My father died twenty years ago today in San Diego. He breathed his last in a room with a view surrounded by his beloved wife and eight children. We were praying the Divine Mercy chaplet, the rosary and reciting the psalms we used to say as children long ago and far away.
He died of pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed on Fat Tuesday, he died on Easter Sunday. I have written before about what a beautiful death he had. The thing that merits repeating is that we were far from a perfect family.
Daddy had bipolar disease, aside from the times he was hospitalized, there was no treatment. It is just now being treated and talked about.
Know this: Bipolar people are brilliant. You probably know some. They are the ones who can burn through days of creativity, who seem drunk with fire, who have an essential energy that makes them ALIVE. They are charismatic and volatile. The are exciting to be around.
And this: Bipolar is hereditary.
Now this: It is treatable.
Nowadays there is no reason to suffer alone. Get help.
So imagine being a brilliant bipolar person, essentially misunderstood, most of your life. Imagine having eight children. Imagine the weight of history, of growing up in the segregated South with the campfires of the Civil War still glowing. Add some extreme idealism, true love, great imagination and drive, and an endless search for answers.
That was Daddy.
Add in an impossible temper and hyperbolic gift for description and comedy.
He was a major in the Air Force, but he didn’t know that for about twenty years. (That is another story). He spent most of his life looking for answers.
In the 1970’s he stumbled upon the work of Norman Vincent Peale and put up vision boards, we called them motivation boards then. Most of his dreams came true.
When I was widowed in 1982, he was my personal coach. I could feel his concern and love across the miles. He understood some of us more than others. I was lucky that he understood me.
At the end, and twenty years later, what is true is what remains.
He loved my mother and his children. He was a wonderful grandfather. He sought the truth. I am sure he is behind my discovery of the positively wired brain work I am immersed in. He never looked at women in a lascivious way. He was charming and funny and one of a kind.
Because he was bipolar with all its attendant adventures and misadventures, I never looked at him with any kind of awe or pedestal admiration. He was my Daddy and I loved him. No one could impress him, and because of that, no one impresses me.
Growing up in a world both here and there that is so invested on where you live, how much you make, what the brand of your watch and car – well Daddy never strove for that, so neither have I.
He gave me a great example of the road less traveled, and if necessary the capacity to travel it against opinion and without validation.
There was one thing that could have broken him, the death of his dearest ones. So he beat us to that finish line.
When he told me that his prognosis was not good, he cried. We were on the telephone. ‘I’m so sorry honey, I’m so sorry I won’t be around for the grandbabies.”
I said, ” That’s OK, Daddy, I know you will be with us. You’ll see it all. I will tell them about you. They won’t forget you. We will see you again.”
He said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get to fly more.”
“You will fly in heaven.And you will get to see everyone, all the ancestors – you’ll be talking to them every day.”
One day he called me and said, “I just wanted to hear your voice and say I am so lucky to have a daughter like you.”
He understood me. “You are good and quiet like your Aunt Lib.”
When he carried Mercy, my first born, he burst into tears and said, “I never thought I’d ever love a blue-nosed Yankee!” He took to calling her Peanut. One day he was dancing in the dining room in La Jolla with her and said, ” Peanut, one day men will try to make you dance backward. You show them! Ain’t no one gonna make my Peanut dance backwards!”
I could go on and on, but there is only this. He loved his family. He loved Jesus. That is what remains.