On the Anniversary of My Dad's Death

It is nine years ago this week that my father passed away. In a way, the years have flown by and, in another way, it is as though he has been gone forever. I miss him. I miss being able to see him, although in the spirit of full disclosure, I wouldn’t have seen that much of him if he were still here. I know that. There is no sense in pretending otherwise.  If he were still alive, we would not have been very active in each other’s lives. And, to be crystal clear, I have exactly zero regrets about how little we saw of each other. Such was the relationship we had. Such were the demands of his marriage, ergo the demands of his life, and consequently the demands of our relationship. I am okay with all of that. As the ever-popular, extremely annoying and overused saying goes, it is what it is. Well, since he is dead, I guess it should be it was what it was, but you get the idea. 

I have very specific and endearing memories of my dad. I can envision his smiling face and I remember how he laughed.  I remember him shaving in our downstairs powder room and splashing Old Spice on his face when he was done. After the Old Spice, he would put VO5 in his hair to keep it in place. The vision of him shaving, applying the Old Spice, and then combing his hair with the VO5 is so vivid for me.  Old Spice was a cologne of that era and you hardly ever smell it these days; however, on very rare occasion, whenever I do come across that smell, it brings me immediately back to childhood. It is a comforting memory.  Whenever I am transported back to those days, it is with great delight. I recently found photos of my dad and I am surprised at how handsome he was. I never considered him handsome before finding those photos, in fact, I often thought that he and his brothers looked a little elf-like. They were small men with bulbous noses and really big eyes. For sure, my father was the most handsome of them and the least elf-like, but still. 

 Not that you could really ever tell this by the life he ended up living, but my dad really loved our family, both our little foursome, as well as my extended aunts, uncles and cousins. His mother died when he was 5-years-old, leaving five children under 12 years-old. There were less than two years between my Uncle Joe and my dad and, again, between my dad and my Aunt Fritzie.  According to family lore, my grandfather was something of a drunk so, after my grandmother passed away, the state of Pennsylvania threatened to take the children from him unless he could “come up with an appropriate plan” and something like $2000.  Whenever I hear this story, I have two recurring thoughts – the first is that he must have been SUCH a drunk for the state to threaten to take the kids from him in 1928, and the second is that the amount couldn’t have been $2000. That would have been an impossible amount for that era. Still, that is the story as it has always been told to me.  

My grandfather may have been a drunk, but he was one smart cookie because he put together a brilliant plan. My parents both lived in the same small town so their families knew each other well. At the mercy of the child protective services, my grandfather went to see my maternal grandmother to see if she would help him. He proposed that she would take care of his children before and after school, provide them with meals and do the laundry, and for all this he would pay her.  She agreed, he raised the $2000, or whatever the sum was, and he got to keep his children. In the photos I found, there is a picture of my father standing with my maternal grandmother and you can see how much they loved each other. I hardly remember her before her mind was taken over by Alzheimer’s, but what I do remember is how her face used to light up whenever my father spoke to her. He was only person I ever remember making my grandmother laugh. 

 During the years when my dad lived home, the first eleven years of my life, he was the life of any party. He was seriously the organizer of every family event I ever attended. In the summertime, he would arrange these huge picnics at a lake near our house and all of my aunts and uncles and cousins would attend.  There were almost 30 of us at any given time, which meant we could field a soft-ball team, or play round robin games of horse shoes or any number of other activities.  These picnics were always on Sunday afternoons and the grown-ups had the pre-picnic procedures down to a science.  Because we were all Catholics, we couldn’t arrive to the picnic ground in the morning because we were busy going to church. This is before the days where our churches offered Saturday evening masses.  The picnic area filled up quickly on Sundays, so one member of the family would be assigned to go there early and stake claim to at least two sites. This guaranteed us two picnic tables and two of the outdoor grills. That was pretty much all we needed because, shortly after noon, the rest of us would pull up looking much like Jed Clampett and the Beverly Hill Billys. Everyone’s cars were packed to the brim with folding chairs, and folding tables, portable grills, BBQ coals, coolers of food, bags of ice, horse-shoe games, badminton games, wiffleball sets, swimming floats and kids. We did this for years and these picnics are among my most cherished childhood memories. Once my dad left home to live with his new wife in Florida, the family never did those picnics again. It was like expecting the Glenn Miller Band to play without Glenn Miller. All the talent was still there, but there was no one to lead the way. 

I can also remember my family getting together to play poker. Whenever I saw poker games on TV, it was always a group of men playing, but that wasn’t how it was in my family. In my family, when my dad would arrange for a poker night, everybody played - all the aunts and uncles and, in fact, a couple of my aunts were cut-throat poker players. They played with pennies and nickels and I can remember nights where someone would claim to have won $25 playing poker. Even now that seems like a lot of money to have won playing with pennies and nickels, but that is how I remember it. Mostly, the games were held at my Aunt Mary and Uncle Pete’s house, which was fine with me because my cousin John and I were close, and we used to play in his basement while the grown-ups were busy gambling. I remember ham sandwiches served on half torpedo rolls made by the Italian bakery around the corner from my Aunt Mary’s house.  Someone would make macaroni salad and someone else would make potato salad.  The appetizers always included pepperoni, olives, cheese, pretzels and potato chips, but the best part was that my uncle would buy soda by the cans and we could choose between orange, grape or cream soda.  Back in the day, we didn’t drink soda unless it was a special occasion and poker nights qualified as a special occasion. Again, once my dad left, I don’t recall that the family ever played poker like that either.  

 My dad told me that he always regretted leaving home. I would like to believe that is true, but my dad was something of a chameleon, so could see him telling me that he regretted the decision to leave and telling his new wife that it was the best decision he ever made. He was like that.  I don’t begrudge him whatever duplicity he needed to make his life work. He made a bunch of decisions that complicated his life and, in the end, probably just wanted to be loved by the people who he loved. My brother has a very different view of all of this and, if I were my brother, I would certainly share his opinion.  My brother was exceedingly generous with my dad, financing some big-ticket items for him over the years, while forgiving him transgression after transgression. My father didn’t appreciate my brother’s generosity, nor did he display much generosity in return.  My brother forgave my father over and over again until, one day, he got really tired of that game and opted out. People always think that, between my brother and me, I have the bigger heart, but that isn’t true.  I didn’t give as much of my heart as my brother did, so there was less to lose. 

During the years when my dad was still home, he read the Trenton Times newspaper every day. Now and again, he would point out a quote from Abraham Lincoln that was, I think, printed every day as part of the Editorial page.  As I recall, the quote was always there, kind of serving as a context for the op-ed pieces they printed. 

“See this?” he would say, “Listen to this.  Abraham Lincoln said this.  ‘I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.’” 

Here’s to remembering you, Dad. Here’s to remembering all of the wonderful parts of life with you.  I hope you are resting in peace. I hope you are reunited with your mom and all the people you loved and who loved you. And, here’s hoping that the end brought you out all right!