Dad was not one you’d bounce a joke off of, but he could take ill-thrown, bounced balls to the chest while pretending to be a catcher for my curveballs, partially a family joke.
So he was many things. And sometimes none at all. Like most of our fathers. Mine recently died, shortly after his 91st birthday.
In my last night’s dream, mid-summer passed, it was about lending an hours-long and late-given but I hope helping hand to my late dad, this time an ala carte assignment. In it, as he was called to the fore like so often, as in actual life on this earth. Work seemed around every corner for him.
— The next day, mom got a phone call/email from the long-term care facility that was returning some unspent funds. The check was made out to dad, who now of course is dead. And he never had great penmanship for endorsing such anyway. So try to open the pertinent attachment; it was even met with a loud screech from the printer, like someone dying. Since the phone service, she found out later, had cut out for a time. —
In the dream, I briefly felt a calling too, and bolted for a bit and loved the time with friends after walking to a downtown music club, this time being situated in River Falls, the south end, but soon felt an urge to get back. And give back.
I would hold the torch, actually a flashlight, sort of, on some Saturdays, without being given any kind of instructions, while dad worked away below, like in a small and dark crawl space. So I never really learned much about what he was doing, and never carried that torch on when reaching adulthood. But as a youth, I was cool with cleaning ends of copper pipes, just the last inch, (in the interim?)
Later in life, when he finally got into the union and did long gigs on big paper-mill shutdown jobs, he was a savant if allowed to look for just a minute or two at the amalgamation of pipes, and could tell better than calculus, or abacus, just which piece of a steel should go where.
There was late in my schooling years in Merrill, that one Christmas Eve where he literally risked life and limb to drive his truck home alone in a blizzard, from near Northern Michigan.
Then in the opposite time of year, there were those evenings on the basketball court, which was really an average-size slab of concrete with at hoop at the end right in front of the garage. Dad and my brother did the laborous task, such as it was, of shooting around to pose for my “practicing” photos I would take, as was practice for my studies of newspaper reporting at UW-Eau Claire. Tom laughed as our dad struck inadvertently funny poses while making like a star defender, for photojournalism.
Also funny was what Tom told as a eulogy, when dad tried to race us past the pine trees he’d planted in the front yard, to show that he was still as fast as that young man who used to always win the game of “deer,” an early version of tag on the old country schoolyard. He ended up, in those final yards, pulling up lame in the home stretch, gaining a huge black broken blood vessel up and down his whole hamstring, as still shown days later, although he never quit doing any type of work because of it..
Not as funny, with the practice throwing I did incessantly, was when dad would try to scoop up my wayward in-the-dirt curve balls at the mound I’d built in back. He would only grumble a little when on occasion taking one in the chest, but was more gruff when one bounced weird and broke his eyeglasses, right near the nose guard — although that would be referencing football, not flinging lackluster fastballs.
There were more, and really bad, jokes at the funeral, as we’d rather laugh than cry. As mom and I pulled into the church parking lot, it was mentioned, again, that she should have renewed dad’s handicapped parking sticker, but the last few days had been quite busy. To which I said, you coulda now just propped him up in that back seat, driven through the DMV drive-through lane, then pointed to the rear and say, for legitimacies sake, it’s him! Hey, say, Chevy Chase would do that, with planting grandma on top of the station wagon roof, like getting ready for a funeral pyre.
I was going to tell that to lighten the mood with the usher who greeted us by the door, and add that we still were there very early to my “late” dad’s funeral, but things kept serious for the moment, before he made a lighthearted quip. The moment was past. (I felt that the eyes of Jesus pictured on the wall were staring right at me, as if I was weighed and found wanting.)
As were the people at a nearby funeral home who a full eight days after my dad had passed away, sent a flyer to my mom advertising burial services they offer. So they missed by a figure of eight; they were really behind the eight ball, as I don’t think there was another resurrection in the offing. We were both still able to laugh at that.
Since this starts as a music website, I must divulge that faith-filled dad did diss the lyrics of Danzig and his song Twist Of Cain, saying on a night right before Christmas that I should not give much stock to his opinions on religion and just who sired who, although well-researched.
He had not even heard of Ozzy, who had slaved away in at least one slaughterhouse in his blue-collar time, splicing beef instead of piecing together pipes. And not having the vocal kind, although he did sing bass in the church choir for a while.
And the fact that a local luminary had asked me, long ago, to sing a tune penned just for me on his “celebrity” CD did not play well with dad, as it was rock music, albeit the light kind.
So my final sendoff to him just had to be some Iron Maiden. I had in mind a song written by bassist Steve Harris, Blood Brothers, in part as a tribute when his father died right as they were going on a world tour. After lots of practice when I could find some alone time, I was able to correctly cue the music, and mercifully the YouTube political ad had been cut out from the streamed version. My singing of the song could have been much better, as although being someone who is seldom nervous when getting onstage, this time around I was shaking in my boots, as my family had not heard my vocals before and I wanted to get it right.
I’d recommend looking up the lyrics, to which I borrowed the first two verses, then added some of my own words, suited to fit my dad. These follow:
“He’s my father/we’re blood brothers/like Our Father/he’s a strong one.
Some men like to live life on the edge/although some do not need that as a hedge.
They are very strong in their faith and resolve/As they know that someday life on this earth will evolve.
And dissolve/around Heaven it revolves.”
I felt he lingered with my spirit in the few days after his death, which led me to wonder aloud if it takes a bit of time for a soul to fully complete the journey to the afterlife …
Good travels dad. Farewell.