Daddyman Outside the Obituary

              I didn’t really dismiss my father the way the obituary made it sound.  As a child I had feared him, but as an older adult—when both of us were older adults—I came to love and appreciate him.  And that reminded me of the inadequacies not only of obituaries but of collective memories—or what memories chose to collect.  I was very disappointed that people wanted the sanitized “resume” of him instead of the collection of quirks.

            At his memorial service we’d displayed things like the song we sang for him for his 80^th birthday.  I’d written it to the tune of “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the Morning,” and my sisters Dana and Suzy had sung it with me.

“If we had a normal dad, how bored we’d all be.

We celebrate the fact that he’s he.

Raise your glass and give a cheer,

Eight decades or four score is here.

Dad’s eighty!

I cherished pictures of his amazing creation of, and tolerance for, a mess.  But he was brilliant, and he didn’t waste!  He also appreciated a good bargain, like the twenty-five cent vacuum cleaner that shot out dust.

“When the Martin glory

Passes through the door.

Stepping on piles of papers.

Boxes of cardboard floor.

He can outquote Bartlett

He can even out-speak Chomsky,

And he’s eighty.

Radical and Socialist

Are some words that can head our list

At eighty.

When he thinks his memory’s

Half way out the door,

I compare his memory

To my own:  It’s more.

If you waste, Daddyman scowls.

He’ll wash and dry his paper towels

At eighty.

Never one to throw things out,

He gives us much to talk about

At eighty.

…

When I visited his home in Portland one year.

His vacuum cleaner made it quite clear

Breathing out, not breathing in

Is not a trait of just Clinton.

Dad’s eighty!

How come he had a vacuum cleaner shooting out dust?

“It was a bargain,” Daddy said, “It was just

Twenty-five cents at the yard sale

I had to get it without fail.

Dad’s eighty.