Thinking about my dad, two years on

I don't think about him too often. But it's been a bit over -- two years? Is that all? It feels like at least four--since he died.

I just finished working with a student on one last waitlist essay for college. And it reminded me that, last year, I had once written a sample application essay to try to illustrate the tone, pacing, humor, and emotional notes that I wanted that student to hit. In retrospect it wasn't fair -- a 30-year old has simply lived more life than an 18-year old. More things have happened, good and bad, and it's easier to write about influential people and moments once their influence has become pronounced over the years. I honestly don't know if the kid got anything out of it, though the mom thanked me for the essay and complimented me on my writing.

Upon a re-reading, I grimaced. It wasn't quite true -- it was my uncle that asked people to pull his finger. My father was usually content to make fart jokes. But my memories of him have been shaped by so many things -- especially, blessedly, time, which dulls wounds and through which the retrospective mind creates order and a logical story where there was none. It was him, in any case, and the rest of it was true.

I don't even know if it would have been a good essay. It is past-focused, and not focused enough on the qualities of character I did develop that would serve me in the future. It might be more of a red flag than a story of overcoming difficulty. And the last paragraph is a bit schmaltzy. But it was a first draft, and I didn't have time to polish it -- I must've worked on fifteen essays for that kid.

I'm too tired or reluctant to come up with a two-year anniversary set of thoughts. It would have been a recycled version at the one-year mark. So it seems strangely appropriate I take something I had written a year ago for the purpose. For it must be marked. I've been  a bit down lately, possibly because I'm seeing these seniors get ready to leave. And I want to leave with them, to give college and my twenties another crack. Or maybe because they remind me that I, too, have moved on from the past, and with equal parts ignorance, optimism, and fear, look toward the future.

“Pull my finger!”

That’s how my dad started every meeting. He was crazy like that, and crazy in other ways. He was bipolar, and I, thankfully, grew up without him in the house. But I did see him regularly – every two weeks. He was, at times, scary, or genial, or grouchy, or energetic – the combination of medications, occasionally illicit drugs, and, most importantly, life. He had enjoyed success as an aerospace engineer at the height of the Cold War, and lost it all – the house, the family, even his freedom.

But it was there, in the institutions, with minimal spending money and limited means of transportation, he developed his relationships, and, if I can be hopeful, some measure of wisdom about how he got there, and what he still had to offer the world.

My father taught me many things. I learned to fear emotion, as that was associated with manic depression. I learned to fear my intelligence, as that was also linked with mental illness. But I also learned the value of laughing, whether to forget, or to share. He could make me laugh, and as he grew older, was better able to laugh at himself, and his past. (And his gas.)

I remember the day he died. I remember his cold form, his mouth agape, stretched in a hospital bed in the care facility where he had spent the last ten years. In life, he had been a terror and an inspiration, a source of merriment and perpetual stress. He was gone, and I didn’t know with what, or how, I would fill the place in myself that was now empty.

Yet even here, there was humor. My aunt came in, and talked with me. After about ten minutes, I realized that she didn’t realize she was standing next to a dead man, and informed her of the fact. The mortician, a young, eager man obviously desperate to keep his job, pleaded with me to rate him highly on the survey that would be mailed to me in a week. “Tens, please!” I couldn’t help but laugh, and I know my Dad would have done the same.

After I had taken care of that business, I looked at him one last time. I recited the words of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. I sat for a while.

And on my way out, I pulled his finger.

My father learned to laugh because it felt good. He laughed to escape the doubts and regrets that plagued him. Honestly, I laugh for the same reasons. But I also value laughter as a way of really understanding and appreciating the human condition. When we laugh, honestly and fully, we begin to open ourselves, to make ourselves vulnerable – and that, perhaps, is the beginning of wisdom.

I have not fought in war. I have not discovered a new technology, or written a novel, or performed in Carnegie Hall. My triumphs, and my tribulations, have been necessarily smaller, more private. They do not capture the imagination, but they echo in my memory. They inform my character, and give me both courage and caution, combining in what I hope to be wisdom. I have faced those old, old fears. And I have learned how to laugh at them, at myself, at the frustrations great and small. He was, in his absence, at least as influential as in his occasional, unstable presence. But he trained me well. For even in that last hour, I laughed a large, wonderful laugh, and thanked my father for his imperfect love.