Family Catharsis

"Is it really that important to you?," my dad responded to my question in Spring 2003. He was known to be friendly and respectful. Although he'd never met you, my dad was the kind of man who struck-up a conversation with you at the lunch counter of any small-town, Main St. diner. Especially if you were a waitress. You'd wonder if he was a salesman but never imagine he was a bookkeeper for an agricultural co-op that raised insects for biological pest control.

But for some reason he hesitated answering the question I'd just asked him. And, I couldn't imagine why he would hesitate to come my mother's funeral. He thought enough of her to have three children with her and stay married for 27 years, so why wouldn't he want to come?

It was Spring, usually a positive time for our family. My parents' and sisters' birthdays are in April or before, and mine falls in June. And, as a family who appreciated the outdoors we were willingly influenced by blossoms, bird-songs and longer days. Our spirits rise and life seems expansive and limitless from March through August.

At that moment we were on the phone. Since I couldn't see his face, I hoped he was hesitating because he tended to be laconic about emotional topics and this one was big. But he always hesitated to discuss anything but pleasant emotions. Our family prefers to be nodding acquaintances with sadness and anger, rather than respectful buddies. We sometimes fight this reputation as adults, sometimes forgetting it can mute our joy, too.

When I was younger, for example, I asked him what World War II was like. His answer closed the subject before it ever got open, "I kind of figure I fought it so you wouldn't have to talk about it." But he also had a convivial, joking personality that made him a great person to spend time with and party. He knew as many good, ribald jokes as anyone I'd ever met and how to tell them.

We drifted apart over the last 22 years, but in the past four years I had again gotten to know him. When my stepmother was alive he usually stood by her needs and those of their couplehood. My dad loved women and usually had one to love and take care of. When she passed away my wife kept encouraging me to spend time with him and it finally took root. One of my fondest memories is when we saw Deniro and Gooding, Jr. in "Men of Respect" at a theater. We did more than see each other at holidays.

And, as an antidote to the stress of urban life, my wife, son and I were especially excited about our cruise to Alaska with him from Vancouver in three months. With his new girlfriend of eight months! Cruising was an excellent choice. For example, although we like camping, my wife and me did it infrequently. As stressed urbanites, we loved room service where someone else rustles-up the grub. Three years before, dad had adapted to cruising the Caribbean with us like a fish to water, all of us wishing we'd discovered its cushy diversions earlier. He was a new fan of the sea-borne casinos, dining rooms, nighttime entertainers and in his eyes you could see him imagining a new woman at his side. Sea air caressing your face as you walk the promenade deck to sumptuous suppers hooks just about anyone.

This time, I was interested in a vacation where nature was mostly untouched and less glamorous. Places crisper and colder which held the solitude and mystery of my early life. None of us had ever been to Alaska, although it had been a life-long dream of his and mine to see it. My wife could get behind it and my son loved the idea. The retired fisherman, hunter and target bowman could barely contain his excitement when I asked him to come with us on vacation. As a bonus incentive to go, an excellent, childhood friend of mine had hand-built his home there decades ago, although I'd never visited his family there.

Wilderness and nature unaffected. Vast vistas of pines or ice fields, salmon flying home upstream, bald eagles and osprey flashing wing-overs into fast, steep dives to snare fish from the ocean. With dad, we had originally planned to go there the summer before. Then, I had the odious task to phone him and say we couldn't go; my wife and I decided to seize the moment when we could move our son to a better school district. So, we put our house on the market and got to work. When I told him this there was one of his longish pauses. Instantly I could feel his frustration through the phone and then it turned quickly to resignation because he didn't want to unload his problems on his son.

I could feel he was disappointed. But I tried to turn the mood up with a positive spin, saying we'd very much look forward to next year or the year after. When he replied matter-of-factly, "It's just that I'm not sure how much longer I'm gonna be around." In that moment, I had a foreboding instinct about our decision to put off Alaska by a year. "What if he's right?!," I thought silently. But, my wife and I were locked into our school-moving plans and there wasn't any going back. The foreboding bothered me for a few months, but I eventually drove it away by ignoring it.

I reminded myself he was a man whose family was known for long lives. His mother lived to 91. His appearance provided good reasons why he was often mistaken for being in his late sixties. When I watched him, for example, walk around the paddock of Las Vegas Motor Speedway at 77, he looked as fit as a middle-aged man. One day, he even confided in me, "The Mercury won't go over 105; would you know how to take care of that?" My wife's sly smile when I told her made her retort, "His age and still getting' into trouble!" Now, at 80, he still worked because he needed to. But it suited him. Those things tended to keep him young and he still had hobbies besides.

He had a worldly presence afforded by his longer history. One of my twin sisters asked him once if he remembered working for Associates Insectary in Santa Paula as he first arrived in town after World War II. Light dawned in his eyes as he remembered. The Marine master sergeant, Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome came to town and stayed, met Miss Petite, Fair and Beautiful, my  mother and started a family. After he quit for another job, he again signed-on in the 1980s at the Insectary for his life's last job, until 2003.

***

Now, here we were as life's finality was getting "up close and personal" with all of us. An epidemic of funerals had just started with my grandmother's death at 99, only five months before. My mother's mother, outlived her husband of 60-plus years by 16 years and all 8 of her sisters, brothers and cousins. My dad politely declined coming to her shore-side memorial, which was finally attended only by her grand- and great-grandchildren, my wife and my cousin's husband. It was Winter; my mother of 77 was hospitalized at that moment and my uncle of 80 was too infirm to travel.

