It is 1990. I am driving east, at high speed. The sun is shining, and the V-8 engine is humming at 2,000 RPM. We are somewhere in
Most other engines would be revving around 3,000 RPM at this speed, but not my Mustang. You barely tax her at 80 MPH. As a Ford coworker once said, quoting a magazine story, it has “gobs and gobs of torque.” And my good friend Ron Vesche, no doubt, would agree.
The top is down, and the wind is whistling by. Miles of pavement vanish beneath my tires, and farmland slips past my field of vision, at an astonishing pace. The vista is cooled by my cheap sunglasses.
To my right is my son Matthew, who is 11. He is my sole partner on this trip to NY, unusual for a nuclear family like mine that visits its extended family en masse, with wife and daughter in tow.
Our music of choice, volume turned way up to enable listening in a convertible, is Dire Straits’ rock epic titled “
It is written by a musician whose name is Mark Knopfler, someone whose music I’ve listened to for years, someone at whom I still marvel at the artistry, the talent and the ability to touch my soul.
Knopfler’s songs cover a spectacular variety of subjects, and often feature wry commentary on our times. He once wrote a song about heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, and another about Ray Kroc, the businessman who developed McDonald’s and the fast food business into what we know today.
Knopfler depicts Kroc as a ruthless businessman who discovers the burgeoning hamburger stand run by the McDonald brothers in southern
My name’s not Crock, it’s Kroc with a “K,”
Like Crocodile, but not spelled that way
It’s dog eat dog, and rat eat rat
Kroc-style, Boom! Like that
The story in “
A community forms around the farm, the Industrial Revolution takes over, workers are enlisted in the service of the company, which begins to struggle, closes its doors and lays off its workers.
The workers, who have enjoyed the benefits the company provides, are surprised by the bad turn. They know their livelihood is at risk, but they’re not sure why, in a poignant lament:
I wanna go to work, but they shut it down
I gotta right to go to work, but there’s no work here to be found
And they say we’re gonna have to pay what’s owed
We’re gonna have to reap from some seed that’s been sowed
And the birds up on the wires
And the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singin’ out the telegraph code
All the way…down the
Despite the subject, which often reminds me of conditions in
As it plays back to us on cassette tape, Matthew and the Mustang and I will set the family record for a trip to NY – 7.5 hours. The record still stands, a lasting testament to two “busy men” on a mission.
This is an unusual trip for just the two of us. My father, a lifelong resident of
He lives by himself, after he and my mother divorced years ago. He has a girl friend, and I think he’s happy. But I want to see him. It was a close call, and I need a visit.
And it’s a good visit with my Dad. We spend a few days with each other, three men of all ages, in an unusual situation.
You would think, given our different stations in life, we’d get on each others’ nerves. But love, mutual affection and the easygoing tolerance common to most men prevail, and we enjoy each others’ company. Matthew and I return to MI a few days later, and things get back to normal.
But, like John Lennon said, life is something that happens when you’re busy making other plans.
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It is March 1991, a few months after my previous trip. I am once again traveling east, but this is different. My world has changed, forever.
It is nighttime. The darkness is illuminated by the moon hanging in the sky high above us, and by the snow that lies on the ground. My wife and daughter are with Matthew and me as we plow steadily eastward.
I am not driving, and I no longer have my Mustang. I have a new Explorer, and my wife is driving, bless her soul, ever my helpmate. She offered to drive, knowing I’d be distracted during the long ride.
In the passenger seat, I stare out the window, lost in thought and pain and sorrow, struggling with tears and a sadness that is unlike anything I have experienced.
Staring at the moon on my right, I am silent, although sighs punctuate the cadence of my thoughts as we slice through the darkness.
My music of choice? “Winter Solstice II,” a compilation of New Age instrumental music selections that is at turns reflective, at turns melancholy, like me. I have my first car CD player in the Explorer, and the fidelity is amazing, just like they say.
My dad has died, suddenly. He had another heart attack in his apartment, and didn’t survive this one. And I will never, ever forget the circumstances in which I learned this. It is burned indelibly in a memory that forgets much, but not this:
I was playing basketball in the driveway with Matthew, at the house in
It was an unusually nice day in March, and spring, I thought, couldn’t be far off.
Life was good. I’d left work early, having completed a project to select a new V6 engine for the all-new Ford F150 pickup truck, to be introduced in 1995.
It was and remains one of the high points in my career. The Controller of Truck Operations sent me a congratulatory e-mail that I retain to this day. And he was right – I’d done a great job on the assignment. My cost analysis and the presentation of the results was thorough and clear, leading to a high-confidence decision.
My wife was preparing dinner in the kitchen, and came to the door, saying I should come, quickly. My sister Kathy was on the phone, and she didn’t sound good.
I ran across the lawn to the house, took the phone from my wife, and listened to Kathy, on the other end, scream, helplessly, emotions ripped and raw, “Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead!”
