Daddy

I can’t give my dad a gift for Father’s Day this year. He’s been gone for over three years now and it hasn’t gotten much easier. In fact, it’s taken me two years to finish this blog. I know that people say he’s better off since he’s no longer in pain and that is true but it doesn’t make me miss him any less. So in lieu of giving him a gift, I thought I’d give one to myself by telling everyone else about him and what made him so special to me.

Daddy was the eleventh child, next to youngest, of immigrants. His father was from Austria, his mother from Czeckloslavakia. No, I’m not going to give you a history lesson of his life. But to understand Dad, you had to know where he came from. Pap was a gruff man not given to affection. Grandma was quiet, spoke no English and, from what I understand, bitter about her arranged marriage. They moved quite a bit when Daddy was young, going where the work was. It had to be hard, especially since “foreigners” were not well accepted back in the day. As a result, Daddy was a shy man who didn’t make friends easily, although the ones he had spoke very highly of him.

Although Dad’s dream was to become a school teacher, he worked in the steel mill as a machinist to support us. He retired after forty-five years of service there. In addition to his job, he had the farm he bought from our Pap where he raised beef cattle, pigs, the occasional chicken and, of course, we six children. If anyone needed a sense of humor to go along with that, it would have been him.

And had it, he did. A very dry, often strange humor it was. I remember a commercial would come on the television for life insurance. An older couple was sitting at their kitchen table discussing their final rewards and the arrangements that would have to be made upon their passing. The punch line, if you will, of the ad was that the couple didn’t want to be a burden to their kids. They wanted all of the funeral arrangements to be made prior to their death. Every time this commercial was on, Daddy would turn to Mom and say “I think I want to be a burden to our kids. How about you, Mary?”  

Daddy wasn’t very affectionate when we were young. I guess he was too busy or, given his upbringing, just plain didn’t know how to show it. He showed his love to us in different ways other than the physical. We all had cute nicknames, ones that only he called us. Some were appreciated, others not so much (I was Sylvia, go figure). Although to this day, we call our youngest sister “Bee”, which was Dad’s name for her from birth.

No, he wasn’t affectionate but he showed his love in many ways that we learned to appreciate when we were older. If you needed a hand fixing a car or moving to a new home, Dad was there. If you were short a few dollars before payday, he would lend it. In the summer, all of our refrigerators were full of fresh vegetables from his garden. We all ate the best beef from his farm. You never went to his house without eating. He loved to feed people so we all knew to be hungry when we visited. It was his way of showing love.

What impressed me the most about my dad, made me love him even more, was the way that he took care of my mother after she had a stroke. Mom was bedridden almost from the beginning; many would have had her cared for in a nursing facility. Not my dad. From day one, he was with her in the hospital and when she was able to come home, he took care of her. He bathed her every morning, fed her all her meals and cried when she got bed sores. He sang her favorite songs and read the Bible to her because he knew she had always enjoyed both. While we kids were there to help when we could, Daddy was her caretaker for over two years, the one she trusted the most. And when she took her last breath, he was with her.

I took Dad into my home eighteen months before his death after he had fallen and could no longer live alone. While I was sad to see that he was unable to do most of the things that he loved any more, particularly his farming, I enjoyed the time I spent with him then. I grew closer to him than I had ever been, learning things about him that I had never known. He became my friend.

He shared his love of cooking (a little of this, a little of that), tried to teach me how to relax (which didn’t take) and constantly told me I needed to quit working sixty hour weeks (It’s not worth it, Sooz). He told me about his father (who spoke twelve different languages), working at the mill (Midnight shift is for crooks and whores!) and how much he enjoyed camping with us as kids (We always had good campfires, Sooz.)

What he didn’t teach me was dignity in dying. He fought it to his last breath. Six times after he moved in with me, we called the ambulance. And five times he came back. We started calling him Lazarus…you’d have to understand my family’s strange sense of humor to get that. But in the end, he had been in pain for too long and he missed his beloved Mary too much to stay. And as he was with me from my beginning, I was with him at the end (along with twenty others who loved him), holding his hand and telling him to go home.

I miss you, Daddy! Happy Father’s Day!