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We were never close, so this is weird.
He died a year ago Saturday when his ultralight plane crashed. It was a shock. In all that time that he was a pilot, the possibility of a crash never occurred to me.
I used to work for him. He ran a small imaging business (he started it in the late 70s as a microfilm records management company). We didn’t even become close when we worked together, but in his office we had the most important conversation we ever had when I came out to him. I’d never seen him so angry, but we parted that day with “I love yous.”
Christmas of ’07, just before he died, he sent his Christmas card addressed both to me and to Mrs. V. – for the first time. He had never acknowledged her existence before then, not even in a casual conversation.
I never had the chance (as we often say) to thank him, to talk to him about it. I want to know what changed. I’ll die not knowing what changed, and that hurts.
It hurts because, although he was very closed to emotion, he would talk about things if drawn out. I could usually do that. But it happened rarely.
I’d like to ask him what he thought of the Bush administration, although I think I know: he once sent me avocados from his tree, wrapped in newspaper. In the newspaper was a photo of Twig. My dad had drawn a moustache & beard on the loser. :) He had a mild, weird sense of humor. Like me.
I’d like to talk to him about his parents. His dad died of Parkinson’s in 1983; my Grandma died of Alzheimer’s October 27, 2006. He didn’t deal well with the dementia. I went with him to visit his dad once. His dad was saying things like, “we have to go get the tools back in the barn, it’s going to rain,” and my dad corrected him, saying “we’re not on the farm anymore, Dad.” I don’t know why he didn’t just go along with what his dad said.
When Grandma died, he told me and my sisters, “when I get like that, don’t put me in a home, just throw me in a ditch.” He would appreciate the humor in his burial site: it’s less than a hundred yards from a ditch.
It’s strange that he died just a few months after Grandma’s estate was settled. He got his house paid off, then died before he could enjoy the freedom.
He was only sixty-eight. News reports of the crash stated that an “elderly” solo pilot had died. My dad wasn’t elderly. That pissed me off. It doesn’t make me mad anymore because I now realize what passes for “elderly” in this country, and even though it’s a crock of shit, I’m calmer about it.
He was flawed. He made colossal, life-altering mistakes. He was not a good father. But there remains in me this wish to talk to him.
:shrug:
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