Tuesday, June 8, 2010

A Posthumous Happy Birthday

Had my father lived, he would be 89 tomorrow. He didn’t, obviously. He died in 1993. Since then, I’ve learned how death really changes a person.

My father was an interesting and difficult man. He played football in the Rose Bowl. After World War II he met Errol Flynn backstage at a nightclub in Paris. He had a sneaky method of forcing his car into the next lane even if the person didn’t want to let him in. He taught me how, and I try to use this knowledge with great responsibility.

But, since his death, my father’s life has been retroactively subsumed by one short phase of it. He was a Marine. He was at Pearl Harbor, and then later, Guadalcanal. I have his medals. I was named after a high school buddy of his, a man I met only once, a genial guy named Carroll who survived the Bataan Death March. I knew my father named me but I didn’t make that connection until after he died.

That’s part of how death changes people. My father didn’t speak of his time in the service. He gave me his copy of Guadalcanal Diary signed by everyone in his platoon (which is mentioned in the book) on condition that I promise never to read it. I never have.

Despite his posture, his nobility and his temper, when he was alive I never thought of him as a Marine. Now, in retrospect, that surprises me because despite our complicated relationship and the variety of my memories, I rarely think of him as anything else. In that sense and in so many others, his death also changed me.

1 comment:

jan said...

explains a lot. i didn't know much of this about Dad...and by extension, about you. thanks.