Marin resident remembers her father

I inherited my strong, sturdy body from my father, who was an athlete, scholar and spiritual and social justice leader — you might say a heroic man — who I loved and looked up to. He died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, when I was 15 years old.

I had a front-row seat to seeing my father’s body painfully disintegrate twitch by twitch over a period of about a year until he was nothing but skin and bones and his lungs died, and then he died on Memorial Day in 1968, searing a brand on my life.

But last August, I stared at Mount Tallac from a rock beside quiet water near my family’s former cabin — for 50 years — in Lake Tahoe. And my perspective shifted slightly, or let’s just say my perspective was willing to shift. I decided I would allow myself to know my father again, which would mean opening myself up to the pain of his death but also to more — letting all my feelings, like sad, curious and glad, dance in a holistic mingling as I now stretch my limbs and strengthen my body at the gym, grateful for the strength and athleticism that I inherited from my father.

Jane Ferguson Flout is a San Rafael resident. IJ readers are invited to share their stories of love, dating, parenting, marriage, friendship and other experiences for our How It Is column, which runs Tuesdays in the Lifestyles section. All stories must not have been published in part or in its entirety previously. Send your stories of no more than 600 words to lifestyles@marinij.com. Please write How It Is in the subject line. The IJ reserves the right to edit them for publication. Please include your full name, address and a daytime phone number.