Saturday, October 29, 2005
Requiems and Saddened Dreams
Dad has been dead a week as of 5:40 this morning. In one sense, it's just one more death among the millions on earth; to me, it's an event of unbelievable importance. It changes everything. I hate it. I also have this drastic sense of relief, because I've worried about him 24/7 for the last 4 years. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I worried about him. I worked my schedule around his meals, shots and bathroom habits. I worried that he'd fall while I was gone.
When the nurse called to tell me he was gone, she also told me that all the nurses up there adored him. I marvelled a little at that. Sick as he was, Dad had still turned on that overabundant charm of his yet again. I told them about his life, and the nurse I was talking to said, "So he's lived about three lifetimes."
I had to agree. Forced to go to work at 13 because his father lost a leg, Dad landed a job as a gas station attendant at 13. He had to check the oil, water and air pressure on each customer's car, then clean their windshield while pumping their gas. That same year, his boss asked him if he knew anything about engines. Dad admitted he didn't. "There's a manual back there. I want the engine in that car in the garage rebuilt."
So, at 13, between customers, following the manual step-by-step, Dad rebuilt a car engine. It started the first time he tried it when he'd finished. He later joined the Air Force and trained as a propeller engine mechanic, jet engine mechanic, and later, back in the private sector, a rocket engine mechanic. He's been all those, a carpenter, hot tub builder, farmer, bronc buster, dump truck driver, town cop, and, like me, hauled bodies for a coroner. He's also been a spacecraft mechanic, worked in Tile World on the Space Shuttles, managed an apartment building and, God bless him, raised me without strangling me.
He had also been an ardent student of human behavior his entire life. His insights into my friends were always coldly accurate, though he often said nothing about them till I'd discovered the truth about them myself. My mother, too, had this gift. They were also both living examples of how to love someone no matter what. My smallest triumphs were noted and praised. My punishments were quick and fair.
I'm going to miss him. I'm even going to miss caring for him, burden though it was. But I know what he'd want for me is to get off my butt and get a life. I've decided to work at that.
