This is another tough one that I had not planned or wanted to write. But it's a lesson in forgiveness to be had for us all, including me. Charles R. "Hoss" Hostetler, my former husband, died Dec. 3 after heart surgery several weeks ago. We hadn't talked for a few weeks, but he asked a neighbor to call me, so we spoke the night before his surgery. Even after our divorce, I always got a call on May 6, our anniversary. He was never really lucid after surgery, so that made a very important reconciliation with a son impossible. Hoss was born in Charlotte and attended Harding High School until, in his tumultuous teens, the Navy held more attraction. His first submarine was the USS Trout, then the USS Trumpetfish for four years, then after we married in 1966, he was transferred to the USS Odax. He was a cook and took great pride in feeding and baking special treats for his shipmates. If he requisitioned a supply of rutabagas for his food supply locker, they were likely to arrive as chocolate Hershey bars for his mates.

Full steam ahead
He will live on in "sea stories" and deservedly so. He was the kind you meet only once. He was larger than life and kept morale high not only with his food but with his uproarious sense of humor; he was "Mr. Entertainment" in tight quarters. His speed was full-steam-ahead and his volume was always turned on high. He already had two boys when we met but they had not had a stable life with their mother in Oklahoma. We won custody of Michael, then seven and David, 6, after a long legal battle. Though I had a daughter, I was unschooled in raising rambunctious boys. In late 1966 Charles was transferred to the Naval Air Station in Memphis. Our furniture was en route when we arrived fresh from an Oklahoma court. We melded the family and in retrospect, the Memphis years were plenty good. Hoss had taken up stock car racing, so Fridays found me and the boys at the dirt track in West Memphis, Ark. Later, he and David shared an interest in bowling.

Back in Charlotte, Charles retired from Piedmont Natural Gas and became a serious bowler, often in several leagues at once. David was most like his dad and in grown-up years there was a clash that ended in years of silence on both ends. It was - pure and simple - a matter of pride, ego, and don't-be-the-first to bend. That changed when David heard that his dad was undergoing open-heart surgery. He wrote the most honest, caring, heartfelt letter I've ever known. We both had throat-lumps when he read it to me on the phone. I just knew that now was the time. Once Charles was awake and I read that letter to him, the rift would be healed immediately. I felt it in my bones; it would happen. It just had to. My dream was to reconcile them. I never gave up until I heard those cold, final words. "He's dead." Now it's too late to make the first move or to receive a timid tentacle of reunification. Closed hearts tend to harden into immovable objects, too stubborn to soften, too proud to accept. Friends say, "Now he understands at last." Maybe so, but it's not near the same.
And so we mourn now for the extra effort, too late in coming, for earlier rebuffs, and most especially for the wonderful memories that could have, would have, should have been made.

This article appeared in the Charlotte Observer Dec. 6, 2006 and is reprinted with the permission of
Gerry Hostetler and the Charlotte Observer.