Somewhere Where Deep Down Inside of Me I Don't Want to Be

Tonight my brother and sisters and I met to start talking about some of the logistics of arranging a funeral for our father, who has not died yet but is steadily fading. It might be this year, it might be later.

One of his younger brothers passed away a few months ago from Alzheimer's (at 91, Dad is the eldest of eight, and three have died). My two sisters went to the funeral in Buffalo, and when they asked our cousin—whose father was the deceased—how she and her brother had pulled such a nice ceremony together in such a short time, our cousin said, "We didn't. We planned it." That's when my sisters realized we should start thinking about how we'd like to honor both of our parents when the time comes.                                   

Tonight's discussion was a productive one over pizza. I won't go into the details here, but for a conversation I was dreading, it went surprisingly well, even with some laughs.

Last night, I was reading letters Dad wrote to me when I was in college. He didn't write as often as my mother did, but he corresponded throughout my four years away from home, often just a postcard from a museum, sometimes a single-spaced typewritten letter of a page or two.

Here is an excerpt from what appears to be the first full letter I ever received from him, dated September 11, 1979, within the first couple of weeks I was away at college, feeling miserably lonely and out of place. At this point, I'd had more than one tearful phone call with both him and my mother. This letter from Dad exemplifies so much of what made him who he was—the formal language, the highbrow mixed with low, the offering of memories from his own life, the encouragement and generosity, the kid-like interest in the modest pleasures of the world. The rest falls away.

Dear Billy,

Your feelings about finding it hard to adjust sound exactly the way I felt when I first got into the army air force. But it is bound to get better. It is not knowing when that makes it bad. . . .

I found in my own life, adjusting to these unfamiliar and indeed alien situations, that the difference between liking and not liking usually was somehow or other allied to finding a friend or two who bit by bit contributed to removing the alien-ness of the atmosphere. Actually it doesn't have to be a friend—they are rare enough. It can just be a pleasant acquaintance. . . . If it is possible to do so, Philadelphia has many fascinating museums. The Benjamin Franklin Museum is world famous and on a par with the Smithsonian. Give it a try if you can spare the time. Of course it has been a long time since I was there, but I remember with pleasure that they have a little movie house there where for a pittance you could see classic black and white films of historical note. Call them up and ask. . . . 

I noticed that on the back of the Grape Nuts Flakes box there is an offer for a "Yogurt Machine" that looks pretty nice. Would you like that for a gift? It would be a good hobby and you could make your own without a lot of fuss. Things like that fascinate me. As you know. There is an old joke about Philadelphia that W.C. Fields was supposed to have originated. There was a contest in which first prize was a week in Philadelphia. The 2nd prize was two weeks in Philadelphia. I am sure it's not really fair. Sounds like the things people used to say about Buffalo. There is something good and interesting about every place. I used to determine that I would find something to do at some real holes where I was on TDY (federalese for temporary duty) and would read a Baedeker or other travel guide and find that there was a Roman ruin, or an old cathedral, or a dinosaur dig or whatever. That is what I would do to put some fabric in my life, and of course it is a useful surrogate for providing the feeling for having a purpose for being somewhere where deep down inside of you you don't want to be.

Love, Dad