I have diaried about this before, and you have been comforting and sweet. But that was before my dad died. Now he has, and I want you all to know that. He was an amazing man, and it seems like I should put a period on the diaries that have gone before.
Dad died around 3:30 am last Thursday morning. My sister, Cathy, and my brother, Joe, had just gotten in at around Noon on Wednesday from their respective Chicago and Maui homes. They and my other sisters and brother were at his bedside when he died.
The funeral was lovely, especially the graveside service, which included a wonderful Air Force Honor Guard from Moody AFB in Valdosta, a nine-gun salute (you have to be a really big wig in the military to get a 21-gun salute, apparently) and a bugler playing Taps.
I hope you will all raise a glass to a man who was really a great father. He so loved his kids. I know I have bored many of you with stories about him in previous diaries, but I'm going to do it one more time for those of you who might not have read them.
We were never well off. In fact, growing up, we were pretty dang poor, and if we hadn't had health care, free rent and cheap commissary food because of the Air Force, we might not have made it. But we never knew we were poor. My dad gave his children two things that money can't buy -- a love of all critters and a love of the night sky. Because of my dad, our family rescued countless birds that had fallen from their nests, been caught up in oil spills and red tide in Tampa Bay, or been otherwise damaged -- mockingbirds, sparrows, seagulls and pelicans. I remember us all driving to church one day on the base when we came upon a pelican sitting in the middle of the road. My dad pulled over, gathered the bird into the car and took him home to nurse him back to health (he had a broken wing).
He was also a jokester. Once, we were in Baltimore at a reservoir and we saw ducks. Trying to show off my knowledge of birds, I proclaimed, "Those are mallards." He said, "No. It's pronounced mal-LARDS." (He had always liked that stupid joke about Mr. Buz-ZARD is out in the yard. I don't remember the joke but it ends with a bunny telling someone, "Well, tell him Mr. Rab-BIT is here with the s--t.") It was some years later when I learned that he was kidding, and that mallards were pronounced mallards and not mal-LARDS.
When we returned from Okinawa, where we were stationed after Japan (this being in the late '50s), our ship dropped us off in San Francisco. We had no idea where we were to be stationed, but we knew we were driving home to Fernandina. So my dad bought an old car and we started out. Mom and Dad and four kids, with mom eight months pregnant with my brother, Bill, no air conditioning (in June), and a box of Cheerios for sustenance. We stopped once in Flagstaff, Arizona, where my dad hauled us all out into the front of the cheap motel we were staying at to show us the most amazing night sky I had ever seen. At some point on the trip, the car's generator went bad, so he would drive at night by the full moon with the lights off, turning them on whenever he saw an approaching car. No child seats, no seat belts. It's a miracle we survived. At some point during the trip, we came across an elderly couple whose car had a flat tire.
Dad got out and fixed it, and the lady, taking pity on my parents who had a car full of children, came over and gave us all cookies she had baked to take to her grandchildren. I remember that, though I don't know why. I also remember that when she came over to our car, she stood smack in the middle of an ant hill.
He loved to take us outside and try to impart his limited knowledge of the night sky. He knew the Big Dipper, of course, and he knew that the Pleiades (the seven sisters, which, in later years, he said were me and my sisters, along with our Mom) were being chased by Taurus the Bull, who was being tracked by Orion the Hunter who was being trailed by his faithful dog, Sirius. When we were in Tampa, living on MacDill AFB, he bought a cheap telescope because he knew that men would be walking on the moon. Then he, once again, hauled us all out of bed to show us the moon when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on it. Other kids watched it on television, but he thought it was important that we look through the telescope. We were all disappointed that we couldn't actually see them, but we believed him when he said they were there.
My sisters and I are still crazy over the night sky. We will basically drop what we are doing to head to Fernandina, where my parents live way out in the woods on a marsh and the night sky is still dark, for a decent comet sighting or meteor shower. Some of us now have cool star-finders and telescopes and most of us have invested in green lasers, which can shoot beams up to the sky if you are trying to identify or point out a certain star or planet. But you have to be careful, because you could put your eye out. Or cause a plane to crash. Whether that is true or not, I do not know and am not willing to find out.
When we were little, he would come home from work, and my mom would have dinner on the table at 5:15 pm. We would eat, clean up the dishes and hop in the car. While my mom finished up laundry or one of the many chores that having a zillion kids entails, my dad would take us in the station wagon "nerping," which was his word for driving aimlessly. We might end up at Beach Park, where we would wonder over the horseshoe crabs, or to the Mole Hole, where we could jump in and swim (he once leapt into the water shoes, wallet and all) when my sister, Vicky, got out too far; or to Jules Verne Park where we would count the boards on the pier. Occasionally, he would take us to a convenience store where we would all buy penny candy. And when he had money left over at the end of the month (a rarity) he would take us to McDonalds, where we would buy four hamburgers, four orders of fries and four milkshakes and split them all among seven kids; this was before my two youngest siblings were born.
Then we would come home and take our baths. Our two bedrooms (girls in one, boys in the other) opened onto a hall, where he would sit on the floor and sing songs and read poetry (Poe, mostly) until we fell asleep.
He has been ill for many years, getting progressively worse. But even toward the end, he liked to hear about the prospects for the Georgia Bulldogs and the Atlanta Braves. When I was looking through old photo albums to put together a collage, I came across a scrap of paper that he had written on. It just said, "Only Hall of Famer to make the last out in two no-hitters. Hank Aaron." I know it was a trivia question he was determined to remember. My husband, Jack, a sportswriter, would always make sure that he had the latest Georgia Football media guide or a program from the Georgia-Florida game or whatever bowl Georgia was in. Every single one of them was still in the bookcase next to the chair he always sat in toward the end of his life -- before he was limited to the bed that he eventually died in. The last time I was home when he was still aware enough to notice, I was wearing a Georgia Tech t shirt. He told me to "take that damn thing off," and I did.
One of his biggest thrills was when Jack and I took him to the All Star game (1993?) at Camden Yards. Oh, he felt like such a star, having drinks with the sportswriters, eating crabs at the harbor and wandering around Baltimore.
We split at some point, me rejecting the Catholic faith that he loved so much. But though it saddened him, it never changed our relationship. Toward the end, I was in his room, singing him the songs that he sang to us as children -- Lindy Lou, Rose of Tralee, Go Tell Aunt Rhodie, Sleep, Kentucky Babe, Strawberry Roan, Streets of Laredo, High Noon and Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, and reciting the poems he loved (Annabel Lee, The Raven -- he loved Poe's poetry).
But despite our differences, I loved my father with a love that was more than a love (from Annabel Lee). And I knew he loved me the same.