Life, Death, and a Wedding

Sorry for the delay, but I was off making the best decision of my life when this was supposed to be published. So instead of keeping up with my blog last week, I went down and married the love of my life. It was a huge life event, and I haven’t stopped smiling since.

Although I would never question my decision, some trepidation led up to the big moment. My beautiful wife has three children, and we have one on the way. For clarification, I will never regret my decision to bind our lives together, and my concerns weren’t about the limitations they would put on my life. My concerns were always centered on my ability to keep up. To give them a part of myself and be able to dedicate the time they deserve from me.

From an early age, my life was about achieving my goals, no matter what the cost. Free time, fun, and social life always took a back seat to work. I set my sights on making it into the military academy, and my entire purpose in life was to achieve that goal. After graduation, my goal was to successfully lead troops in combat, which became my life purpose. After separating from the military due to injury, the goal shifted to starting my own company and writing books. 

Gift or curse, I have always had the ability to laser focus on a goal and sacrifice anything to achieve it. As a single guy, I could shoot for the stars, and the only person hurt if I failed was myself. Bringing a family into the mix changes everything. Knowing myself, the last thing I wanted to do was commit and ignore everyone as I doggedly chased some personal goal at the expense of everything else, including personal relationships. I was never worried that they would handicap me in my personal ambitions. Instead, I was worried I would fail as both a husband and father because of my personal aspirations.

Although the worry was nagging at me, I knew that I needed both my wife and the kids in my life. My revelation didn’t hit until a few weeks before the wedding when my father passed away. The loss was as sudden as it was devastating. My father wasn’t just my father; he was my best friend. He was there to talk to when I was deployed, and he became my business partner once I was out of the military. Since 2014 when I got out, we had spent nearly every day together. Having fun, building a business, or working, we did it together, and he was suddenly gone.

My head was a mess. The happiest days of my life, my wife saying yes and finding out I was going to have another daughter, were mixed with the saddest day of my life. Even with a couple of combat deployments and years of military hardship to toughen me up, I felt lost and confused. My analytical mind needed to step back and try to make sense of everything. With the help of family and regulars from the brewery who knew my father, I started to get a perspective on the hurt I was feeling at my father’s passing.

Everyone was hurting because of the effect he had on their lives and because he would no longer be around to chat or hug. They would never get to interact with him again. Mom didn’t miss him because he wasn’t around to provide a paycheck or because he could no longer achieve great things. She missed him because he was her best friend. She was hurting because she lost that personal connection with an amazing human being in his passing. I was missing him, not because we would never write a best seller together, I missed him because I could no longer sit and enjoy the company of my father, friend, and mentor. Customers hurt at the loss, not because he was no longer around to brew their favorite beers, but because he was no longer behind the bar talking with them, imparting the wisdom of his years, or listening as they vented about their problems.

The loss was not borne out of the loss of potential achievements or accomplishment of goals. The loss was borne out of the greatness of his character and broken relationships. As writers, to some extent, we want to change peoples’ lives; we want to be remembered for our works long after we have departed this world. What better way would I have to achieve these things than to become a husband and father?

My concerns vanished when I realized that I was getting the privilege to be to my wife what my father was to my mother. To be to my kids what my father was to me. Sure, I could still be my own person, with my own goals and ambitions, but I was on the precipice of becoming so much more. I was becoming someone who would be loved for more than my accomplishments.

I was being given the opportunity to build a life with an amazing, compassionate, loving, and driven woman. I was being given the opportunity to mentor, love, and influence the lives of four little people. Watch them grow into happy, healthy, and prosperous adults, whatever that may entail. I could be the light, rock, and safe place to them that my father was to us, and I couldn’t wait to make it official.

Although I will have more demands on my time, I have never been one to sit idly by and watch the time pass. I will be adding family time, cub scouts, horse riding lessons, and myriads of other activities to my schedule alongside personal time hacks, but I couldn’t be happier. In my book, being a successful professional and being a good husband and father don’t have to be mutually exclusive. My father showed me that.

It still feels a little weird, but I’m happy to be changing how I define myself. Going from Zach, West Point graduate, Captain in the army, successful business owner, and published writer, to Zach, husband, father. The fears of losing myself in service to a family are nonsense. I am still Zach, the writer, and business owner, but now I have so much more.

Z.D. Dean