Today would have been my father's 82nd birthday. He's been gone for nine years now, but I can visualize him at age 82, only a little bit older than he was at the end of his life.
Unlike my Mom Shirley, who suffered with cancer, Jer was here one moment and gone the next: He had been running early in his final day and was working on a family member's car late in the day--the same things he always did.
Anyway, I miss him terribly and think of my parents practically every day; only an intense stretch of trying to juggle the bills or more than one major errand bumps them off my brain for awhile.
Dad was one of those awesome people who kept evolving, especially in his later years.
Growing up, I was often afraid of him because he was quite strict. And yes, he could get really angry at us. Can't remember what we did (possibly it was putting dents in the garage door by playing field hockey), but I recall him picking up a bat and any baseball or tennis ball in the vicinity and smacking it a long ways to keep us from using it, far into the brush across the street; this was before there were any houses there. Sometimes we couldn't find those balls again. But at the same time, he was so loving and helpful for the vast majority of our time together.
The Dad I remember hated my rock'n'roll when I was just getting into it but wound up going to see my 1980s band many, many nights in-a-row.
He was the guy who said, "soccer will never make it here" but became the greatest soccer grandparent that my nieces ever knew. He was the man who taught me all about baseball, which I am gaga over to this day. Dad also said, "mark my words" a lot.
See, I'm still doing it.
He was the guy who "only" liked dogs but took care of my daughter Mirelle's cat, the
pet who loved my Dad so much that he would gently pat my father's face. It was hell when Dad died, because I was there in Michigan that summer and the cat walked around the house, so lost. How do you convey to an animal what happened?
Dad made such a beautiful connection with my wife and stepdaughter when we all traveled to Michigan in 2002. That seems like many decades ago, not just one.
I even miss when Dad was impatient and would bark out "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" with the words running together (hmmm, I do it to my cats nowadays). I loved how he'd say, "You snap the whip and I'll make the trip," which I found out much later was from one of those great boogie woogie records of the late '40s; my guess is that the source of that jive phrase was his hip friend, Bernie. Or when we were really little, Dad would tell us, "Jump!" And then: "Who told you to come down?"
Damn, Dad, I wish you could come from wherever you are and visit your son again. I hope you're having a happy birthday.
Unlike my Mom Shirley, who suffered with cancer, Jer was here one moment and gone the next: He had been running early in his final day and was working on a family member's car late in the day--the same things he always did.
Anyway, I miss him terribly and think of my parents practically every day; only an intense stretch of trying to juggle the bills or more than one major errand bumps them off my brain for awhile.
Dad was one of those awesome people who kept evolving, especially in his later years.
Growing up, I was often afraid of him because he was quite strict. And yes, he could get really angry at us. Can't remember what we did (possibly it was putting dents in the garage door by playing field hockey), but I recall him picking up a bat and any baseball or tennis ball in the vicinity and smacking it a long ways to keep us from using it, far into the brush across the street; this was before there were any houses there. Sometimes we couldn't find those balls again. But at the same time, he was so loving and helpful for the vast majority of our time together.
The Dad I remember hated my rock'n'roll when I was just getting into it but wound up going to see my 1980s band many, many nights in-a-row.
He was the guy who said, "soccer will never make it here" but became the greatest soccer grandparent that my nieces ever knew. He was the man who taught me all about baseball, which I am gaga over to this day. Dad also said, "mark my words" a lot.
See, I'm still doing it.
He was the guy who "only" liked dogs but took care of my daughter Mirelle's cat, the
pet who loved my Dad so much that he would gently pat my father's face. It was hell when Dad died, because I was there in Michigan that summer and the cat walked around the house, so lost. How do you convey to an animal what happened?
Dad made such a beautiful connection with my wife and stepdaughter when we all traveled to Michigan in 2002. That seems like many decades ago, not just one.
I even miss when Dad was impatient and would bark out "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" with the words running together (hmmm, I do it to my cats nowadays). I loved how he'd say, "You snap the whip and I'll make the trip," which I found out much later was from one of those great boogie woogie records of the late '40s; my guess is that the source of that jive phrase was his hip friend, Bernie. Or when we were really little, Dad would tell us, "Jump!" And then: "Who told you to come down?"
Damn, Dad, I wish you could come from wherever you are and visit your son again. I hope you're having a happy birthday.
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