Man of the Week – My Father

I lost my father yesterday. This article is 100% self serving but guess what? I don’t give a s**t. Make no mistake, no matter how you try to brace yourself for this kind of event, the sting is overwhelming.

Believe me, we had our differences. When I was growing up I thought he was the biggest a-hole on the planet. But as I got older, I started seeing things from a completely different perspective.

He grew up during the depression. He had very little. He lost his mom to pneumonia when he was just two years old. He would sit on a windowsill all day waiting for his sister to pick him up from a neighbor’s house who was babysitting him. He lost his brother in a war and watched countless people he knew and loved pass away. He watched his best friends get blown up inches away from him in the Korean War. An event he hated talking about decades after the fact. It was a rough ride for him and yet, when he spoke of his younger years, he did it with great affection.

When I was growing up he didn’t talk much; which made me think he hated us, me especially. Most of the time he was probably just sweating how he was going to take care of us when he didn’t make very much money.

Growing up, I had an uncle who I was very close to and who loved me and my siblings a lot. He was the kind of uncle who would win 10K at the track and take us out for ice cream and to Coney Island. He was totally cool.

Through my teen years my dad and I drifted further and further apart. I was the typical arrogant teenage prick most of us were at that age. Thinking we knew everything when we didn’t know s**t.

He was always there though. Getting up everyday, going to work, taking out the garbage, walking the dog, shoveling the snow from the sidewalk, opening and closing our little above ground pool, wrapping Christmas presents at 2:00 in the morning after working all day, filming us, taking pictures, running errands, going shopping and doing all of the things that a father is “supposed to do”.  

After I got married and had a couple of kids of my own, I started reflecting on many things.

One day, I told my father that I needed to speak with him privately. We sat down at the kitchen table. I put a big bottle of Sambuca between us and we proceeded to get wrecked together. I sat there and got everything off my chest. The way I felt, blah, blah, blah and what a douche bag I thought he was. But I did make sure I told that no matter how much everyone said that my uncle was like “a second father” to me, it just wasn’t the truth. I told him that I finally understood that a “true father” was the one waking up everyday, breaking his balls for sh**tty pay, to take care of his family. The old man sat there with me. Drinking, getting hammered, smiling and talking. He never went back at me. When we were completely tanked and it was all done. There was nothing more from both of us than “love you, always will”

After that, my old man and I were totally ok. Everything changed for the better. We hit a stride and reached a silent understanding that lasted from then until he passed away.

Sadly, my dad is gone now. But I do have a wealth of stories about that crazy old f***ker. He was a total whack job for sure and I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Here’s some advice for you, if you guys have some unresolved bull s**t with your father, uncle, sister, whatever, do your best to straighten it out before it’s too late. Swallow your f*****g pride. If you care about someone, tell them, because tomorrow, they may not be there. If you blow it, it will be too big a burden to carry.

I was talking to my sister today. Through her tears and grief she said “I will always love my mother, but I adored my father”.

I totally get what she meant. I would give just about anything for just one more opportunity to tell him that.

Bye Dad.