Celebration of Life

My stepmother has planned a "Celebration of Life" in honour of my father, down at the clubhouse where they spend time with their friends in the ex-pat community in Ensenada - the actual service is looking likely to be in November, but this Celebration is this coming weekend. As I could obviously only attend one of these events, I will unfortunately miss the Celebration, but Nancy offered to have someone read something from me, if there was anything I wanted to say. Today, I finally got around to writing something, so I thought I'd share it here for those who are interested....

Ever since Nancy started planning this Celebration of Life I have been wondering what I wanted to say, trying to think of how to begin and how to make sure that what I wrote was brilliant, moving, witty and so on. I've been putting off making a start because it was hard to see where I was going to go.

Then today for lunch while opening a tin of sardines, I realised what I wanted to say – not to tell you about a military career, or stamp collecting, or a Mexican retirement, or about the women in his life - but to talk about the little things – some of them, at least - which together make up my father for me.

Baseball, of course, always reminds me of my dad – living here in a country with no baseball I am reminded of him less this way than I used to be, but I have very vivid memories of going to Orioles games (at the old Memorial Stadium – none of this Camden Yards nonsense) with him and my brother – even before my parents divorced, baseball was the province of my father and I do think he enjoyed the outings, despite protestations about how much two small children could eat, and how frequently they needed the toilet.

A few songs will always remind me of my father – my favourite song memory is being in his house in Blue Sea Lane, where he lived between his two marriages – listening to Simon & Garfunkel and turning The Boxer up so loudly that the glass in the windows shook.

There are also food related memories – yes, his favourite Christmas cookies, which I still make every year, partly for the memories – it wouldn't seem like Christmas without them - and partly because I like them too. And yes, the few German things my mother used to cook – schnitzel and spatzel. But also, Brussels sprouts will always remind me of Dad because that was the one vegetable the rest of us, Mom included, were allowed not to eat, when she fixed it for him. I actually like sprouts now, but they still remind me of my dad's "smelly vegetable" and how he was forever trying to get the rest of us to have "just one taste" - convinced that if we just kept trying, eventually we'd like them. And of course, the sardines – my father was the primary consumer of sardines in our house (though I'm fairly sure I also liked them, even as a child). The unique sardine tin is a bit of a wonder to a child anyway, so perhaps that's why my memory of him opening it with the little key is
so vivid.

Or there was a recent conversation about buffets which sparked my memory of the Sunday brunch buffet at the Officer's Club at Andrews Air Force Base. I don't suppose it was anything particularly spectacular as these things go, but to a child, a buffet is something splendid and wonderful – picking your own food, and going back for the things you like best, as many times as you like, and my brother and I both adored it.

There are of course many, many more memories of my father – not all of them positive – there's certainly
at least one argument that will stay in my memory forever – but it's all these small things – these instances in my daily life where I find my father a part of it after all – which are the special ones to me.

Ever since Dad died, many people have asked me how I am coping, and my usual reply has been that it's
not so bad on a daily basis, because living so far away from one another, we didn't see each other regularly, and neither of us was perhaps as good a correspondent as we could have been – had we met up weekly or called each other often, his absence would be more striking – in essence, my father hasn't been part of my daily life for many years, or at any rate, that's what I've been saying.

But in the last few weeks, I've noticed increasing numbers of times where I find myself thinking of my father – and I don't just mean when people ask about him or me, but for instance with the sardines, or when a letter arrives with an interesting stamp on it (I had a round one from New Zealand recently – how cool is that?) or even when I was in Woolworth's and saw that they'd released CHiPs on DVD (we used to watch this as a family sometimes, while eating dinner).

And here's what I think – that I haven't simply started thinking of him more since he died, but that I am more aware of each time something in my life sparks a memory or echoes back from my childhood, because now I know that those are the sum total of the memories I will have – no new ones will be created. And of course that's sad, and I'm sorry for it, but this heightened awareness of my father's place in my life is also a good thing, as it reminds me of all the special things that make up my memory of him; it reminds me to enjoy them, savour them, pass them along to my own children. And it shows me that, distant or not, gone or not – he was, and remains, still very much a part of me and my life.