Had enough yet? [ 2006-08-30, 6:03 a.m. ]

****
My dad's Chicago funeral was well-attended. (We held a smaller ceremony in AZ a few days after his death for his neighbors and some of his older friends who'd retired in the West.)

The Chicago memorial drew a lot of his former work colleagues, including a man who flew in from his home in China to honor the man who gave him his first job, my Dad. I emceed the event, falteringly, and several people - family and friends - spoke. My dad had one younger sister, whom I had to literally hold up while she read her personal eulogy. It was rough.

There was a definite difference in the two memorials - the first was sadder and in some ways, more real, because we were all still pretty pissed at my dad for pulling a fast one on us (Surprise! He'd been ill for almost a year and didn't tell anyone!)and because my mom didn't attend that one. In deference to our mom, who is grieving deeply, we toned down anything that could be construed as negative (including a lot of sick jokes) for the Chicago memorial.

With his eulogy, my older bro (Mystery Bro to you) painted a wonderful portrait of my dad and I want to share it here.

Memorials are a time for reflection and over the last two weeks I�ve certainly done a lot of reflecting. They are also a time for tears and for smiles. As I have reflected on Dad and his life, I�ve cried and smiled in about equal measure and I�m sure I�ll do more of both today. As I have struggled to make sense of the rush of thoughts and emotions borne from my reflection, they have gradually coalesced in to a unified theme: How contradictory a man he was.

He was as stubborn a man as I have known but at times he could be as impulsive as a two year old.

He was an open-minded seeker of knowledge and understanding; but also frustratingly rigid, narrow-minded and opinionated.

He could patiently spend hours working and reworking the design needed to build replacement vegas for his house and then lose his temper at the drop of a hat.

He loved music and paid extra to have CD players in his cars but wouldn�t let the radio play for more than a few minutes before he wanted to �turn that noise off� and he rarely played a whole song from start to finish, never mind a whole CD.

He�d sit and watch TV for hours but mostly with the sound off and never on one channel for more than a few minutes.

He was not what anyone would call a religious man and yet could sing, from memory, hymns and gospels that some church- going folk I know can barely recall.

He was arguably the smartest man I�ve ever known and yet he was the same man who nearly burned his house down when the TV dinners he was baking caught fire because he hadn�t thought to take them out of their cardboard boxes.

Yes, Robert S. was a man of contradictions.

This is, after all, the man who began his career wearing a crew cut, narrow ties and white shirts and ended his life wearing henleys, blue jeans and Birkenstocks with wild-ass hair, bushy eye brows and as scraggly a beard as you could hope to see. Talk about contradictions, my god, over the course of his life he gradually transformed from the man in the gray flannel suit into a freaking hippy.

To the casual observer I imagine Dad looked an awful lot like a loner. He certainly did a credible imitation of one.
When he retired he chose to live alone. Not only alone, he moved to Prescott AZ, one of the few places in the world that is both the middle of a desert AND the top of a mountain. As many of you know from having tried and failed, convincing him to come back east for a visit practically required hiring a kidnapper -- a trait that even his ashes seem to have inherited.

He had a phone but I really don�t know why. He answered calls, but rarely made them. He outright refused to have an answering machine and as for computers and email, they may as well never have been invented. As far as I could tell, his view of visitors was like his view of cod liver oil; best taken in small doses at infrequent intervals.

But as with many things about Dad, the closer you look the more contradictions you find. This loner made friends faster and made longer lasting friendships with more people than just about anyone I know. If you offered me one million dollars right know, on the spot, if I could just name five people I went to college with I�d leave here no richer than I arrived. Yet, this loner maintained lifelong, close, personal friendships with dozens of college friends and co-workers.

In Prescott he was great friends with two of his neighbors but they moved away. So, practical man that he was, he made equally great friends with the people who bought their house. Late on the day after dad died, we stopped in for a visit only to find that they had been crying all day. That�s pretty remarkable I think. In a day and age where many people might not even recognize their neighbors if they passed them on the street, four of this loner�s best friends were his neighbors. If you measure a man�s life by the number of friends he made and kept, then this loner died a very rich man.

As I reflected on this contradictory man a pattern began to emerge. Yes he was impulsive and stubborn, open-minded and opinionated, patient and quick-tempered. Yes he was a man of many friends who lived alone. Yes he was all those apparently contradictory things. But they are not so contradictory after all. They have something in common -- they were his way of doing things. Say what else you will about the man, he lived his life the way he wanted. He said what he thought. He did what he wanted to do, pretty much when and where he wanted to do it. It was in turns amusing, frustrating, aggravating and even embarrassing but he was doing something few people ever do � living life on his own terms.

He died pretty much on his own terms too.

When we learned that he had been suddenly hospitalized we rushed to be with him. But true to form, he had his own ideas about timing and died before we could get off the ground in Chicago.

Still we all came to Prescott to be with him. To see to his final needs, to tidy up his affairs, and to grieve for our loss.It was the first time in many years that A, P, L and I have been together for an extended period. It was a contradictory, bittersweet time for us. It is as terrible a reason I can think of to get together -- but it was good to be together. Being together made our loss more bearable and I thank each of you for helping me through those days.

It was hard being in his house. Every time you turned around, everywhere you looked there were reminders of him; reading glasses strewn about; lighters, gum and toothpicks piled in careless profusion.

And as I watched all of us wander through his house, as I was told by his friends and neighbors how much something one of us said or did reminded them of him the last and perhaps greatest contradiction of his life gradually dawned on me � while this one-of-a-kind person is gone forever, never to be replaced, he is not really gone at all because so many of his attributes live on in his children and grandchildren.

Look around the room and you will see him everywhere: His stubborn determination in P as she climbed for 14 hours out of the Grand Canyon on a hiking trip gone bad. But it�s not just P, it�s Rie and A, and H and B and all the grandkids.

You�ll see his open-minded inquisitiveness not just in Rie but in A and P and T and K and E and in all the grandkids. You�ll see his love of history in P. You�ll see his patience (and temper) in A and me. You�ll see his intelligence in G and his artistry in A and in all of his grand kids.

The man we knew, the study in contradiction, is gone. But all any of us has to do to see him again is to spend a few minutes with one another.

For me it will never be the same. I hope it will always be enough.

Dad was cremated which is fitting considering how much he hated the cold. It wasn�t uncommon for him to be sitting at home, furnace running, space heater at his feet wearing long sleeves, long pants and long underwear; all while the outside temperature was in the mid to upper sixties.

So Dad, I love you and I miss you. Wherever you are right now I know you are busy making new friends and I hope it is warm enough for you.

thisaway - thataway

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