Not sure exactly why, but late Saturday night I decided to look up my dad’s obituary. I’m guessing it was partly because it was Father’s Day Eve, but it was also out of sheer curiosity. I couldn’t remember how long ago he had died nor how old he had been, and had never bothered to investigate before.

Thanks to Newspapers.com, I found the obit in the April 30, 2003 edition of the Asbury Park Press: William J. Jones, 85, of Whiting (N.J.). It mentions how he was born in Wilkes-Barre, how he had served in the Army Signal Corps in World War II, how he had worked at Culbro Corporation (which I remember as American Tobacco Company, a warehouse in Paterson, N.J.) for 33 years, ending in 1979.

It mentions my stepmother, a woman who visited untold turmoil upon our family. It does not mention my mom, Ethel, who died nearly four decades earlier. Cancer. (The above photo of the two of them is circa 1945, I’m guessing.)

There was a brief mention of my sister and me, as well as our step-siblings, and that was about it. Eighty-five years, boiled down to about 200 words.

Of course my mind ventured down assorted avenues as a result. Of him coming home from work all those years ago, when we lived in Hawthorne, a small town in Northern New Jersey. He always smelled of tobacco and carried his metal lunchpail, as well as a copy of the New York Daily News that I read back to front — i.e., from the sports section forward. (How had the Yankees — the between-dynasties Yankees of Mel Stottlemyre, Horace Clarke and Joe Pepitone — done the previous day?)

And I think of him watching my mom fade away. Of him remarrying a few years later. And of him ultimately turning his back on my sister and me. She headed off to college shortly after his second marriage. I was shunted off to boarding school in fifth grade, which was my stepmother’s doing. It wouldn’t be her last underhanded act, goodness knows. She was bent on driving a wedge between Dad and us, and he let it happen.

I seldom saw him from the time he married in 1972 until his death. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we crossed paths. Maybe it was at one of his birthday parties in New Jersey — maybe — in the 1990s. Seems to me that somebody asked me to stand up and say a few words, which I did, even as my stepmother said in a stage whisper, “Why should HE say anything?”

A true gem of a human being.

And I can’t remember the last time I heard his voice. Think it was when he called me on the phone in the late ‘90s. I welcomed the call, as he hadn’t ever bothered to reach out. Yes, he and my stepmother had been there when I graduated from college in 1980, and when I had gotten married six years later. But he hadn’t even called when his grandson was born in 1994. In fact, he never met our son.

So to hear Dad on the other end of the line was incredibly uplifting. But alas, he was only calling on behalf of his step-grandkids, to ask if I knew how to go about getting autographs at a Phillies game. I did not, and he couldn’t get off the phone quickly enough. (I’ve always suspected my stepmother was listening in on another line.)

Another time I tried to arrange that we attend a Phils game together, but true to form, she invented some reason as to why he couldn’t make it. So we remained estranged. I didn’t go to the funeral, and have no regrets about that. Our family — i.e., his real family — staged a memorial service of our own, and I’d like to think we honored his memory while avoiding the drama my stepmother certainly would have created.

Obviously I feel some hurt and anger over the way things unfolded. At the same time, it’s still your dad. There’s still a bond, however tenuous. You still love him. That was always my thought over the years: If all my stepmom’s roadblocks had been removed, I would have forgiven him in a minute. I would have welcomed him back into my life, without question or reservation.

Now, as a father myself, I wonder if I’m doing it right. There was certainly no template to follow, no roadmap. I know I love our son to death, that I’ve tried to support him, that I would do anything for him. But I also know I have significant shortcomings, that I’m only capable of doing so much. (And it is here that I will express thanks for my wife, a woman of great strength and decency.)

I wonder something else, too. I wonder if somewhere down the line I’ll see Dad again. I’m not a spiritual person (speaking of shortcomings), but I think about how wonderful it would be to cross paths with him — and my mom — once more. To sit and talk and laugh and love. To make up for lost time. To rebuild all the bridges that had been nuked by others.

Goodness, that would be great.