46 - stardust

You are unique.
You’re not just anybody
and you know it,
and your family knows it.

No matter what you’re doing,
you have a way
of going about it
that’s all your own.

You are loved.

—George Kinney, to his son Max, Expressions from Hallmark

~~~

Am beginning to “feel” the loss, it’s all coming now in the quieter moments.

Sorting through cards and email messages from Pops. The last birthday card he sent, two months before he died, was the kindest, most heartfelt and encouraging string of words he’d ever sent my way. It’s like, what the fuck, you too? Death draws near and you rethink things, you see more clearly, you understand how you’ve been, how you might change.

Don’t think I ever really understood him. Never saw him whole, as a complete human being, only saw the “man,” testosterone to the nth degree. Kept him at a distance after I grew up. He was such a tough son of a bitch, always wanted to throttle him. At odds we were, mother had always been the peacemaker, forever the manager of the even keel, even when he’d belittle and condemn, rant and rage. He was toughest on her, and she’d never turn away, never gave it back. And it pained her, as Sonja and I got into our teens, that we didn’t take to his intimidating and browbeating ways, his ugliness and cruelty, and we’d give him lip, gave it back tenfold, and there’d be these moments where we’d be screaming and yelling at each other, even as adults, and mother would just leave the room, and Sonja and I would get drawn in, it was always a game to him, and we’d push it, dare him to take a swing, “Go ahead, do it,” and of course he never did, a taboo for him. He imagined himself upright and honorable, not like his brother, or mother’s father and brother, all abusers, they weren’t above fighting with their wives, beating them up. And of course Pops WAS upright, and honorable, yet imperfect as we all are, and he just didn’t have it in him to see weakness and accept it, couldn’t accept failure and the frailties he saw in others, he didn’t have it in him to express the gentler, more loving feelings he had, couldn’t be supportive or encouraging. It was all about toughening up, competing, never admitting to the feelings and thoughts he had learned to keep hidden, feelings he even kept from her. Throughout their life she was the one who gave expression to the heartfelt and loving, the one charged with writing thank you notes, and birthday cards, and gifts that were spot on and perfect. She was the one more encouraging, more supportive and hopeful.

Pops changed when mother died. In the 21 years between her death to his own, he grew to be more thoughtful and reflective, and the things she once did he’d do. He cooked for himself, planted a garden, grew tomatoes, basil, and installed an array of honeysuckle along the back fence. He even dabbled in churchgoing with his one and only girlfriend after mother. This is a guy who slammed down his first shot of whiskey when he was 14, the day Gramps found him in a Nevada City billiard room. From the get-go rough and tumble he was, never shying away from a fight. He loved to mix it up with “the assholes and arrogant scumbags.” Speaking of which, one of the last in-depth conversations we had, he was just incensed, rip-roaring, angry, and I thought he was taking me on, like days of old, trying to ramp me up, but then I stopped, just listened, and I saw something I hadn’t seen before, in his anger, in the detailing of the ugliest things he had done out of retribution and vengeance, he was pleading, asking why people are so vindictive, so cruel, so unthinking and insensitive. It’s like he was saying, “I’ve been an asshole myself, all these years, because that’s what I had to be and do to provide for your mother, you and your sister.” Always a new story or a new revelation with him and he went on to tell me of a particular general contractor, a supreme asshole, condescending and just a prick, and this general decided he was going to fuck Pops over, and he did. And the Old Man made up his mind he’d get the asshole back, a residential tract of homes, a slew of them already wired, electricians had finished their part, exterior plastering done, interior sheetrock scheduled, and Pops with no help from anyone, on his own, at dusk, job sites empty, he goes in with wire cutters, snip snip, here and there, pivotal points in the wiring along the studs, and a kind of glee in it, fuck with me will you. Imagine it, final inspection, and they can’t figure out what’s wrong, and now it’s not only the general contractor involved, but the electrical sub-contractor, and the sheetrockers, and the painters, and…, well, Pops, in the revelation admitting to not feeling good about it, so fucked up to have to do these things, to take revenge on others when they mistreat you, when they figure you’re a cretin and simpleton, and try to take advantage. It’s like, his anger all these years didn’t have to do with being “an angry man” per se, his anger came when he realized he couldn’t trust you to be honest and forthright, to speak your mind, and it pissed him off, he so wanted to trust, to be on the up and up, but “that’s not the world we live in,” he’d say, “it’s a world of assholes,” and he learned to tell the difference between someone who was worthy and someone who was greedy and malicious and not to be trusted, and either you go off, cry your eyes out and remove yourself, or you stay in the game, stand your ground, let these lying fucks know they’re not going to get away with it.

~~~

I was living in midtown Sacramento, in an old Victorian, having fled Los Angeles and a failed marriage. It was the second or third Friday after mother had passed, and I asked him if he wanted to go to dinner, to Andiamo!, originally the Rosemont Grill, one of their favorites over the years. He said yes, and for about six months, he and I, faithfully, every Friday night, to dinner we’d go, same restaurant, same booth, same waitress, Beth was her name, he knew her as she waitressed at the Country Club he had joined, and he was always hinting at it, wanting me to ask her out, and she was sweet, nice but not for me, and there we were, getting reacquainted, me playing the role of mother, the listener, his date on their night out, and the stories he’d tell, and we’d talk sports, football and the 49ers, die-hards we were, and I got further glimpses of who he was, what he had strived to do, what he loved, what was important, and it was here I saw how gregarious he was, how social and at ease with others, and I could see that he didn’t know how to be alone, that he missed her desperately, missed having her near him, close, someone to talk to, someone he could trust, his anchor of love. Then he met his girlfriend, and I began to date again, and…

~~~

Sonja scripted Pop’s funeral and as the folks passed his closed, simple wooden casket and viewed the array of family photographs we had assembled, as they shook our hands telling how us how great a man he was, I looked over at the painting we had set on an easel, Pops and Mother, the two of them in their 20s, he had just returned from the Pacific, a gunner’s mate in World War II, it was over, and they were in a nightclub in San Francisco, he in uniform, hair near blonde, and she in that brunette 40’s do, oh so lovely, the happiest image I have of them, just before they were married, and I can no longer think of him without thinking of her. And as the folks passed by, the last of the songs he had chosen for his funeral came on, Nat King Cole’s Stardust, and I cannot listen to it without tears welling up, without seeing them one last time, without looking back in some rose-colored mist of happiness:

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart

You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely night dreaming of a song
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
But that was long ago
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song

Beside a garden wall
When stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
of paradise where roses grew
Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain