures and experiences within higher education, we assume we will catch up to our fathers. We picture them waiting for us so that at long last father and offspring can race together, keeping exact rhythm and pace. But the cruelties of physics deny us the pleasures of equality. Just like us, our fathers will never stop moving forward until they are so far ahead we cannot see them. Likewise, as we grow stronger, our parents begin to diminish.

When I am writing papers or flashcards, sometimes I look up and see my partner and son playing together. I see the weight in my partner’s eyes as he prepares to go back to Iraq. He worries that he will run out of time to teach our son about life. He worries he will be forgotten. He worries that he will never be able to say, “I love you” enough times so that my son knows what most of us often forget. Our fathers are proud of us just for existing, just for surviving all the mistakes they made as parents, just for being who we are, warts and all.

Some of our fathers left us, in some form or another, years ago, and some of our fathers are far too large a part of our adult lives, helping us defray our student fees, hiring a lawyer when we get in over our heads or lecturing us when we pull a ‘C’ in biology. Our fathers have a power over us, for what they gave or what they didn’t, and this hold will be a part of us for years to come.

My father-in-law died a little over two years ago after a short and difficult life. He was a man filled with charisma and regret, who had not taken advantage of the opportunity to be more involved in his son’s life. His cremated remains now lay in an expensive steel urn in my son’s closet. They have traveled with us to three apartments over the years and have yet to be awarded a designated space in our home. They are in limbo because they are part of a “to-do list.” My partner is planning to bury his father, but only when he is ready. When that day comes, he will dig a hole in the ground and begin to fill up the one in his heart.

Reach columnist Elizabeth Brady at features@dailyuw.com.