The Funeral

This past Friday was Armistice Day, or Wapenstilstand here in Belgium. This day always makes me think of my father, and his father. Both were military, and both are dead.

My father had a very difficult relationship with his father, and I inherited that legacy, having a rather strained relationship with him. I maybe saw my grandfather a half a dozen times, at least that I remember, so I don’t know if I would have had such a relationship with him as well. It is a non question.

My father lived in a world of intense Fear, and he ultimately drank because of it. He was a surgeon in the Vietnam War, and most likely, he never got over it, nor was he able to fully deal with the fears that that period of time instilled in him.

Although an insanely gifted thoracic surgeon and professor of surgery, my father was plagued with insecurity as a result of his fears. He would never be good enough in his eyes, and he punished those around him, often unwittingly, as a result of that fear. It had paralyzed him at a certain point in his life and he was never able to get unstuck.

He had great periods of luminosity and brilliance. At his funeral, there were hundreds of people to pay respect to a man whom each of them knew differently. Some knew him because of his job as a surgeon, others knew him because of his passion as a Grand National racecar driver and mechanic, and still others knew him because of his drinking, for better or for worse. But, they all loved him. As did I. My final conversation, though nearly a year before he died, was in a dingy phone office in Castiglion Fiorentino I remember it well. Funny how sometimes we know that that will be the last time we talk to someone.

He was a tragic Faulkneresque man who carried on his back a heavy burden of guilt and self-loathing, something I inherited from him for a while as well, but have since thankfully shed over the years. He was god-plagued, booze-plagued, and fear-plagued...and, he was the American Dream.

This video has always reminded me of him. He did not die behind the wheel, though that in itself is a bit of a miracle, but this was a part of him that I remember all too well. He loved his dogs, and he loved his scotch, he could relate to them better than he could to people. It was not all that he was, by any means, he was a great many in many respects, but seldom do we know the full picture of anyone in our lives, no matter how close we are too them.

I hope that he is resting in Peace at last though, without Fear.