Whew. You just don’t forget that. The shock stunned me, a condition that lasted several days. There’s nothing with which to compare it.
I return to NY to mourn my Dad’s passing. The child in me wishes to be comforted, and my wife rises to the task. But I have responsibilities as well to shoulder: my Dad has made me the co-executor of his estate, and I am responsible for funeral arrangements.
I do reasonably well, with the help of several people. I return to MI a few days later, and spend another year or so dealing with lawyers, Probate Court and the distribution of his estate.
It is hard, losing a parent. And the first one is especially difficult, because you can’t prepare for it. You lose one of your key anchors in life, a moral and attitudinal grounding that is temporarily stolen.
And the reality of actuarial tables suggests that the first parent to be lost will be your father. So the loss of a father is, for many like me, a very difficult loss.
A recent episode of the TV show “Gray’s Anatomy” focused on such a loss. A character’s father died in the hospital after a struggle with cancer. This Dad had meant a great deal to his family. They gathered around his hospital bed, and his wife and three sons touched him tenderly and said their goodbyes.
The character, a young intern, walked away to be alone. Another intern, a woman, left the room to find him outside the hospital, standing quietly alone.
She approached him, observed a few polite moments of silence, and welcomed him as a new member of what she called “The Dead Dads Club,” a club that no one chooses to join, but in which membership is inevitable. She felt his pain, it was clear, and was sad to have a new member in the club, but she wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. Other members of this club were available to help.
Your dad and mom, after all, are life for you for so many years. And when the physical support you need becomes less and less necessary, sometimes even resented as you grow older, the emotional support continues to nurture and sustain.
And, despite a loving family that surrounds you as you become an adult, including a knowing spouse and sympathetic children, this emotional support has no direct substitute. It is not replaceable.
The essence of this loss is simply this: You don’t know life without your parents. So when one exits the scene, permanently, your world gets whacked, and it requires all the maturity you can muster, and the support of loved ones, simply to get past it.
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It is late 1991, a few months after I joined the Dead Dads Club. Dire Straits has released a new album, titled “On Every Street. “ I buy the CD.
The title song is about dealing with loss, in which the person who has survived struggles to remember and to recover someone who’s been lost to them.
I listen, and I listen again. The song is poignant, well-written, melancholy. It is written for me, I think, and I’m happy to know that someone understands how I feel about this loss, as I search, unsuccessfully, for answers:
The streetcar symphony crashes into space
The moon is hangin’ upside down
I don’t know why it is I’m still on the case
It’s a ravenous town
And every victory has a taste that’s bittersweet
And it’s your face I’m lookin’ for
On every street
Reflect for a moment on the verse above: The moon is hangin’ upside down. That’s what it was like the evening we went back to NY, after I learned my father had died. The world had changed, forever, and no longer made as much sense. Things, including the natural order of things, were indeed upside down. Knopfler had nailed my mood, again.
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It is 2005. Matthew has scored tickets to an outdoor summer concert with Mark Knopfler at Meadowbrook. Knopfler runs through a few songs, and he pauses momentarily.
Alone on stage, Knopfler begins to play his guitar. The notes are barely audible at first, but soon the strain of music familiar to Matthew and me from years earlier begins to float across the summer evening.
And Matthew, to my right, elbows me excitedly and says, “
And Matthew is right. And once again, my son and I share an unbreakable bond, an unbeatable moment that began with a wild ride east to visit my Dad. Together, for a few days, the three of us shared time w/ each other, loved each other, just as I was doing with Matthew that evening at Meadowbrook.
This year, it will be 16 years since my Dad died. And I will spend another Father’s Day in which my kids focus on me, but I’m unable to pay practical tribute to a man to whom I owe much, and who I am beginning to resemble, in physical appearance and personal habits, in startling ways.
I still miss my Dad - always will. But, in a recent task driven by an almost-unconscious need, I burned a couple CD’s with Mark Knopfler’s music, using an iTunes gift card my kids gave me on Father’s Day 2005, and I plan to give it to Matthew the next time I see him.
At a superficial level, I do this because I know Matthew will enjoy it, and I want to enhance this common interest with him.
But at a deeper level, one that will go unspoken between Matthew and me, I guess it’s my way of completing the circle – my Dad would be pleased to see the person that Matthew has become.
And although I can no longer honor my Dad in ways in which he can respond in a practical way, I can sure as heck honor his grandson, and in so doing make my Dad happy. I know this, for a fact.
It's funny. I was in the car and listening to Knopfler last night. I was listening to the CD's you burned me years ago. I keep them in my CD player and listen to them from time to time, but they never come out of the CD player.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't seen this post before, but it's ironic that I see it the day after I was listening to the music and thinking about the drive to NY in the mustang and the concert. Great times. Love you Bud.