As my mother's family carried more gypsy soul, not having my dad present felt almost O.K. He had drifted apart from my grandmother after divorce from my mother, and I could somehow understand his not wanting to come to her memorial. The day we held our ceremony, my grandma had her ashes spread at sea by the Neptune Society. Her husband, my grandpa had done the same. My dad and stepmother were the only ones in our family with the cemetery plots.

But, for the question at hand, there was a monumental difference. My mother -- dad's wife for 27 years and ex-wife for 31 years, was not known to be well, but had just died unexpectedly at 77. My mother! I got the surprise call late at night from a kindly bedside attendant who explained she wasn't likely to last very long, and that I should come immediately. That wasn't a night I like remembering. One sister and I flew low across the San Fernando Valley to come to grips. I also called my dad but in my shock don't have a clue what I said to him. I didn't expect him to come that night and he didn't.

The only reason I wasn't a puddle of tears over the phone with him now, from having my mother and grandmother die within five months of each other, was they both had one foot on The Banana Peel. Mellow Yellow. Reasons why he might not come to her memorial blipped through my mind. I grasped that he hadn't been married to our mom for a long time. With her passing he'd now outlived both of his women and that must have been the harshest of realizations. It had to be hard for him.

But, it wasn't as if he wasn't spiritual. With my mother and him I remember attending First Presbyterian with him when I was five or six years old, and they even did custodial work for the church. I learned how to bow my head from them.

I could still feel in his voice and his pause there was something bothering him. My instincts had not a clue. But I didn't want to make it more painful for either of us by asking why and hoping for an explanation from Mr. Quietly Emotional. A 47-year old like me wasn't clear what people nearly twice my age held in the backs of their minds about Checkout. These things were given: he had just turned 80 less than a month ago and my mother's health had been iffy for 43 years. I was just hoping he'd say "Yes," and we could commit this chapter in our lives to memory.

His second wife, my stepmother for 25 years, had died about two years earlier. Measured by the considerable volume of her possessions boxed against the walls in the spare room of his two-bedroom condo, he wasn't anywhere near done with her. In person, it was often easy to feel his sadness about losing his companion.

It took him nearly a year to decommission her bright pink bathroom. His was the outdoors-green bathroom across the hall. He only came to tears once about her death -- on the phone. I had asked him, "How are you doing?," with an unspoken reference to his feelings about Angie's passing. He told me he missed her terribly and his voice trembled as he cried and tried to express his feelings for her. Once, I'd extended my wife's touching offer to help clean up Angie's possessions, but he declined with a, "Maybe."

They reminded me about our mother's sincere wish to be remembered on her childhood home, South Mountain in Santa Paula. The outdoors had been in her blood. Her and my uncle ran the mountain as children, the son and daughter of a Union Oil field foreman and a preacher's daughter. Their family home was provided by the company. As time lengthened, my uncle even retired to Oregon for the outdoor pursuits he enjoyed as a child and young man, those he cherished on the mountain.

These days, South Mountain remains largely undeveloped. But there are many oil leases and ranches across its flanks and back. Santa Paula's California Oil Museum carried Union Oil's name for a long time until recently. Having grown up there, I wondered if my uncle still knew some of the mountain's owners. So I called him to see if there was a chance any of them would allow us entry for a memorial service, hoping for a spot near the site of their childhood home. My uncle remembered a family name that sounded hopeful because he had reminisced about them before, so I made a call. The man I talked with was clearly the sort of person who respected the traditions of family and place, and he granted us permission to be on his land as we held our family memorial.

That day, the distant green of the mountain hadn't yet given way to summer's brown. Perennial grasses, sage and sourgrass still bloomed in this place. My dad, my sisters, their husbands, my wife, my son and me gathered on a beautiful, warm Spring day. My sisters and me hadn't visited the mountain in decades, and our new friend showed us around, sketching verbal charcoals of old landmarks. His memory of where my grandparent's former home site lay provided us with another link to our pasts and traditions. The shape of their lives then is embellished by our romantic imaginations.

Because it's a mountain, it takes some work getting around. To save some walking time and have some fun, as children my mother and uncle used to give each other cable-rides across a steep draw in a galvanized washtub. She showed me this as a young boy and I'd seen the steel cable, tall posts and galvanized washtub. That was an important storyboard from the movie of our lives. I imagined the site was still there although we couldn't find it this day, because the cables were overgrown and washtub had gone missing.

It was a little too warm for comfort, with a capricious breeze that would tease you and then disappear. We all stood in the bright sunlight under a sky with an occasional, wispy cloud. From this little ridge overlooking the valley nestling Santa Paula, its airport, homes and traffic weren't audible in the distance. But, a half-mile in front of us, the Santa Clara river meandered closer to us.

Because I was too emotional to even speak clearly, my sisters offered their remembrances while everyone else stood silently. And although it was especially difficult, I'm especially glad we all took the time to walk the pain to the grace of our beautiful memories. The scene of us on the hillside and how it looked is one I'll remember always. It makes me teary to realize my mother got her wish to be remembered where she grew up.