Dad upstaged me

It's nearing February 4th, which would mark the 3rd anniversary of my father's death. I'm pretty certain in the coming days, I'm going to spinning more interesting tales about him, but I'm going to start from his death, because it illustrates our fractuous and competitive relationship.

Before I get this ball rolling, let me say one thing. It may seem like I didn't like my father, but I did. It took a long time for us to be able look past what we thought the other one should be, and see what the other one is. We never did have the "Dad, I'm gay" conversation, but I certainly never made any attempts to hide my attraction to men in front of him--such as a room full of male pin-ups--and he never expressed any hatred towards me vis-a-vis my own homosexuality.

Some (astrological) background: I don't know how many of you out there are only sons, but I am. In our house, there was myself, my mother, and father, and we didn't cotton too friendly to strangers. (We didn't cotton too friendly to relatives either, but they had the genetic excuse.) So the basic demographics were two men and one woman, so there was a lot of testosterone flying about. Let's factor in personalities now. I'm going to use astrology here, because it's great for personality assessment. (Note well, playwrights, note well.) I'm an Aquarius, my mother is a Leo, and my father was a Cancer. That's two fixed signs (read: stubborn as hell) and one mutable sign (read: indecisive and manipulative) and also an Air sign (read: opinionated and chatty), a Fire sign (read: Confident), and a Water sign (read: emotional). Air and Fire get on very well (respect amongst the equally powerful); Fire and Water get on decently (provided Water respects Fire's authority); Air and Water...not too friendly. I've had Water sign boyfriends, and while we could get along, at time it is like two people speaking two separate languages. Water is obsessed with feeling, Air is obsessed with logic and reasoning. Long and short of it is this: my mother & I got along perfectly, my mother & my father got along without much fuss, and my father & I got along like a parrot in at the North Pole.

Now onto the story.

Late in the evening on February 4th, I get a call from my mother. Sounding very cool, she says "your father is dead." She explained to me that she had called him downstairs in the basement and recieved no response. Thinking something was wrong, she went down to check on him and found him collapsed on a treadmill, dead from a heart attack. I remember being very together about this piece of news. There was no crying or angry thrashing of nearby items. In fact, I remember being angrier trying to get a berevement ticket to Milwaukee.

I make it back to Mequon, and my mother is...functional. No crying, no jaunts off to nostalgia, just handling the details. We're both more interested in hammering out the details of my father's estate. Then she tells me that the relatives are coming in three waves as the funeral nears. The first wave consists of members from my mother's family. They are all coordial, consoling, and very Virginian, which in this particular case could be interpreted as the Southern equivalent of being from Connecticut. The second wave, consisting of the first part of my father's family, arrived on February 6th. At the time, had you told me it was my birthday, I would've said that you were absolutely crazy. So when my mother turned to me and remarked that she's getting me a cake, I was puzzled.

That evening, I am greeted with the truly too-meta-for-words sight of a birthday cake being plopped down in front of me while assorted relatives sing "Happy Birthday." This was too bizarre. My birthday had always been celebrated with my mom & I going off to New York, while my Dad grunted a "happy birthday." It never really mattered to me what he said, because I knew on that day, he had to at least try not to rile me up. As I took in the surreal scene, it was then that I realised that I'd never again have the chance to act smug in front of my father on my birthday; nor would I ever be able to engage in one of our many arguments (he liked to call them "discussions," though I have never "discussed" anything with someone while speaking rapidly and in a high pitched tone) from Mitchell Field to the airport. When I blew out the candles, I talked myself out of making the first birthday wish that came to my head: "I'd like to see my father one last time." Yep, for once, he deservingly got one over on me.

As for the funeral, there's several other stories tell, but for now, this is all about my father.

An interesting postscript: The day after his funeral, one of the Encore movie channels aired The Karen Carpenter Story. Mourners in the house or not, I was hell-bent on seeing this. (By the way, Mitchell Anderson as Richard Carpenter...inspired casting.) So I sit down and make it through the movie. At the end of the film, there's an onscreen blurb that says that Karen Carpenter died on February 4th. Eerie, I tell you. Even more unsettling, is that while my father died of a heart attack, it was basically brought on by obesity...so now February 4th is now seared in my head as the day people with eating disorders die. (This somewhat makes me freak out since I'm a recovering anorexic myself. They aren't kidding when they say that eating disorders are genetic.)