esrosedotblog

1988

My Dad died 22 years ago today.

He had been sick with occasional pneumonia. It kept coming back.

I got a call while I was working with a group in Houston.

His lung had collapsed and the Docs thought it was the end.

I called one of my partners, it was his client, and he got on a plane.

I stepped off the platform as the group went to work in a session. There would be lunch after the group did its work.

He stepped on the platform when they came back from lunch.

I was on a flight back to Boston where I hoped to get a car to drive to Pennsylvania.

Fog closed the Boston airport and I spent the night on the floor in Windsor Locks airport (Hartford). I got into Boston about 7, John met me with the car, I went home and took the car to my Mom's house and was with my Dad that afternoon. Late.

We spent a couple of hours together. He was on a respirator and not conscious to the eye. But I knew that he knew I was there. Or, I was certainly willing to assume that he did.

I told him that I loved him and that it was OK to let go. I was there. I would be there for my Mother. No worries. No regrets.

I mentally forgave him for anything I still thought he had done that I was pissed off about. I told him that.

I forgave myself for stuff that was unfinished between us.

There wasn't a lot. We had been through all that.

A year or two before he told me that he knew I was happy in my life and that he was pleased about that.

That took away all the stuff about me being gay, about my doubts that I measured up for him. All that.

When I was done with the small crumbs of regret, I got into bed with him and held him tight.

Then I went to my Mother's house.

He died during the night.

John and my son Dave drove down the next morning. It was raining hard.

We did the arrangements. Got the funeral guy all our family had used.

We made it a family only thing.

Most of his sisters and a cousin came. It is the first that I saw them in thirty years. And the last.

The "girls" were in their nineties by this time.

And then, he was gone back to the earth.

We got him one of those veteran stones. I have not been to visit him for quite awhile. He is in my heart. I visit often there.

There is still an ache.

My Dad was a wonderful man. He grew up with nothing, left school in the 8th grade, found a job with a food chain and became a manager. He stayed with them for 45 years.

He ended up in some politics. He was Treasurer of the School Board and when I graduated from High School he gave me my diploma.

He saw me through MIT and into my married life.

He was upset at the gay coming out but he held his position as my Dad. He loved me through it as I loved him back.

He became a wonderful grandfather. Beloved by his grandkids.

He did for and with them what he somehow could not do with and for me in the affection department. Open and joyous. I was happy to claim part of it as my own as well.

That's it.

Thoughts about my Dad. God love him.

Labels: family, fathers