(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Hi, RiaD. I crossposted this essay from firefly-dreaming.com.
Ten years ago, on January 18th, 2001, my beloved father passed away after a long illness (He’d been sick for a year and a half) prior to his death, his funeral, and the big celebration of his life as an exceptionally great person, a fantastic freelance photojournalist, a great conversationalist, and a big jazz buff. He was also a great tennis player, but a horrible punster, yet, he had a wonderful sense of humor, which often helped pull people through.
My dad was always an exuberant, vigorous man, who enjoyed life to the fullest, showed a true curiosity and interest in what made people tick, always walked tall, and had a twinkle in his eye. Although his work as a freelance photojournalist often took him to various parts of the country, he was always there for the rest of the family, through thick and thin.
The conversations I had with my father about pretty much everything under the sun were wonderful, even though I ruefully remember not having enough of them. He used to tease me about my intense love for the film West Side Story, and he was interested in why I liked J. Anthony Lukas’s book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Life of Three American Families , which was about Boston’s school crisis during the mid to late 1970’s, how three Boston families (the Twymons, an African-American family from Boston’s South End/Lower Roxbury section, the McGoffs, a white working-class Irish Catholic family from Boston’s Charlestown section, and the Divers, a Yankee gentry family from Lexington who bought a house in the South End, and moved into the neighborhood to help the poor, especially non-whites) coped with the situation.
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Life of Three American Families , also depicts the role that prominent politicians such as the late Boston School Committeewoman Louise Day Hicks, then-Mayor Kevin H. White played in Boston’s school crisis, as well as the role that the Church, the police, and Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr., a Federal District Judge from suburban Wellesley, who, along with a number of experts under him, had created the extremely divisive large-scale Federal Court-mandated school busing edict that took Boston by storm in the fall of 1974, with much turmoil, upheaval, and emotional and psychological scarring in its wake, of a city and its people that resulted from the increased polarization that ensued. Equally importantly, in the book Common Ground, J. Anthony Lukas also touches greatly on the fact that Boston had already been traumatized by poorly thought out urban renewal policies that ended up displacing untold numbers of people, as well as the affects of airport and highway expansion, which cut through and imposed on various neighborhoods across the city, plus already-existing racial and ethnic bigotry in Boston, and how these factors all helped pave the way for a hostile all-white Boston School Committee to play to white workingclass fears, frustrations and resentments along the lines of race and class, and pave the way for a poorly designed and poorly executed, largescale mandated school busing edict that basically satisfied nobody, and led up to Boston’s school crisis and all the turmoil, racial/ethnic upheaval, and increased polarization that resulted.
However, getting back to the subject at hand, my dad was always interested in why I liked a certain book and/or a certain movie so much, and it was great that my dad was such an accepting person. When I pointed out that J. Anthony Lukas had a good insight as to where much of the racism and/or criminal behavior came from, and treated everybody in the book as whole human beings regardless of their general outlook, background and/or viewpoint. He accepted my answer.
Birthdays, holidays and other special occasions were also made special by dad’s presence, and, since my graduation from Piano Tuning school back in June 1999 took place right on my dad’s 75th birthday, he had something even bigger to be proud of; seeing his oldest daughter graduate from trade school. At the graduation, my dad was his usual sociable, exuberant self, making the rounds, talking with and shaking hands with and congratulating my classmates, and taking pictures of everybody. My whole family came to the graduation, and my mom, dad and I went to eat at a great restaurant in the North End, where the school was located. My brother and sister in law, who’d been married for two years and didn’t yet have any kids were unable to come. Ian had to appear in court, and my sister in law had a doctor’s appointment that she’d made many months ago and couldn’t reschedule. It had been a great day, overall.
My brother and sister in law, who were then living in Cambridge Port, a well-integrated section of Cambridge, MA, frequently had big parties, to which all of their good friends and family (including mom, dad and I) were invited. Whether it be a family gathering, a party, or dinner out, my dad could be seen, his lanky 6′ 2″ frame making the rounds, shooting the breeze with people, and, in general, enjoying himself. Although he never, ever countenanced racism and bigotry, which were complete anathema to him, he was the most non-judgemental, compassionate, understanding, gentle, humorous and accepting person that I’d known, and I was quite lucky to have grown up with him for so long, especially since many people never have the luxury of having a father live to see them grow up, whether it be by passing away, or through divorce or separation. I knew plenty of people in both of the above situations while growing up, and beyond.
It wasn’t long after my graduation from trade school and his 75th birthday, however, that my dad began to show obvious signs of being ill. (I later learned, however, that there’d been other, smaller, more subtle signs that I wasn’t aware of, such as constant fatigue, that had gone on for about a month before, but he’d dragged himself around and lived his life anyhow). He came home one afternoon after a tennis game with my brother, exclaiming how terrible his tennis game had been. My dad also began falling asleep unexpectedly, even during the day, which was totally uncharacteristic of him. Worse still, he lost his balance, and, ultimately, his memory, as well as his coordination. My dad, who had been a fantastic conversationalist, now could not remember what anybody had just said, and it was now impossible to converse with him.
So, my dad’s decline continued, and even the top neurologist in the country couldn’t figure out what was going on. The week before his passing, I went out and partied a lot, and, on the Tuesday prior to dad’s death, I received a call from my brother at about 8:20 that morning telling me to reschedule my piano tuning job that I had for that day, and to go to the hospital, since my dad was having trouble breathing. I called our family friend, rescheduled my tuning job for two days later, and drove over to the hospital. We all gathered at the hospital where dad had been rushed by ambulance from the rehab center where he’d just been. The resident intern on call told us that the next two days would tell the story of whether or not dad would pull through, since the infection had extended and infected his bloodstream. Sepsis resulted. The next night, Wednesday, I called my brother, inadvertently waking him from a deep sleep. He told me that dad was rapidly going downhill. I knew that it was time to say goodbye, and drove over to the hospital, where my mom, sister, brother and sister in law were all gathered by dad’s bedside. I stayed with them for awhile, and then went home, after saying goodbye to dad and telling that I always loved him, and that I missed him.
On Thursday, I tuned our friend’s piano, then went out and did a whole bunch of other things. I came back that evening and found a message on my answering machine from my sister (who’d flown in from the midwest to be at dad’s bedside during his last days), stating that dad had passed away at two-thirty that morning.
We got an autopsy that came back several months later, but it was hard to believe that dad was gone and no longer with us. A rare but fatal form of encephalitis, known as Limbic Encephalitis, is what completely and totally took him over, and ultimately killed him, so it’s not like his life could’ve been saved even if they’d known what was happening to him. Although we all miss him, and a void has been left in our hearts that will never, ever be filled, he still lives on in our memories, both happy and sad. (I’m getting a lump in my throat, tearing up as I write this),
Although the passing of a family member supposedly signals a new era to come, I’m sure dad would want me to continue with my interests and not give any of them up, no matter how quirky. Frankly, I can’t help wondering what he’d think of the world as it is right now, but I guess that’s irrelavent).
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