Dad's Birthday

Today is my dad's birthday. On this day in 1938, my grandparents welcomed into the world, gave him a good family name, and proceeded to give him a good childhood.

How does anyone really determine what a "good life" is? Did he live a good life or did he not? How to measure such a thing - that indeterminable quality that defines a life as having been well-lived?

If we measure by accomplishments, we could balance positives by degree. A good job, a loving wife, children, and a head full of hair. But is that enough?

If we measure by pursuits, we can look at life-long literacy that translated into a love of books and curiosity about many things. He loved a good conversation and could entertain people for hours with his wit, knowledge, and good humor. He loved the "manly pursuits" modeled for him by his father and uncle - strong, decent men of integrity who worked hard all their lives and enjoyed outdoor pursuits and working with their hands.

My father certainly didn't lack for looks. Until the day he died that man looked good. Women watched him and on what he would say were too many occasions in his life, he watched back. His weight problem just wasn't an issue. He still looked good - and therein lies one of the differences between men and women.

Did he courageously fight his demons? Those addictions that dogged him relentlessly his whole life? I think he did put up the fight - but something inside him just couldn't be convinced that tenacity needed a hold here - that sticking to something required more than good-looks and a winning smile. He had been beaten by them all his life - and not tasted success. To taste that success might have made all the difference. But how are we to know?

My father was a man of voracious appetite, telling one of his best friends that he "just couldn't stop" and push the plate away. When he was briefly successful, he was miserable - the demons just kept gnawing. So he opted for pills and surgery - what he perceived to be the "reasonable" way out. Medically speaking, I suppose it was - but was it the right way? The only way? In the end, did those drugs for weight loss contribute to his death? They are easy to blame.

And the drugs and alcohol - now there's an elephant in the livingroom! Drugs and alcohol - twin demons who took up residence with my father early in his life and steered him away from the very accomplishments he would have used to gauge his life in years to come. Drugs for pain, alcohol for release - from what?

Did my dad think he didn't measure up to my grandfather's standards? Did my grandfather ever take him to task for being weak in this way? Or did he remain taciturn and take refuge in his garage? These things I do not know. He certainly couldn't have been pleased - these were never behaviors the firefighter and cabinet maker pursued. He liked fast cars - but gave them up when one damn near killed his son. (Did he blame my dad for crashing that Austin-Healy? Or did he blame the car? Did my father feel blamed? By the time the story got to me it was a family legend. Humorous. Innocent.)

My father battled depression his whole life. Nobody discussed it. Nobody talked about it. Nobody petted or dressed the elephant in the living room. This depression was chemical and he came by it naturally - his mother assuaged hers with alcohol every evening of her life. (But always after 5:00pm.) His maternal grandfather was apparently quite the drinker and left deep and abiding wounds that his family will never discuss. To discuss it would be admitting weakness - moral weakness, not physical - after all, if you ask God to cure your affliction and it isn't cured, then you just didn't ask hard enough.

He was the most intelligent man I know. This sounds grandiose - after all, I've met many intelligent people. So take it with a grain of salt. But he was extremely smart in so many ways. What options this man had! Talk about the path not taken! A true scotsman lament - the would have beens. The coulda-shouldas. My father regretted many things. He told me this. He promised me he would wean off the pain-killers and I do believe he was trying. He supposedly stopped drinking but I have heard otherwise - and this is something best not discussed, right? What about that other road? The road that would have him sitting in his chair in South Pasadena right now and some pile of ash in a livingroom shrine.

So how to measure the man - this very fallible man born on this day 68 years ago in Glendale, California, to very loving parents and a warm, extended family?

I can only measure him by the depth of my love for him. I always forgave him - from the first days of my life he was never held accountable. I adored the man would forgive him anything. I miss him terribly and want to call him up almost everyday and tell him something, relate some tidbit to him, share a book, tell a joke. I miss him with a pain and a void that is unending.

I watch these psychic shows on television and fantasize that he is around me, watching me, wanting to tell me things. What would he tell me?

I wait for inevitable dreams of the man, since I have dreamed a lot in the past few years. But he has shown up twice. Once comically - the details I won't divulge but it was vintage dad, telling me he "couldn't go." The other was more recent - he drove up looking like my favorite professor and then put on sunglasses and became my dad - who walked by me without looking at me while those sunglasses got bigger and bigger and I'm thinking "Hobo Kelly" glasses. But this wasn't a funny dream.

I wish a happy birthday to the memory of the man because I can't tell him directly anymore. He is a pile of ash sitting in a shrine in a dark and sad apartment. He is surrounded by the detritus of his life - his things - the possessions that somehow link him this world in some tenuous and sad way. These things that we hold and caress in an attempt to conjure up the essence of the man, thinking, "He touched this. He touched this."

I am sad, bitter, and angry. I am these things because he should have been with me a lot longer. He shouldn't have died when he did. He was killed by his weaknesses - and what kind of justice is that? Where is the justice in the world when a man unable to control his appetites, his addictions, his needs - is done in by these very things? Definitely a human condition.

I miss my dad. I love him still. I wish a happy, happy birthday.