Robbing Death of All Its Power

One week ago today, my dad passed away, due to a blood clot. The day before, I was told by my brother that my dad's prostate cancer prognosis had changed from roughly six years -- a prognosis that had, until then, remained unchanged since the diagnosis, about a year before -- to six months. Based on that news, my wife and I took that Friday off from work, so we could go visit him. About twelve hours before we were going to get in the car and drive up, my sister-in-law called and told me that he was dead.

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I broke down at the news, of course. I was sitting at my computer when I got the call, and after my wife took the phone from me, I sat there with my head in my hands, sometimes grabbing my hair in my fists. I wanted to throw things, but I didn't. Later that night, trying to find something to occupy my mind, I settled on watching The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which I now acknowledge is a particularly odd selection, under the circumstances. However, the film is so close to perfect that it did do the job that I required of it. A day or so later, one of my brothers told me that on the night he learned of my dad's six-month prognosis, he chose to watch Ikiru. I said, "I can't decide if that's the best or worst possible choice." He said, "Worst."

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* * * *

The first two nights I spent with my family, my brothers and I spent a great deal of time singing old Irish folk songs, primarily songs of Irish rebellion, because those were my dad's favorite. Growing up, we had a record, and later a tape, of the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem full of these songs, and my dad loved playing them for us. As a result, the lyrics of many of those songs have not left us. Those lyrics that did elude us were retrieved from the internet. Of my father's seven sons, two of us (not me) can genuinely sing, and each of them took a solo, one on "Boulevogue" (God grant you glory, brave Father Murphy/And open heaven to all your men) and the other on "The Parting Glass". "The Parting Glass" would later be sung by the same brother at my father's viewing.

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The lot of us sang, together, "The Croppy Boy" and "Nell Flaherty's Drake" and "O Donnell Abu" and "The Foggy Dew" and "Kevin Barry" and "The Minstrel Boy". Most of us can't sing, but we sounded pretty good. At the cemetery, we had a bagpiper, and he played "The Minstrel Boy". I wasn't quite prepared for that.

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* * * *

On Sunday, my wife and I, along with one of my sisters-in-law and her two kids, went to the National Zoo. My nephew really, really wanted to see beavers and otters. When I saw him that morning, as we were preparing to head to the zoo, I asked him, "What animals do you want to see today?" He said, "Beavers!" Like there was no question in the world. Had you asked my wife, she would have said "Pandas!" We did indeed see pandas and beavers and otters. It was a good day. My dad would have liked it.

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* * * *

I was terrified of going to the viewing, because I hadn't seen my dad yet, and seeing him in his casket convinced me that he was, in fact, gone. It had somehow been an easy fact to navigate around in the days leading up to that night, but no longer. I brought him a pack of Vantage cigarettes, which had been his brand for many, many years, until he decided they were too expensive. When I thought my trip to Northern Virginia was going to be a visit with my dad, I had planned on bringing him several packs. My dad smoked until the end, but, though I smoke myself, it was something I never before had wanted to overtly encourage. But it was clear at that point that he'd beaten cigarettes, so I felt that he should have the brand he preferred. He never got them, but I gave them to him anyway.

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* * * *

I was talking to one of my brothers about our dad, and how he raised us. Some old family friends, friends of my brothers and myself, were at the viewing, and many of them talked about how much they'd loved my old man, but were scared of him all the same. So my brother and I talked about how perfectly he walked that particular line. Based on his background, had my dad been a fictional character, he would have been the stereotypical hard-ass, who was either a cold disciplinarian, or perhaps worse. He grew up in an old Irish Catholic coal-mining community that still, to this day, seems to be physically clinging to the 1940s. He left that area and eventually became a Special Agent for the FBI. That was his job for thirty years, and he did it all over the country. He was a damn good agent (as he wouldn't hesitate to tell you, though maybe not in so many words) and a hero, and, by the way, he cut a very imposing figure. He was also the sweetest man I've ever known. My brothers and I weren't hit, by either of our parents, and they both loved to have fun with us, and joke with us. Any fear we felt was a fear of disappointing him. My mom, too. They were both such wonderful people that they set a very high standard of humanity by simply existing.

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* * * *

My dad had a lot of phrases that he liked to repeat to us, for encouragement or instruction. If we came home from school crying because somebody had been mean to us, he would hold us close and say, "Never let the bastards get you down." If, for some reason, he felt the need to talk to us about fighting another kid -- which happened from time to time -- he would tell us that we should never start a fight. Ever. But if we found ourselves inextricably involved in one, he told us that we should always go for the other guy's nose, because that would end the fight right there. He also had the funny quirk of ending every phone message with "Clear", which, I'm told, is an old pre-CB radio sign-off.

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But the best thing my dad ever said to me is something he said to me my whole life. He said, "I don't just love ya. I like ya, too." When I was a kid, I remember being confused by that, because wasn't "love" supposed to be a few steps up from "like"? What gives? As I got a little older, I of course realized that it's possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. As my brother rephrased it, when he and I were talking: "Even if you weren't my son, you'd still be my friend."

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* * * *

The night before the funeral, I went to bed early, but I had trouble sleeping. There were a few reasons for that, but one was that a few of my brothers, my wife, one of my aunts, and two cousins were all downstairs, drinking and laughing, and, in the house where I was staying, sound carries. At the time I was annoyed with them, but I now consider it my own fault. I should have been down there with them. My occasional bouts of loner-ism don't always pay off in my favor.

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Anyway, I was in bed, watching TV, flipping through the channels, and I found a show I'd never heard of before, called Movie Mob. The titular mob is a group of people from around the country who, at the behest of the show's producers, go out and see whatever big movies are opening that weekend, and then record their reviews on YouTube, or something, and send the links to the producers, who then show them to us, the viewer. The viewer, in turn, can get on-line and vote for their favorite, or least favorite, and the least popular member of the mob gets the axe, and can no longer submit his or her film reviews to the show. The films under discussion in the episode I caught were The Ugly Truth and G-Force. In the G-Force review, each member of the Movie Mob at some point offered up their imitation of a guinea pig.

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"Jesus Christ," I thought. "First my dad dies, now this."

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* * * *

In his homily during the church service, the priest said that funerals are important in that they're good at "robbing death of all its power." And indeed they are. They are also, of course, miserably painful, but afterwards you still feel cleansed, if I may be permitted to use that old cliche'. There were two eulogies at my dad's funeral: one from my brother, who talked about how my dad could never enjoy anything fully -- a song, a movie, anything -- unless he could share it with his family. One of my sisters-in-law relayed a bunch of stories about my dad, because, she pointed out -- as though any of us needed to be reminded of this fact -- my dad loved telling stories. The best story she told involved my dad tricking her into watching Patton.

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Both eulogies were funny and sweet and sad and terribly moving. And then we brought the casket to the cemetery and left flowers on it. We cried and said goodbye.

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As the song goes:

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O, all the comrades e'er I had

They're sorry for my going away

And all the sweethearts e'er I had

They'd wished me one more day to stay

But since it falls unto my lot

That I should rise and you should not

I gently rise and softly call

Goodnight and joy be with you all

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I love you, Dad.

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Clear.