It’s futile, in the shadow of death, to sum things up. One can see neither the trees nor the forest, but only a confounding haze of xylem, owls, and distant mountains. That said, if I were the kind of guy to bow easily to futility I wouldn’t have spent my life trying to be a creative writer. So, here is what I want to say about my dad.

AMOUNTS

When he was in fourth grade, one of my dad’s teachers told him he’d never amount to anything. He related this anecdote to me when I was also in fourth grade, and I was shocked. Clearly, dad’s fourth grade teacher was not a nice person. More disturbing, however, was this notion of “amounting to” something. It has bothered me ever since. What a horrible thought, that the diverse columns of a full life might be totted to a single value. My dad, a consummate outdoorsman, swam across Lake Washington, summited every major peak in Washington State, volunteered on ski patrol at Crystal Mountain, rode bikes, ran, dug clams, sailed from Seattle to Hawaii and also up to Desolation Sound. A devoted husband. A caring father. What does it add up to?

REGRETS

My dad only ever confessed two regrets to me. The first was that he didn’t finish college and become a veterinarian. Instead, he stumbled into working as a computer programmer for Boeing. This paid well, and he was good at it. Our family had a nice house in a decent neighborhood. We had a 26′ sailboat. I got ski lessons. We weren’t what I’d call “rich,” but I think my dad’s teacher would have been favorably impressed.

And yet, he didn’t do what he’d wanted to, which was to help animals.

My dad loved animals. His second regret was about a bird he once shot. He was a kid, and the bird was a chickadee. He “blew it away” with a shotgun a friend had lent him. The memory pained him for his whole life. He swore then that he would never again take a life for no reason.

My dad’s regret about getting into computer programming instead of animal doctoring was also the main thing he amounted to, in the capitalistic sense. He and I are different in this regard. I didn’t stumble to where the money was, but doggedly pursued my own equivalent to being a veterinarian, which is writing novels for young people, a dream has paid off arguably thus far in terms of both money and renown—arguably enough that I’ve lately been looking for work in the software industry.

Some of our local tech juggernauts are hiring writers, but I’m not a technical writer, or an editor, or a journalistic blogger. I’ve spent my life getting good at confabulating stories about made-up characters, a skill that has little application to the crafting of precise in-house Javascript style guides. (My dad didn’t use Javascript. He wrote in a computer language called Assembler.)

TEMPER

My dad had almost no temper. Here’s an example: Sometime during my tweenhood, I heedlessly forayed into the neighborhood on a sunny summer evening without telling my parents where I was going. When I got home, I was headed up the stairs, and my dad saw me, his son who had been missing for hours, an absence that had caused worry, many phone calls, and even some driving around shouting my name out of the car window.

He fixed me with his sternest gaze, and I saw that I was about to get epically scolded. “You,” said my dad, “are in deep yogurt.” Then I was told in no uncertain terms that I should always inform him if I was going to be away from the house. That was that. Whew!

That was the angriest I ever saw him until many years later, when he spoke the last words he’d ever say to me.

LAST WORDS

The memory troubles that plagued the closing decade of my dad’s life began when he was sixty six. One of the first symptoms was aphasia, a loss that deepened over several years and that finally reduced his vocabulary to “Yes,” “No,” and an occasional, “It’s good.”

These were troubled times for my family—a complex subforest of the vast region of my lifelong relationship with my father. Almost daily, it seemed, I made decisions that inadvertently worsened things, with the result that I lost many nights of sleep to worrying. I suffered panic attacks. My own sense of incompetence cast a shadow over me. I became depressed and felt myself a failure, an opinion the world seemed in no hurry to disabuse me of.

When my dad was seventy-two, my mother and I moved him into a “memory care facility,” where he couldn’t wander off and get lost. He was locked in there. The elevators would stop, if he got in. The windows would only open a crack. The fire exit was painted to look like book shelves. It was a clever place.

However, my father was cleverer. He had an insuperable mechanical aptitude that persevered against the diminutions of his illness. One afternoon, when he wanted to go for a walk and no one would take him, he discovered that the windows in the facility cafeteria could be taken entirely out of their frames by pulling up a couple of tabs. He quickly removed a window, and went for his walk.

This walk was, unfortunately, straight down. He was on the second floor, and plummeted to a concrete patio below, breaking both of his heels and his back.

Later, in the hospital, my mother, my wife and I tried in vain to comfort him. I held his hand while he sobbed from the unendurable agony. He didn’t know what had happened to him. It was one of the worst nights of my life.

I came daily thereafter for six weeks. One afternoon the hospital aids needed to move him to another bed, and I helped. I took one of Dad’s legs and started to turn it, which caused him excruciating pain. He grabbed my hand, fixed me with a fiery gaze, and shouted,

“Stop, goddammit! What are you doing?”

This was the first complete thought he’d articulated in years, and it was the last thing he ever said to me, though he lived to be seventy-five.

DYING

Dad died Sunday, two days ago now. Bedridden, suffering renal failure, he fought for breath as his lungs filled with fluid. He slept, woke, never seemed fully conscious. Mom and I sat with him, talked to him, read to him.

It seemed like he might linger for days. I decided to head home awhile and rest. Mom said she’d stay on a bit.

I left, and Mom remained. After about an hour, she also decided to go. She put her folding chair away. She went to dad, kissed him, told him she loved him. She made the sign of the cross on his forehead.

He took a final breath, and died. Just like that.

VALHALLA

Since he passed on, I’ve been imagining an odd little scenario for my dad’s spirit. This idea has recurred stubbornly for several days now, so I guess it means something to me. The scenario is this: my dad’s soul, freed from its broken body and ravaged brain, is approaching Valhalla. Dad is as brilliant as he used to be. His faculties are fully restored.

He approaches the entrance to Valhalla and sees Thor and Odin standing there, minding the door.

“Halt!” says Thor. “Why should we let you in, Jerry? You are half Swedish.”

“It’s true,” says Dad. “My father was Norwegian, but my mother was Swedish.”

“And you never died in battle,” Odin adds. “During the Vietnam war you served as a telegraph operator in Panama. They would have evacuated you even before the women and children!”

My dad nods. “Yup,” he says. “That’s why I chose that job.”

“And you had no rage,” Thor says. “You would only speak of deep yogurt.”

“I enjoyed yogurt,” says my dad amiably. “I had it for breakfast every morning.”

“We furthermore have this report from your teacher that you never would amount to anything,” says Odin.

“I did make some money from computers,” says my dad.

“We don’t give a shit about money,” says Odin.

“Or computers,” Thor adds.

The gods pause. “Leave here,” they say imperiously, “unless you can give us some reason we should let you in.”

“Well,” says my dad, “I did have a son named Steven who became a writer.”

“We’ve never head of him,” say the two.

“He’s not very well known,” my dad admits.

“What kind of writer?” says Odin. “A journalist?”

“A technical writer?” says Thor.

“No,” says my dad. “He’s a creative writer.”

Dad waits awhile, until the gods stop laughing. Then he says, “So, you’ll let me in now?”

“Yes, we will let you in,” say Odin and Thor obediently in my story.

“Also,” my dad says, “I think we should all go for a sail now.”

“Yes,” say the gods. “Our boat is right here.”

They all climb in, and sail off into the great fjords of Valhalla, full of xylem, owls, and distant mountains.

*

I love you, Dad. I’m not sure what that amounts to, but I want you to know that the chickadee you shot is alive and well in these fjords.