A Remembrance of My Father

*Note: The following essay is adapted from the eulogy I gave at my father’s funeral on December 12, 2011.

Dad, December 25, 2009

I have always adored my father, so much so that I have sometimes denied his faults – though he had as many as the rest of us.  However, about a year ago, I found a Father’s Day poster I had made him in school with fill-in-the-blank sentences that started with “I love my dad because….”  Twenty or twenty-five years later, those statements still ring true: “I love my dad because he has messy hair.” And, “I love my dad because he loves me.”  When not lost in thought, Dad was an electric current whizzing through rooms, sending off sparks of love, sarcasm, irreverence, and occasionally, taskmaster.

That someone who worked so hard, without complaint, to take care of his body in order to live has died is unfair.  But, Dad wouldn’t have wanted anyone to be melancholy on his behalf.  Shortly before my grandfather died, Dad and I sat in a room as he told me about the preparations he had made for the looming funeral.  With tears in his eyes, he told me, “Life is so profound.  We are all only one breath away from death.”  Since expressing emotion was not Dad’s forte, he usually reflected on life in more matter-of-fact tones.  For example, a month before he died, I told Dad about a student I wanted to help but could not because of school policy.  Dad said, “Let it go.”  When I repeated the story a few days later, he said, “Nat, get over it.  Don’t ruin your weekend ruminating over this.”  

Dad talked often about the fact that life is unfair. He, however, was blessed with more than his fair share of luck.  His luck began when my grandmother, Emma, married Herman Jacobs.  Poppy, as I called him, was a grown-up kid, and my dad loved him dearly.  At Poppy’s funeral a few years ago, Dad talked about the fact that Poppy never met a person he couldn’t befriend.  He told those gathered that knowing Poppy reminded him it was worthwhile to make friends. 

Greasy and Poppy (Emma and Herman Jacobs), Date unknown

Most people haven’t ever heard Dad complain about the horror of having company over or having to make an appearance at a social event.  What they do know is that once the party started, Dad had the time of his life.  He might have stolen the showing, out-talked the host, or laughed so hard he nearly cried.  He seems to have been friends with every person he came into contact with, from the guard at the office building to court reporters to strangers bicycling in Holiday Park to the judges he addressed with nicknames such as, “Georgie Baby.”

Dad was lucky throughout life.  He was lucky to break his arm badly enough in the 70s that he missed serving active duty in the Vietnam War.  He was lucky to have a form of prostate cancer that grew slowly over a period of years.  He was lucky to have had numerous heart “events” but never a heart attack until last Thursday.  He was also lucky to have a wife who tolerated his absentmindedness and who knew how to keep him in line.  He did, by the way, love my mom dearly.

My dad was most lucky to know that he was lucky.  He didn’t take being alive for granted.  He didn’t moan and groan about aches and pains.  Simply put, he got up each day and lived.

I am a teacher, and this past year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how alike the classroom is to the world at large.  We adults are not much different than a class of tenth-graders – for better or worse.  What I love most about teaching is seeing glimpses of the little kids inside the pubescent minds and bodies of my high schoolers.  Being around my dad was also a regular reminder of the joy and power of childhood. 

Foremost among the outstanding qualities of kids is a willingness to ask questions.  My dad had an insatiable curiosity.  He always wanted to know more, whether the topic be brewing beer, the Civil War, or playing ukulele, which he started to do two days before dying.  

Dad in one of my parents' many gardens.

My dad was also passionate.  His hobbies changed regularly, but he was 100 percent focused on whatever had caught his interest.  At home, this meant he might answer a question incompletely or that he was leaving track marks on floor as he paced back and forth talking to himself.  Sometimes, when I called and asked, “What are you doing?” all I heard was silence on his end of the phone line.  Once re-engaged with the rest of the world, someone – Mom, one of the kids, a neighbor, a friend – was going to learn something new.

Like a kid, my dad had an unvarnished sense of right and wrong.  Unlike most adults who protect themselves or their interests with a flexible perception of right and wrong, my dad always stood by his beliefs.  Charlie Smith wrote this comment in response to Dad’s obituary: “Bobby was and will always be remembered as a man of great character. He never failed to do the right thing no matter the consequences to himself.”  What Charlie wrote is true.  As Bob’s daughter, I found his steadfastness sometimes infuriating.  Whining and cheap arguments rarely changed his views.  

