Tim Hollister - His Father Still: A Parenting Memoir

Praise for His Father Still

Tim Hollisters writing is fearless. As he tells the painful and beautiful story of his teenage sons life, he examines in retrospect when he needed to protect his beloved boy and when he needed to let Reid be Reid. Rules, rebellion, academics, driving fast: this book is for every parent who has ever anguished about how to be a parent. Read this and grow in wisdom and love.

Mally Cox-Chapman, Author of The Case for Heaven

Tim Hollisters honest narrative of his experience will help parents better understand the calculus of the exposure vs. protection dilemma that we all face. Anyone who wants to be a safer and smarter parent should read this book.

Brendan Campbell, M.D., M.P.H., Medical Director, Pediatric Trauma Program, Connecticut Childrens Medical Center

This book masterfully weaves together the travails of parenting, which are temporary, with vivid illustrations of the parent-child bond, which endures no matter what. Along the way, it demonstrates the power of a caring faith community to help a family, in the wake of tragedy, to find Gods grace in each day.

The Rev. Matt Laney, Senior Minister, Asylum Hill Congregational Church

This book helped me, as a mother who lost a daughter, to understand that we are always parents to our children, no matter on what path life takes us. As a professional who works with teens on safe choices, I gained a new appreciation of how we guide our young people through the dangerous rites of passage they face every day.

Brandy Nannini, Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility

His Father Still is a story delivered with love, insight, grace, courage, and honesty. Tim delves into the struggles that parents face in trying to decide what is best for their children and how to protect them. This book demonstrates that relationships with our children do not end, even if our kids leave us, but take on new dimensions. As a parent who lost her daughter in a vehicle crash, I know all too well the journey about which Tim writes. His recounting celebrates each childs individuality, and the unconditional, eternal love that parents provide.

Robin Thompson, RN, Med, Founder and CEO, The ART of Driving

In His Father Still, Tim Hollister provides a self-critical and intimate look at parenting that will help all parents as we wonder how we are doing at the most important job we will ever have. Ultimately, Tim achieves a new and enduring connection with Reid, one that will continue to evolve. A must read not only for parents, but also for all who want to understand and better comfort those who are suffering.

Joel Feldman, Founder of End Distracted Driving

Tims story is a message that every fatherand mothershould hear about being a parent, especially through changing fortunes: that love is eternal and lives on in powerful ways.

William Seymour, Office of the Commissioner Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles

This beautifully written book is profoundly deep, powerful, and insightful. Tim Hollisters journey as a father and friend before, during, and after his teenage sons fatal car crash are exquisitely described and touch the deepest human emotions and exploration of faith. A tour de force and a must read.

Garry Lapidus, Director, Injury Prevention Center Connecticut Childrens Medical Center / Hartford Hospital, Associate Professor Pediatrics & Public Health University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Also by Tim Hollister

Not So Fast: Parenting Your Teen Through the Dangers of Driving (Chicago Review Press)

His

Father

Still

A Parenting Memoir

Tim Hollister

This is a true story depicting real events and real people.

I have used fictitious names when necessary to protect privacy or confidentiality.

Copyright 2015 by RSH, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, downloaded, scanned, stored, or distributed in any form or manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage any piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address RSH, LLC c/o David Black Agency, 335 Adams Street, 27th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

www.fromreidsdad.org

eBook ISBN: 978-0-78675-632-2

Print ISBN: 978-0-7867-5631-5

Cover design by Maria Ramsay

Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services

To Ellen, for giving me permission and time to write this.

To Martha, for persevering.

To Gracie, for wagging her tail through the darkest days.

To Reid, my son still.

Contents

As our kids grow into teens, we let out a tether, allowing our sons and daughters to experience life and its risks firsthand. We try to strike the right balance, allowing them to face danger because its part of growing up, but pulling them back before they see for themselves what happens when they touch a live wire, lean too far over a cliff, or put the accelerator too far down. Fear and frustration unavoidably haunt this process, because granting freedom means seeing less of what is happening at the tethers other end. We hope that the tension in the extended line is our kids remaining connected to us, but we are less and less sure. Presence and control give way to being satisfied with our teens returning to us, wiser for their experiences but physically unharmed. We thank our stars for the strides they have taken toward adulthood, and the gods for their having sidestepped the worst-case scenario.

Sometimes, however, the tether breaks, and at a time when the life that had been pulling it taut is largely hidden by this maddening phenomenon of raising teens by letting them go and giving them space. With teens, car crashes are the most frequent cause of these breaks, though there are many others.

Yet when a catastrophe occurs, we dont, cant, and wont just walk away, because of course, parents are never untethered. Slack in the line, especially when it involves a teen, forces a retracing of how we let out that tether and ultimately creates a need, in lieu of what was, for a sustainable connection. In other words, the parent-child connection never really breaks, and in the aftermath of a cataclysmic change, we yearn for a renewed attachment.

This book is the story of a tether that broke and how I set about evaluating my letting go vs. reeling in, learning who had been at its other end, and devising a hereafter. That is, in the months after my seventeen-year-old sons passing in a one-car crash, I considered, reconsidered, and agonized over this balance of exposing vs. protecting, and how I had handled itor not. As I tended to the many unrelenting and surprising demands that were thrust upon me as a father who had lost a son, I revisited the choices, decisions, and assumptions I had made as a father. Yes, of course there was grief and despair, but also a review, all while I was attending to an unthinkable set of new responsibilities. My reflection was spurred not by guilt or a need to absolve myself over his driving on one night; my focus was the life I had given him, including the lengths to which the tether had extended, and what he had taken from his degrees of freedom. My inquiry was less burdened by the feeling that I had made an obvious mistake than confused by the sense that I hadnt. Our father-son relationship, now entirely rearranged by his loss, needed to settle, and I started by replaying the metaphorical tape and taking notes.