It was strange that Sunday afternoon that I should get a call from my brother, Paul.  He was not one to get on the phone and chit-chat and there were no problems between us.  We always had fun together when I was home for a visit but years of living many miles apart and busy lives do not make for a lot of family closeness. It didn't take long for me to find out the reason for his call.  Dad had passed away.

My initial reaction was how could this be.  I had just talked to him on Tuesday and he sounded fine. When you have two parents who have been divorced for years and never mention the other one's name you have to plan ahead to avoid uncomfortable situations.  Dad and I talked on the phone about once a week and with Mother coming to visit I called him before she arrived to avoid a sticky situation should he have called when she was there.

Dad had remarried a few years after he and Mother got a divorce.  In his usual style she was about thirty years younger than he was and had couple of almost grown children. My brothers and I tried to be polite but it was obvious from the beginning that she did not care much for us.  The feeling was quite mutual and I even nicknamed her the Wicked Witch of the West as she was an alcoholic and prone to not treat Dad very well when she drank.  My brothers had lots of stories about her that I really didn't care to hear but there is the one where she referred to us as lazy kids.  You could say a lot of things about my brothers and I but lazy did not fit any of us.

After working as a pharmacist for fifty-two years Dad had retired the year before at the age of seventy-four.  Without any hobbies, except for betting on college football games, or many friends I could imagine that being at home with the Witch was difficult. I always kept our conversations cheerful, tried to find some new medical or scientific fact to tell him along with the positive happenings around our house.

Was I surprised when Paul called with the news of him passing?  Yes and no.  I knew from him popping nitroglycerin pills during his visit and his disdain for doctors that talking to him about his health was not the thing to do and I actually guess that it was a call that I expected.  More than surprise it was the shock of realizing that the person who always protected me from Mother, thought I could do anything and was always positive was gone.  He built me a playhouse, taught me to ride a bike and drive a car but by far the best was how he taught me to be kind and to love.

I do have to say that he did die in what some people would think was pretty sad.  I have always thought he went out in style.  On a beautiful Sunday morning he went to the self-service car wash, had a massive heart attack and died instantly.  I could always imagine him in his white  shirt, hat, dress slacks and wing-tip shoes washing his car.  The man who never spent a day in the hospital and the man who wiped his cars off with a chamois every night in the garage died probably the way he would have wanted to.

My bothers made the funeral arrangements which was good since I knew nothing about that sort of thing.  At the age of thirty four I had only attended two or three funerals in my life and those were for people I really did not know all that well. He was not a church goer as the only time he attended church was when we were little so the funeral was more of a small memorial service at the cemetery.  There was some discord between my brothers and I from the fact that I did not want to view him in the casket. I wanted to remember him sitting at the kitchen table when we had our long discussions or painting the house in clothes people would wear to church or his smile when I would go into a long dissertation of why I needed a new dress. I had long gotten over the fact that friends would think he was my grandfather because he was older or that he loved Studebakers.

I was glad the service was short and there were not many people there.
The interesting thing is how many times through the years that I have thought when something good happened or I achieved some goal how much Dad would have liked it.  Or how he would laugh when I pulled some boo-boo.  Of course I miss him but at the same time I always feel like he is there.