I did get my father to make a concession concerning the cell phone bill, however.  At the time of Dad’s death, I was thirty and engaged to be married.  He had allowed me to stay on the family cell phone plan for about eight years – a situation he and my mother found embarrassing and galling.  The extra line cost $10 per month, and I paid him $30.  (In actuality, the plan cost about $15 after taxes.)  In recent years, Dad had tried to foist me off the cell phone plan, but I made an agreement with him.  He would allow me to stay on the plan until I got a job that paid more money or until I got married.  Once I was engaged, Dad told his friends he couldn’t wait to get my line off the cell phone bill.  Of course, I stayed on for five months after the wedding, but surely he knows now that I am completely and permanently financially independent.

One of my favorite photos of Dad.  He was demonstrating his skill as an Olympic gymnast.  Sacramento, California.

The most brazen of kids, my dad loved to make jokes and laugh.  Unlike those kids who grow up to be school bullies, my dad’s jokes were never the sugar-coating for venom.   Some neighbors stopped by to pay their condolences on Saturday, and they laughed as they recalled Dad rolling down the window of his car to yell, “Get off the street” as he drove by.  He was not one to say “I love you”; instead, he gave the people he cared about a great deal of heck.  This includes having answered the telephone in hundreds of different voices, and when I was away at camp in high school, telling a friend I couldn’t come to the phone because I was dead.  Dad once hid behind parked cars in a garage, waiting to jump out, in order to scare a secretary.  He reveled in taking photos of strangers walking in parks while on vacation in San Francisco with my mother, stood on the table to sing opera, and during one of many impulsive moments, put shoe polish on his head to mask the spot where he had shaven off too much hair.

After the funeral, my family informed me that I related the shoe-polish story inaccurately, so I will amend that story now.  Dad had decided to cut his own hair with an electric razor.  My mother had cut her hair before, and my brother regularly shaved his head.  I can only guess that these facts were encouragement to my father.  Dad pulled out the razor and buzzed away.  The guard was not on, and he shaved off too much hair on one side.  One could clearly see scalp through the hair.  The other side soon matched.  In an effort to correct his mistake, my father applied shoe polish to the overly-shorn spots.  The shoe polish didn’t help much, except to add hilarity to the situation.  But, like I said before, I loved Dad’s messy hair.

Despite working in a profession with a dark side, Dad retained a trusting nature and was not cynical.  He believed, without fail, in a justice system in which all individuals’ rights are protected – one in which all judges and attorneys fulfilled their duties honorably.  In the midst of making prosecutors scramble in court, Dad would do something like loan $7 to a homeless man on his way out of the office, believing he would be repaid but laughing when he was not.  Perhaps his greatest success as a criminal defense attorney was his appeal of Chelsea Richardson’s case.  As I understand it, his work on that case was equal parts defense of Chelsea and a repudiation of prosecutorial negligence.

My mom once told me that she had asked my dad what he missed most from the past.  This happened after a number of life-changing events had occurred, and Dad told her that he missed family dinners.  For decades, mom had cooked meals from scratch, and the five of us would sit down to eat dinner, sometimes in near silence, sometimes in a noise-filled room.  Sitting around the dining room table is the image that comes to mind when I think of Home.

I am so grateful that we had many family dinners in the weeks preceding my father’s death.  I am grateful that the day before my dad died, I told him a story about Cheese Whiz that made him laugh.  I am grateful he and Gina last talked to one another in gangsta voices about gangsta activities.  I am grateful that Paul assumed the role of head of household in the days after Dad disappeared, and I am grateful that Dad approved of the Christmas decorations mom had put up the last day he was alive. 

Dad preparing before a bike ride.  He later switched to a recumbent.

More than anything, I am grateful that Dad died doing what he loved, bicycling.  He and I rode together for a period of time, and he frequently told me that he felt best physically when he was on the bike.  Dad died knowing we loved him, and I, for one, know that he loved me, even though he refused to give me a hug upon request.

In remembrance of my father, I will find moments today and everyday thereafter to be conscious of life – to feel, to laugh, to acknowledge what I have.  Doing that and occasionally dropping an F-bomb for no good reason are the best Bob Ford tributes there are.