He was born in the first week of February, 88 years ago, in the hills of West Virginia. His abusive father was a successful coal mine superintendent until he lost it all and died an alcoholic, alone in a hotel room, leaving my dad to pick up the pieces. His mom had left his father many years before, which in the 1930’s, took a woman with a whole lot of guts. She raised her four kids by becoming Post Master. My dad loved and admired her with his whole heart. His closest friend was a German shepherd named Lady. He worked, pumping gas, even filled up the tanks of John Dillinger and his goons on a cloudy day way back when.
He was shy, a loner, who liked to spend all his free time hunting and fishing. He joined the navy at 18 to escape the mines. It was on a ship, as a Gunners Mate, where he spent the next six years of his life. He saw a good friend burn alive right before his very eyes and swears it was only from the prayers of his beloved mother that he lived to speak about the War. On December 7th, 1941, he was on the Lexington, an aircraft carrier that had moved southward to help reinforce Midway when he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They had pulled out of Oahu just a few days before. Five months later, the Lex got torpedoed twice, followed by three bomb hits and then the gasoline vapors caught. It was there she burned until she sank..my dad jumping into the warm Coral Sea, with the sky exploding around him.
He met my mom when they were teenagers but didn’t make his move until he was visiting home, on leave. He stepped off the train, and saw her standing there, with “the prettiest, shiniest, blackest hair you ever saw”. They married at City Hall..he in his uniform and her in a mauve dress that I still have in a box in my closet. They had two kids and in the early 50’s, packed up the Chevy and moved west to California, welcomed by the fresh scent of orange blossoms and and all the dreams a young family can hold. They bought a brick home in the Valley for 18 thousand bucks. My dad became a tool and die maker and well into his 40's became a father again when yours truly came along. It was then they picked up stakes and moved eastward to Arkansas, where they farmed, cattled, grew blackberries..even owned a boat dock in a small quiet cove where memories of swimming and skipping rocks are some of my sweetest. In 1999, he buried my brother who died at 49 of a drug overdose. The only time I ever saw my father cry.
He was diagnosed with bladder cancer a year ago last January. He had 8 chemos and 32 radiations without so much as a whimper. He never lost a hair, he never complained and he always had a smile for the nurses.
He has loved my mom for 62 years. They live in a yellow house in the middle of the forest. It is there they will finish out their ordinary lives while listening to the laughter of their three grandchildren and one great grandchild. He's a veteran, he made it through, and he is my dad. I honor you today and always.It was three years ago, Veteran's Day, that I wrote the words you just read about my father- to honor him and his years served in the United States Navy. It lets you in on the chronicle of it all. Tonight I will give you a little bit more. The spine of who he was...the piece of him, in me, who is left. And it is on this quiet, rainy evening in March, I say a final goodbye to my dad. He died just two mornings ago. A man as stubborn as myself. A man whose pride would rare up and butt heads with mine more than a time or two....a man who didn't think twice of driving back an hour and a half in the dead of a winter's night to fetch his crying girl her forgotten stuffed "Froggy" from a restaurant chair.
I can tell you he loved pinto beans, trees, Ray Charles, horehound candy and his kids. But not in that particular order. My siblings and I were first.
Always. His patience and work ethic led by example and were only exceeded by his commitment and capacity to sacrifice. I will always remember his healing touch when my back was sore from fever. And the way he smiled as my mother danced to the record player. No one could make a fire as swiftly and beautiful as he. A poetic dance between brittle kindling and a beloved silver Zippo. Sadly, I remember when his mind was keen and how the vicious hand of dementia began to slowly eat away everything I knew and loved. This is where the story gets sad. But I must speak of this sadness because only by owning it and swimming through it's sludge will I make it through to the other side. The place where I know my father would want me to be.
Years ago, upon moving back to the Ozarks with the hub, my one-year-old, Will, and unborn lima bean, T-Mag, things began to manifest in him. An angry word here and there. A hurtful comment...odd behavior that I stupidly took personal and began to hold inside..like a pot simmering on the back burner. The last few months, things were said that cut me so deep, I never thought they'd heal.
I began to mourn what I had all those years before and ugly ole embitterment set in. Somewhere between the festering, wicked confusion, and badly acted
Lifetime movie of the week, we lost our way together- Bobo and I. Last winter, I had to pull away after family decisions were made that I did not agree with...the situation became so painful and so physically stressful, I was forced to step back and take a breath. A breath that lasted almost two months and one that could have cost me a karmic plenty had it not been for a phone call from a nurse in the ER, who by chance, found my name in a dusty hospital file. But like any difficult mountain we are forced to climb in life, we have to sink in our boot spikes; and through time, careful thought and fervent prayer, we eventually end up atop and are rewarded with the view. And this is where my story gets good. The music swells, there's a panaramic wide-shot and what do ya know..dad and daughter unite. Just in time for Oscar season. Maybe not under the most
healthy conditions...but together they find themselves, face to face, in a white room, with really bad art and the kind of healing that can only take place when the Universe opens wide and decides to teach an ordinary girl a lesson in forgiveness in the most compassionate, awesome and humbling way. It was there we held each other, we spoke more clearly than ever before and it was there I learned not to loathe myself any longer for mistakes I've made by not understanding just what it really was in the boxing ring against me. I have met an amazing woman along the way who will nurture my remaining parent who has also fallen victim to this Freddy Krueger of a disease. She will help my sister and I through the pain in understanding the ever-changing Alzheimers, and hopefully morph our helplessness into a couple of ass-kicking superheroes.
I can't help but think it was my dad's heart that forged through the glop and found me. Not the other way around. He, the ailing one, teaching his numb nut daughter the way the land lay....taking my ostrich stance to a peacock preen. That's what daddies do. A dear friend comforted me more than he will ever know by saying those two months lost between us were only but a blip in an otherwise long and loving relationship.
And so it goes, it was there in hospice, I advocated for him as hard as I could, forgave myself in the balm of his love, made up with my sister and slept on a really crappy recliner. I love you, Dad. I love you for your tenacity to reach through a ravaging disease to find me again, to forgive me when I slipped and continuing to be a mentor to me even in death. I wish you all things golden in your next life...and that I may share the journey with you again- working out the kinks and filling in the grooves...finding our way through the mystifying scape of the cosmos.
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