My father died in 2001, 22 years ago. He died the day after Thanksgiving, and I was fortunate enough to spend Thanksgiving Day with him in the hospital. He was in the hospital because of the flu and they were planning to discharge him on Monday.
We were told that his major organs just gave out all at once. He must have known something was wrong because that morning he called my mother as we were leaving the house to go to the hospital.
At the graveside funeral there were several hundred people who showed up from all over the US as he was that well respected and admired.
I had written a poem the morning of the funeral about spending the last day of his life with him and helped him sit up in the hospital bed to keep him from coughing.
My father played football in college and worked for the Federal Government for 40 years at the Department of Agriculture and was the Agricultural Attache in Egypt, Poland, and Holland before retiring at the age of 62. He received a government pension and a military pension because he stayed in the Navy Reserves for 30 years.
As far as a father to me, he was not a very good role model. He drank one glass of Bourbon everyday and overdrank whenever he was at a cocktail or dinner party. He was an adulterer and verbally abused my sister and I. He never taught me how to do any home repairs except putting in a new window pane. He never came to any of my athletic events while I was in high school.
That must have bothered him a little because when my brother went to high school (he was eight years older than me) our father never missed any of his athletic events.
However... my father supported me in anything that I ever wanted to do and was willing to pay for any type of training that I might want to have without expecting me to do anything with that training.
My father was the type of man that no one ever questioned what he had to say or expected from you. In other words, no one ever argued with him even if they wanted to. In most cases he was always right.
He had a silver tongue and could easily convince anyone to do anything for him. He also had a way with words when he wrote letters that were so convincing that he always got what he was asking for.
My mother told me when I was older that he would sit on the side of the bed when it was time for me to go to bed as a child and read stories to me. His voice would change with each character in the book. His style was very entertaining, but I don't remember any of it.
I remember as a young man that I was so angry with him that before he died I would tell him exactly what I thought of him and all the bad things that he had done to me. When I had my chance to do that, I just did not feel the need to let him know how I felt. There was no point to what I wanted to do.
About 12 years before he died, he was diagnosed with some strange disease that the doctors told him would kill him in a little over a year. He beat the odds and lived much longer than expected. The disease did cost him to have his right leg cut off just below the knee.
A once strong and vibrant man was reduced to a frail man sitting in a wheel chair. I didn't feel pity for him or at least did not want to express it... but, I was sad his strength was taken away from him.
At the end of his life, all I could think about was the good times that we had had together and my mind never once dwelled on anything negative.
I am just like my father in so many ways and did not realize it until I turned 60 and started experiencing my own health problems... and, that got me reflecting back on my life and all the bad things that I had done to my daughter and my first wife before we divorced.
LIKE FATHER LIKE SON
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