Having done a little post titled "Generations of Mothers" (this post is no longer available) for Mother’s Day, I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about my father. 

            I didn’t know his father; he died at about 50 years old of a “bleeding ulcer” (sounds horrific) during WWII, so I am left with only the impressions my dad had of his father.  He was a staunch Irish Catholic from New Orleans who married an English Baptist from Boston.  His life, apparently, was not filled with loving bliss.  My father said he wondered how his parents ever had two children. 

            Born in Chicago, my dad was raised a few miles from New York City where his father was the head of a printer’s union and printed a daily horse racing paper.  I am told of long walks from Bogota, NJ, through Teaneck, Englewood and Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge.  On these walks, they would have some private time.  His father would put his young son on a bus at the bridge for the return trip and walk himself home.  Due to his father’s position and the popularity of horseracing in the '30s, the family didn’t seem too deeply affected by the Depression.  Life’s main turmoils appear to be related to his mother’s personality, which I think today might charitably be described as mentally ill, but then just passed for “cold.”   

            His early years seem bucolic.  I have a photo of him somewhere on a pony, ear to ear grin.  Perhaps it had something to do with his father’s work.  As in my childhood, when I would accompany him on his milk route, I imagine he enjoyed worktime with his father. 

His school years seem to have been filled with more sports than academics.  Until he broke his ankle in a pickup basketball game at 61 years old, he had a deadly two-handed set shot, the kind you never see today on any court anywhere.  His high school yearbook said “Killer (a nickname that pervades every generation of my family) can always be found surrounded by girls.”  He was an excellent dancer and popular by all accounts. He had one younger sister, Pat.  She passed away a few years ago.  Before she died she impressed on me over and over how good he was to her.  Apparently their mother was not generous in the love department; what little affection she had was reserved for my dad.  So he made up for it by taking his sister to the dances, and always taking her out on the floor.  Maybe this was the secret of his success with the girls of his day. 

He signed up for the Army, the one branch of service that would take him immediately after Pearl Harbor.  They would invest in him a condensed education in civil engineering, which he was unable to continue when his father died.  My father could not get from Oregon State College to New Jersey and back in the time allotted (6 days), so instead they shipped him off to the Pacific.  He was an artilleryman in the Philippines and Guam, and despite a medal that said he spent a record number of days on the front lines (in Corazon I think) he was never wounded.  He also NEVER spoke about battle, and disliked anyone who  did.   He suffered malaria and yellow jaundice, diseases that killed huge numbers of servicemen.  But he managed to live and return home after the A-Bomb left him and thousands of other men on ships waiting to invade Japan. 

He met my mother at some office in New York.  Against the protestations of his mother, he married this woman of Italian descent.  They raised four boys beginning in 1948.  That meant 3 teenagers in the ‘60s, a hell I imagine might have rivaled any he saw in the Pacific theatre. 

Although having had a good education, my father was not really cut out to work with other people.  He was not cantankerous, he was just too private and quiet.  He found his calling as a milkman, a job that allowed him to work in the silent hours of the day and perhaps catch a little rest when the rest of the world was toiling away.  It also allowed me to enjoy hours with him by myself, smelling the sour milk in the truck, and learning to love that hour just before dawn when the birds were the only thing awake.  It was his hour and it became mine as well. 

There were periods of his life when he would also moonlight (if that can be used for day work) as a painter or roofer.  He was a physically unimposing man, but hard as iron.  He had four boys to feed and he did what was necessary.  When the boys were finally fledged, he could cut back a little and begin to enjoy life with my mother.  Her cancer cut that period of life too short – she died way too young.  But in the five years from her diagnosis to the end of her life, they managed to get some travel in, and enjoyed grandchildren time.  Two weeks after she died, he finally agreed to have his hernia repaired.  After all, she no longer needed him to take care of her so he could begin to take care of himself. 

It was no hernia as the doctors discovered when they opened him up.  He too had cancer in the belly (mom’s was ovarian, dad’s was colon).  When he came to he made a decision I couldn’t understand at the time.  He chose to have no treatment whatsoever other than for the surgical wound.  He said he had lived enough, his wife of 40 years was gone and he was ok with going too.  I suspect when you have faced front line jungle warfare and been told to expect “75% to 90% casualties” as you storm the Japanese beaches death loses its hold.  But despite repeatedly wishing he could check out, he lived another 17 years. 

At the end of his life he gave me what perhaps will be the greatest gift I have ever received.  Not wanting to be a burden to anyone he put his meager life savings into a long term care policy.  It paid for his assisted living and when the time came, nursing home care.  But I didn’t want him to die there and when I realized how little time he had left, with the urging and support of my wife I moved him into our home.  For the next three months I brought him whatever he might eat, washed him as I could and even changed his diaper.  I slept on a couch near his bed awakening to horrendous coughs, a legacy of spraying urethane on rooftops to supplement the milkman's income.  He took all of this loss of dignity with little complaint and allowed me to do whatever was necessary.  I think he saw how much I needed to provide some measure of return care to him. 

So for this gift and all the gifts through the years, especially the ones I was too self absorbed to say thank you for, I post this little story of Tom, the basketball player and dancer, the solicitous older brother, the dutiful patriot, the hard working husband and father and in the end, dispenser of the gem of acceptance and grace.  Happy father’s day.  I hope you aren’t mad at me for pouring that little bottle of fine Irish whiskey on your grave the other day.  After all it was an indulgence you all too infrequently allowed yourself.  And of course in my head I sang your favorite song as I did this.

“In heaven there ain’t no beer, so we gotta drink it here.” 

Slainte.