Friday, March 25, 2016

New Songs, Timeless Theme

I was listening to my daughters singing along with some popular music last night.  I knew it must be popular because they were singing along and I didn’t recognize it.  In between songs, they talked about the nuances of genre.  Folk, pop, rock, some combination.  But what I noticed were the lyrics, which shared a theme.  Though I couldn’t tell you what they said specifically, the words had that same aspirational, eternal, absolute conviction that good love songs thrive on.  Now, my girls are on the imaginary side of that divide.  They have had, depending on their age, their various crushes or hoped for attachments.  But, unlike Dad, they have yet to experience that aching certainty that the person you are sitting across from in some restaurant or walking hand-in-hand with or driving home is the person you want to, need to, must be with for the rest of your life.  After 35 years of marriage it would have been quite easy for me to descend into lecturing my daughters about how unrealistic the portrayal of love is in a three minute song on the radio.  Really, you could live without that other person.  After all, you were alive before you met them, right?

Then, I thought back to the time when I was in that place.  When the longing and the wondering were actually realized in a magical young woman who said “Yes”, who said “I Do” and started that life together that seems much more than the two of us.  While I know that it is true that a form of life would go on if one of us was no longer there, I also know that there would be a vast emptiness that would never be filled.  That is how love should be.  You give it all you’ve got, flaws and all, and something grows up and out and together until where one ends and the other begins is less and less discernible.  And to tear that apart would indeed be tragic.

So, I suspect the love songs will just keep coming.  As unique as each relationship, as familiar as that ‘tale as old as time’.
Just an old-fashioned love song, 
playin’ on the radio, 
and wrapped around the music, 
is the sound of someone promising they’ll never go.
You swear you’ve heard it before, 
as it slowly rambles on.
No need in bringing ‘em back, 
‘cause they’re never really gone…
An Old-Fashioned Love Song

Performed by 3 Dog Night, lyrics by Paul Williams

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Saying “Goodbye” to Dad

THE NEWS
It was the day after Thanksgiving.  I was outside doing some yard work when a call came from my sister.  Dad had cancer.  Pancreatic cancer.  The prognosis was clear.  Without any treatment, he had a few months to live, at best.  With a regimen of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy he might get a month or two extra.  After weighing the benefits of aggressive treatment against the misery of that grueling experience, Dad decided to stay home to spend his final days in familiar surroundings rather than as a clinical statistic in a constant cycle of treatment and hospital visits.

SOME BACKGROUND
Dad left when I was three years old.  Our encounters after that were rare.  The next time I saw him was seven years later when I spent half the summer with he and his wife.  Three more years passed.  My brother Phil and I had a short stay with Dad before Mom moved us to Wyoming.  A couple of years summers later, the two of us had another brief visit.  I graduated from high school in 1977, then moved back to California in 1978.  In 1980, I drove my orange Mazda GLC up to Yermo to see Dad after five years without communication.  Driving home in the dark, I wondered what the visit meant to me, to him.  We had said so little.  He had spent part of the afternoon working in his garage.

Karen and I got married in 1981.  Dad decided it would be better if he stayed away, since the rest of our family might feel uncomfortable.  In the fall of 1987, Dad’s wife Marguritte died from cancer.  Karen was pregnant with our first daughter Candace when we went up for the funeral.  In 1995, my wife and two daughters went to see Dad and his new wife Lorna May.  Candace and Aimee were small.  The wives kept the conversation going, our girls kept it from being too quiet.  It was the last time I saw Dad.

In 1999, my brother Phil died in an accident.  While Mom and my sisters dealt with the aftermath, I was elected to call Dad.  I have never been good calling people.  A phone call is too close, too personal, especially when delivering very bad news to someone whom I had not spoken with in years.  After explaining what I knew about the circumstances, there was an awkward pause.  Then Dad remarked how Phil had a hard life.  Then I asked if he would be coming back for the funeral.  No, I can’t travel because of my back.  I can’t sit for that long.  That was the last time we would speak to each other for sixteen years.

WHAT TO DO
After ending the call with Renee that afternoon last November, I had a decision to make.  One my sister wasn’t ready to approach yet.  Of all of us, she was the most outraged by Dad’s unwillingness to come to his own son’s funeral.  In her mind, Dad was a non-entity.  She wasn’t going to call him.

I had not seen him in over twenty years. We were strangers, vague acquaintances with a biological link.  Time had kept rolling along and the distance between us had grown.  Oh, I would send him our annual family Christmas letter.  Father’s Day in June reminded me his birthday was coming in July.  Sometimes I would send a card with a little note.  Mostly, I just watched the day go by, wondering what the man whose genes shaped me was doing in the desert a few hours away.  

My younger daughters would ask about the grandfather they had never met.  I knew in my gut that I should do something.  But I never did.  Our last two encounters had been exercises in awkwardness.  Dad and I share a discomfort with extended social activities.  I was busy making a living and raising a family and figuring out life, trying to be a father without much to go on from my own growing up years.

Now, the stranger was dying.  The tomorrows which always seemed plentiful were few and disappearing rapidly.  So, after a few days of agonizing, I picked up the phone and dialed the number.


WHAT DO YOU TALK ABOUT WITH A DYING MAN?
I had no plan beyond this: I owed the man my life and wanted to let him know that my 50-plus years had been blessed beyond measure, in spite of the rift between us.  When he answered, I recognized the voice immediately.  A little less firm, a little more rough.  But it was Dad.

So, we talked: about his disease, about his wife Anne, about how he was feeling, about my family and my work.  He had read each Christmas letter, so he knew a lot.  I got the first hint of what he was enduring when he told me he only weighed 114 pounds.  The last time he had weighed that was at the tail end of his tour in Korea.  He didn’t say what his normal weight was, but it had to be a good 70 pounds more.

