To end this year I am memorializing my father. I gave his tribute on December 1st, kicking off what is normally one of my favorite times of the year, that sweet spot between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. This one was marked by his passing and was bittersweet. The weeks since have been spent taking care of my mom and tending to the business of modifying her life for the future. As a result, the month of December has flown by with little time to process the loss myself, and I want to take some time to correct that and write some of it down. It’s not the usual blog fare, but it’s all I got.
My dad checked into the hospital on November 17th, celebrated his 59th wedding anniversary on the 21st, Thanksgiving on the 22nd, and died on the 24th, having never left. His death is what anyone could want in a passing, something rapid without any lingering agony. It was so fast that I was not able to be there for the end. I find that both a little sad and a little merciful in equal measure. There are some memories I don’t need and that is probably one of them. My journey home took me through Orlando and all I remember is how surreal it was to be traveling in a state of shock with people on their way to Disney for Christmas. The days leading up to his funeral were a blur, and I had little time to prepare myself. I wrote somethings down during my trip, but the words were so disjointed I found that I couldn’t use them. Instead, I made a little outline and used it to speak from the heart. I can’t remember exactly what I said now, but parts of it are here.
I was lucky enough to consider my dad a close friend. We came of age at approximately the same time. I know that sounds odd, but you see my dad joined The Program (AA) when he was 40 and I was a teenager. He was growing and maturing into the man he became during the second half of his life during my formative years in high school. The fondest memories of my time with him are of being his garage working on an old Triumph TR-6 roadster, the car that I would take to college, and all the conversations we would have there, while the smells of oil, transmission fluid, and night blooming jasmine, surrounded us in South Florida. Our conversations were intimate and often filled with humor. Today the relationship I’m fostering with my son is informed by that experience.
One of my favorite moments, happened when he was trying to remove the cover to a break fluid reservoir. The reservoir itself was rectangular and made of a plastic resin. The cap was flat and roughly the size of a man’s palm. My father struggled for minutes trying to unscrew the cap and became angry and frustrated, and cursed in some usual way. I had been studying this while he fumed and said, “Let me try.” He looked at me with a disbelieving eye and threw his hands up. My hands are bigger than his were so right then and there I reached over, and in one single motion simply removed the cap. Dead silence. He looked over at me and said, “You got to be kiddin’ me.” To which I replied, “It’s not my fault if you want to do everything the hard way.” He stared at me, and I stared right back at him, and we held it for a beat or two, then we simply burst into laughter. That was the moment he and I became friends.
In college, I would recall many events in that garage and the conversations that would define my father to me. I learned a lot about him over the years. And among moments of laughter were also moments of sock at some of the things he had endured in his life.
When you restore old cars you have to take care while taking them apart because, obviously, you hope to put them back together one day. On one occasion my dad was using a hammer and accidentally bent part of a door assembly, which would make it more difficult to reassemble. I was on the other side of the car performing another task, and I heard the THWACK of the hammer followed by a guttural whispered voice, “YOU GODDAMN DUMMY.” “What?” I called. “Oh nothing.” He said in frustration, “That’s just my father.” I heard this repeatedly over the life of the restoration project.
One time, he fell back and sat after a visit from his father’s ghost, and I said, “He really did a number on you. Didn’t he?” My dad acknowledged this by telling me a story involving his pet rabbit, which his father made him kill for a family dinner. (You read that right.) And you also have to understand that my father’s family were not without means or the ability to purchase one in the market. No, it was done with a measure of malice and cruelty to teach him a lesson. I remember vividly, how, with his eyes closed, my dad clawed at the bend in his arm with his opposite hand, as he relived it to me - feeling the rabbit’s feet flailing on his arm, while he was trying, and failing, to kill his cherished pet as quickly and humanely as a young boy could. (Horrifyingly, it finally ended with a hammer.) From that moment on the memory was cast as I contemplated a cruelty I could never imagine, and never experienced in my own life, thanks to him.
I still marvel at how he was able to put a story like that behind him and name his first born son after his father. I see him in a very poignant way, both in terms of the perseverance it took to get away from, and the desire to still gain approval from, his father. It is little wonder that he was an alcoholic. Nevertheless, his life became one of success and redemption. At 40, he quit drinking and remained sober for the rest of his life. He thrived as a mechanical engineer and authored two patents for Pratt & Whitney where he worked until he retired.
Despite his accomplishments, my father was without ego and learned very slowly how to enjoy his life, because his father’s ghost was never that far away. He found a lot of purpose in sponsoring other men in Alcoholics Anonymous and I saw proof of this at his funeral when I met more people than I could count, who told me how much they appreciated him. I think one of the things that helped him succeed was his background, and why he always said he wouldn’t change a thing. It grounded him in some way I can’t fully describe, but I can say I had a lot of fun teasing him about all his toys. I used to say he had “good problems” trying to decide wether to go out on boat, go for a drive, or just hang out by the pool. He might chuckle to be polite, but these things never meant much to him. What mattered to him were the people in his life and he would talk about their struggles and their successes with more pride than his own.
For as long as I can remember, I called home every Sunday morning and he would share their stories and what was going on. The common theme was always work. “Work on what is in front of you,” is what he would recall - a lesson he was taught, and in the process it installed within me a work ethic and an appreciation for his simple admonition. “Work the the problem, treat others with respect, the rest will take care of itself.” His mantra became my own.
My father enjoyed almost 20 years in retirement. He loved where he lived, and the last time we spoke he said that he didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. “I loved my life. It was great!” It’s one of the last things he said to me in the days before he died. The memory of the timbre of his voice and the sense of wonder in it as he said goodbye is one that I cherish now.
It is not easy to say goodbye to him. It has impacted me a lot more than I ever expected and it made speaking about him difficult at his funeral. My father was 81 so it is difficult to say it was unexpected because it was his time. In the end, what mattered to him most were people and I like that very much. While he was never good at expressing it, he loved people deeply, but always in that gruff old school kind of way. Again, I saw proof of this when I thanked all the people that showed up for his service. To do this, I closed my tribute by summoning a bit of his spirit and said, “My dad would be overwhelmed that so many of you showed up for him. And I know exactly what he would say, ‘Jesus Christ, Jackie! How the hell are we gonna feed all these people?!’” And the room exploded in laughter in recognition.
In the end as large as the auditorium was, it wasn’t large enough to hold all of the people that came for my dad. More people than we had ever talked about gathered to fill it, and even more came to stand in the back and peek in from the doors. I have never spoken in front of so many people in my life. When it was over and my mom got up to go, she looked back with teary eyes and whispered to him, “Standing room only, Jack.”
As I said before, my dad had good problems.
Jack Barbic May 17, 1937 - November 24, 2018