Quote from: BGuttman on Feb 04, 2017, 10:07PMYeah, losing a job and a parent at the same time is very stressful. There was a piece in the New York Times magazine a few years back (maybe a lot of years back) talking about life stressors. Losing a job, divorce, and losing a parent all are extreme stressors.
When my mother died 26 years ago at age 71 that was very bad. I found myself spontaneously breaking into tears for a year after that.
But a couple days ago my father died at age 100 and I'm fine with it.
From Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump, he got to witness an amazing stretch of human history, and perfectly timed his ride on the wave of American prosperity.
I think the happiest time i had with my father was when I was about four or five. I'd climb up in his lap and say "draw me a train" and he'd pull an envelope out of the wastebasket and draw me a scene with a steam locomotive.
That's a long way to have to go back for a happy memory.
I know a lot of people would be glad just to have a father like mine who never came home at 2am in a drunken rage or one like mine who had a long, continuously-employed professional career. I am grateful that he had those positive qualities. I've met fathers who didn't and their families were a wreck.
None-the-less, my strongest memories will be the disappointing ones. His hands-on parenting was pretty much limited to dragging us to church every Sunday.
He expressed no interest in any of my interests even when they were interests that he had had at one time, like wood-working projects or photography.
I learned early on not to bother asking him questions because his answer would typically be, "I guess you'll just have to put on your thinking cap, my good man!" If I had a complaint about something, his remark would be, "Well that's just tough!"
He had a PhD in Chemistry and was a calculus whiz but was incapable of helping me with any of my homework. He could not understand why I had questions about something that was so obvious to him.
The only time I ever heard him say, "I'd like to help you with that" was after he was able to add, "but I'm just too old and weak to be much use."
If you went down the list of classic father-son activities, we did none of them. To this day I can't pass a football or hit a baseball. The only sit-down serious father-son talk we ever had was when he told me I HAD to go to his alma mater for college because that was the one he'd pay for.
But then I ended up having to pay for most of it anyway even though he could have easily covered it. That was seriously bad financial guidance from my parents that took me almost 20 years to unwind.
One of my biggest surprises was after my mother died and I came home to find him playing the piano, choosing hymns to play at the funeral.
Huh? My dad plays piano?!?
For years, all we had ever heard from his childhood piano study was "America" and he said he could play nothing else. But here he was now, sight-reading through the hymnal.
All during my beginner trombone years he could have been helpful and plunked out a simple accompaniment to a simple solo. That would have been great fun but it never happened. It would have cost him nothing but a little time but he never ventured to try.
So, I don't mourn my dad's passing. He had a longer life and more chances to do the things he wanted than most of us can hope for.
I do regret the missed opportunities and all the things that could have happened and should have happened but didn't because... he just didn't want to bother.
May he rest in peace. He's finally getting that nap he always seemed to need.