I told him I was thankful for my life, glad I had a father.  And he admitted he hadn’t been much of one.  Then, I told him that if it weren’t for the circumstances of the divorce, I would have never ended up (along with Mom and the rest of my siblings) in a little church where my life would take a radically different turn.  How because of that, I met my wife and her family which have been so vital in shaping the life I now enjoy.  That Providence has a plan and we don’t necessarily see it all.  

At a certain point, I could tell he was getting tired and it was time to go.  I told him I would call again soon.  Then, he asked if I could text him instead.  It was easier for him to respond to because his sleep schedule was erratic and being on the phone took a lot of energy.  After I got off the phone, I sent a short message to him.  He almost immediately responded.  

Valjean Robidoux:
Hi Dad. Glad we got to talk tonight. 
Maurice Robidoux:
I am too. I don't know if I can ever explain what happened in our lives and we can't change it. Let's just go from here. 

And so I spent the next several weeks texting with a dying man.  It was is if my life suddenly was focused down the wrong end of a telescope, looking at a tragic event taking place from far, far away.  The rest of my life faded into the background.  My morning and evening ride on the commuter train to and from work became my window into Dad’s world as we texted back and forth.  Not every day, but more often than not.  Dad didn’t always have strength to respond right away.  And knowing, always, that time was rapidly running out.  Not in that vague sense that we all have that our earthly lives our finite, but in the very real sense that life is fighting a rear guard action against an overwhelming disease for enough time to negotiate a peaceful surrender.  Dad did that.  He came to terms with his end.  That gave him the freedom in those short weeks to say those things to his children that he knew in his heart needed to be said, to acknowledge failings of the past, to move forward in hope and charity, to give and receive love long dormant.

Dad passed away on February 22nd.  I was sitting in corporate headquarters in New Jersey, participating in a meeting that did not need my particular skills or input.  The text came from Anne.  It was over: the weeks of wondering which day would be his last; the snatched fragments of texted conversations that Dad could muster with his disease-ravaged body.  Just a few hundred words.  But enough to bridge the chasm that had been between us for over 50 years.  He was finally able to admit who he was, I was finally able to accept it.  

Rather than a selfish ogre willfully neglecting his offspring, I caught glimpses of a man who struggled to understand the bitter conflict between his own parents and did not want to inflict that on his children, who silently carried the brutal experience of serving his country under MacArthur in Korea, from Inchon to the ghastly battle for Chosin Reservoir in December of 1950.  But, he placed no blame, he took full responsibility for the choices he made.  He was a patriot and had no regrets about doing his duty.  He admitted his failings as a father when he left behind a shamble of a first marriage.

This quiet, flawed man who had outlived two wives in his remote desert home, was now experiencing “till death us do part” for the third time.  He was the one who would be parting.  His Anne, his wife of short seven years, loved my father dearly.  She was bearing the grief of each day with humor and tender care for her man.  Young love knows no boundaries of age.

Dad was a maker.  He rebuilt dozens of cars, though he didn’t collect them.  For him, the joy was in the craftsmanship — solving the problem of fitting diverse automotive components together into a unified, functional piece of mechanical art.  He was always at home in the garage, rarely comfortable elsewhere for long.  The last shop he built had the same square footage as the home I live in.

While on tour in Korea, Dad picked up the guitar.  He was self-taught, like many men from that era, including my father-in-law.  To someone like me who cannot play any musical instrument, the notion of someone teaching themselves to play guitar is a kind of magic.  He played acoustic, electric, and electric bass guitar.  For a man who liked to be busy with his hands, the guitar was a pleasing alternative after a day using mechanic’s tools.  And, as he put it, music was good therapy.

THE END
When Dad’s time came, none of his children were there.  Always a private man, he also had a sense of dignity.  And death by cancer is not dignified.  So Dad wanted as few visitors as possible.  Mostly, he just wanted to be with his dear wife Anne, whom he referred to often as his angel.  Thankfully, Anne had her children nearby who did what good children do - giving support when needed and space when that was needed.

If I believe in anything, it is redemption.  That somehow, in spite of wasted years and hurt and doubt, there is still a chance for restoration.  We almost missed it.  Yet, in those few weeks, we were given a beautiful grace to say those things that needed to be said, especially “I love you.”  Saying “I love you” is a good habit we have tried to nurture in our home, a reminder of why we go the extra mile for each other, especially after a family squabble.  For Dad and I, this was the first time we used those words in all those long, distant years.  I cannot explain the significance of “hearing” those words for the first time from my father after decades of silence.  To know that as hard as it was for him, as hard as it was for me, a bridge had been built over what seemed an impossibly wide and deep chasm.

As I told Anne: “Words. Just a few words sent out into space. And because of them I have grown closer to my dad than I thought possible.”  Though I have my concerns about what we miss by having our noses glued to our smart phones, that technology was vital during Dad’s final earthly days.  Critical bonds between father and daughters and son were forged or mended.  Honest words of the heart allowed Dad to slip into eternity knowing that he was loved, that his children were okay, that forgiveness is a magnificent restorer of the soul.  All through text messages.


Some deaths are sudden, leaving no room for goodbyes.  Some hearts are too frozen even when there is time and the words remain trapped inside until it is too late.  I am thankful for just enough time and light and warmth and courage for my sisters and I to share what was vital and beautiful with Dad.  Will the regret for ‘what might have been’ ever be gone?  Oh, I am sure it linger.  But our own years will roll to their conclusion and then we will know fully and the ‘might have been’ will be eclipsed by what will be.