Ron

When my dad was a little kid he went to work with his dad one day. I never knew his dad. He died before I was born. I knew him only as Hank. Not grandpa, or some other nickname, because my dad always addressed and referred to his parents by their first names. Hank and Velma. At some point during the day, Hank and my dad walked over to the store. Hank bought himself a carton of buttermilk to drink (strange) and my dad a small chocolate milk. He told my dad, however, that his was also buttermilk. My dad happily sucked back his 'buttermilk' and found it to be absolutely delicious. A few days later, while shopping with Velma, whom my siblings and I would end up calling Gram, my dad asked her to buy him some buttermilk. She told him he wouldn't like it, but he insisted that he had drank it just the other day and loved it. So she obliged. My dad excitedly gulped back a large mouthful, and immediately spit it all back out.

I got a kick out of this story. The combination of the innocent young boy wanting to be like his old man with the always hilarious scenario of somebody thinking they're about to taste one thing and ending up with something horrifyingly different in their mouth. My dad told this to me one evening in our living room while the two of us were watching The Barefoot Contessa. It's one of the last stories I can remember him telling me.

There are a few clear memories after that. His initial reports of back pain, which I mostly ignored. His decision to start sleeping in a guest bed in the basement that felt better on his back. The time he picked me up from student teaching, wincing in pain at every small bump. Him staggering into the kitchen and telling me about a new recurring, and highly disturbing symptom. My silence. Him repeating. Me snapping back that I didn't know what to say to that. The tests. The frustration. The crying. The diagnosis.

It was cancer, widespread throughout his body. From there it was an avalanche. Within no time his pain was unbearable. He took large amounts of morphine, which made him incoherent but seemed to do nothing for the agony he was in. There would be no real conversations after that. Just endless moans and cries from his bedroom. Day and night. A sleepless house.

His hands grasped my shoulders, mine under his armpits. He had lost a lot of weight. We shuffled slowly down the front walkway together, looking into each others eyes. Looking like some sad, slow motion version of some football drill he might have shown me years before. Me, walking backward, leading him out to the van so that my mom and I could take him to Concordia hospital, where he would spend his last few days. When it was clear that he had very little time left, my family gathered in the hospital room. My brother flew in from B.C., rushed into the room and was mortified by what he saw. Friends came by to visit him. My sister brought in her dog, whom my dad had loved. We took turns moistening his cracked lips. It was hell. At one point, my sister's and I left to get something to eat, and I decided not to go back. I was in a band at the time and we were supposed to have a show at the Pyramid that night. I sat at home, feeling exhausted and confused, and at some point I decided that I was still going to play the show. So I called our singer and asked if he could come pick me up. As he pulled up in front of my house, so did the rest of my family. I knew what that meant. I hugged and kissed and cried with everyone for a bit and then headed off to go rock out in front of a small handful of bored drunks.

When I was eighteen, I was backpacking in Italy and I got an e-mail from my dad. He was going to start drumming again, playing old standards at the legions around town with some band. It was probably the most proud I'd ever felt of my father. I had never really seen him drum. Maybe when I was too young to remember, but his drums had been in cases on a shelf in the basement for most of my life. That is, until my friend Dave and I decided we were going to start a band. I convinced him to take the drums out and show me a few things. He had played a big part in developing my passion for music. He was a DJ, so I would sit in the basement with him while he set tapes. I'd go through his song books and make lists for him to make me mixtapes from. He'd play me the first few seconds of a song and see how quickly I could guess what it was. He was always relatively supportive of my band as we went from being just an idea, to an actual thing, to recording an album and going on small tours. Through all of the things I geeked out on as a little kid, from cars to football he always had some knowledge and a stack of old magazines to offer me on the subject. After becoming one of my football coaches the first year that I played, he slowly got more and more involved with the football club, to the point that it became more his hobby than mine. Music was different though. Sharing this with him, at this point, seemed to say something to me about who we were as guys.

He was far from a perfect father. I choose mainly to focus on the good things about him now, but to remain aware of his failings and to recognize them in myself and improve on them. I regret that we were only starting to get to the point that we could sit and talk as men. With every new year of my life I feel like I understand more about who he was, and some of it makes me angry at him, some makes me sympathetic, and some makes me proud, but above anything else it all makes me wish that he was still here. Almost every night he would gather with a group of other guys at the Salisbury House down the street and they would sit and chat for hours over coffee. I always knew I could find him there if I needed to reach him. Having to walk in there was always annoying and awkward at the time, but now I would give anything to be able to join them for just one night.