The 100th Post!

100 Posts

Dumbdumbdaddyo has changed me. It has helped me forgive my father for getting old. As I sit here trying to write my one hundredth post I am overwhelmed with emotion. I am so grateful for my life. I am so grateful for my wife. This blog was her idea. The best thing I ever did in Aspen was marry Suzy. The first six years of our marriage were the last six years of my dad’s life.

I remember in the first year of our marriage I took a week off work so Henry and I could drive my old Landcruiser from Aspen to Phoenix to help get my dad out of the nursing home after the amputation of the rest of his foot and lower leg. He wasn’t doing very well at all and after my first visit with him I thought I was a fool to think we were going to make any real progress in the short time I had to give. He thought I was my big brother J and my mom went on and on trying to correct him and he got really angry and never did fully wake up.

I brought Henry with me the next day and was a little worried about bringing my rambunxious two year old golden retriever into the facility. He knew right away this wasn’t a place like any other place he’d ever been before. He knew these people were dying and if there was anything he could do to help them he was going to give it a try. My dad was asleep when we got there so we roamed the halls looking for people who wanted to pet him. Everyone wanted to pet Henry. He made some of the people so happy they would cry tears of joy. He pulled me into one room where a very old blind woman sat who had never had a visitor and he put his head right into her lap and she stroked his head and said, “sooo beautiful sooo beautiful sooo beautiful!” As we left the nurse told me it was the first time she’d ever heard her speak and she’d been there for years.

When we made it back to my dad’s room he was still asleep so I sat in the chair next to the bed and Henry put his head in my lap and started to hum to me and wag his tail and I started to cry. When my dad finally woke up he said, “Bitty Buddy, when did you get here?” I said Henry and I just got here and we’ve come to take you home. He said, “It’s about time!” So I told him then let’s get to work. I started asking him questions. I started trying to get that great big battered mind going again. He’d start answering a question and then get confused or drift off again and I’d wait and start up again where he’d left off. I’d ask something like tell me about your father? I don’t know anything about my grandpa; tell me about your father? He’d get mad and gruff, “there is nothing to tell…” and then drift off again. I’d wait and when he’d come back again I say tell me about the best memory you have of your father? He’d give me a pissed marine face and slowly bark, “Don’t… have… one…” Off again on again and I would ask, “Tell me anything about your father?” And he said, “After mom left him he drank himself to death. After mom left him he lived on scrambled eggs and whiskey.”  I videotaped some of these interviews and as the days went by his answers started getting clearer and longer and slowly, but surely, he started coming back.

I remember asking him because of his dad did he ever worry about being a good father himself? He said, “No, I didn’t ever worry about being a good father, but what I did worry about was being a good husband. I have always felt that the best thing a man could do for his children was love their mother. So that’s what I tried to do. With a mother like yours being a dad was easy. Did I ever tell about the best thing I ever did at Maryland?” Yes dad, you did, a thousand times, the best thing you ever did at the University of Maryland was marry my mother!