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In Memory of My Father

0

I guess I'll do this as a series of memory-snippets.  I have to write this.  But you do NOT have to read it.

Seriously.

And those of you in the "Sunshine and lollipops, all is well" club (you know who you are) will not be pleased with this one.  Just skip it, ok?

1

My brother on the phone this morning:

"He was, without a doubt, without even a close second place, the single most miserable person any of us [the 3 kids, being my sister Chris, brother Bob & me] have even known in our entire lives, bar none."

Regrettably, I must confess to the world, myself, and the world via GodsWebsite.com,  that my brother was not even remotely exaggerating.

2

My dad has wanted to die for a long time.  He had actually been talking about it, directly, on the phone for about 2 years now.  It really intensified, into high gear, when "That goddam socialist Obama" was elected.  And, I'll say this for the very last time, THERE ARE NO EXAGGERATIONS HERE.  Accept it or not.  The election of a "radical socialist who wants to destroy this country out of revenge for it" was just too much for his heart to handle.

And his heart is what finally gave way.  Acute heart failure brought about from extreme hepatic encephalopathy.  That's liver failure from 6 decades of Olympic-level drinking.

For the last year, every time we spoke on the phone, when he wasn't too mad at me for one of my many offenses,  he mentioned his mortality.  What would happen if he died first, what would happen if Norma (his wife, my stepmother) went first, etc.

He was adamant he didn't want a memorial service.  And there won't be one.  This is, I guess, as close as we're going to get.

3

Vital stats.  He was born in October of 1931.  He was an all-star, 4 letter jock in high school.  He spent some time touring the country in minor league baseball in the Dodgers farm club.  Figured he wouldn't really be a major star, so he became a stock broker to support his (first) wife Merna (Odd but true file: Merna divorced Van and married Stan.  Van divorced Merna and married Norma) and 3 kids, Me (b. May 1958), Chris (b. Jan 1960) and Bob (b. May 1961.)  He left the finance world in the mid 80s to start a prison ministry, helping those about to be released to deal with the demands of the outside world.  There he met Norma who became his second wife in the early 90s.  In 2004 they moved from the San Diego California area to Bend Oregon, where he remained until he died Saturday night, Nov 6, 2010.  He was 79 years and 6 days old.  He experienced 28,861 sunrises on earth.

4

  Pictures of me - in the scrapbook my mom kept - 2 years old, in baseball garb...it was obvious, almost from day 1, that I was not going to be a gifted athlete.  Dad: "From the day you were born, all I ever wanted was a jock son to play baseball with."  Sorry.  So sorry. 

I was born to be an egghead.  Sorry.  In the 8th grade they charted my IQ at an alleged 154.  Sorry.  By the time I was in 3rd grade he taught me how to play chess, and stopped playing with me in 4th grade because....how to put this...he just couldn't beat me.

We were almost never on the same level.  On almost anything.

I've learned from many people over the years that feeling sorry you cannot be more like what your parents want you to be is a fairly common human experience.  But it didn't feel very common to me. 

So sorry, Dad.  So sorry.

5

No one in my life has caused / inspired such extremes of thought / feeling as my my father.  Not even close.

My childhood was freaking amazing.  Frankly, my entire LIFE has been a blessed journey that I simply would not change for anything.  Oh, sure, little things, like maybe getting the nose cancer cut out before it turned into the semi-major surgery it was.  But all and all, the extremes of my feeling as I contemplate my dad's death boils down to these:

• My life has been astoundingly blessed.

• I owe huge amounts of this, if not in fact the majority of it, to Van Huppert, my dad.

• Yet he seemed to be mad and disappointed with me so very much of the time,

• and his open anger and hostility as the years went by were truly staggering to behold.

• From one marriage came 3 kids who are, each in their way, utterly anointed and beautiful, he never missed a meal, had most of the material blessings that a person could ever hope for, and yet...

• was, indeed, the single most miserable son of a bitch that any of us have ever met.

6

No one is alone?  (http://www.reverbnation.com/karenreneerobb#!/artist/song_details/5893631 is my friend Karen, with yours truly on piano.  It's the song we recorded while Van lay dying alone.) 

Dad died alone.  Tied to a hospital bed. With mitts on his hands so as not to be able to tear out the feeding tubes, because of the ants he felt crawling all over the place....

His wife Norma did everything she possibly could.  And then some.  To the point of harming her own health.  And thank you, thank you, thank you Norma for all the warmth and comfort you tried to bring to Van in his last years, days and hours.

But there will be no memorial.  No chicken casserole for the post-funeral gathering.  He didn't want one.  He refused to make friends with anyone in their new town, and had systematically divorced himself from every single person he had ever known.  "I don't have to put up with that crap.  You can't talk that way to me."  One tiny normal human lack of consideration or rudeness, just one misunderstanding, and he wrote you off forever.

Since I was one of the few people left who could / would actually talk with him, I was able to have 5 "We're done, that's it, the final communication from me ever" discussions, in the last year alone.

His rudeness to Norma and the hospital staff goes beyond mentioning.

He died alone.

7

Why?

What happened?

As the 3 kids have talked recently, over and over the topic returns to Base Zero: "What Happened?  Why was dad so bloody miserable??!?"

8

Perspective.  It's always perspective.  I really think that's somewhere between 95% and 99.99% of the whole game.

My dad never missed a meal his entire life.  Except for voluntarily camping, he never lacked a roof, or hot and cold clean running water.

Minor league baseball and business and vacations allowed him to tour the USA.  The army (he was a part of the Korean occupation just after the war, he was never shot at) allowed him to tour some of the world.

As toys & technology came along, he was always right there to join the party.  TV? Check.  Color TV? Check. Cable TV? Check.  When mono records turned to stereo?  Check.  VCRs?  Check.  CDs? Check. 

Computers?  Oh yes, very much check.  We'll come back to this one.

Cabin by the lake?  Check.  Boat for said lake house? Check.  Membership at the private Pittsburgh Country Club? Check. 

Money to send 3 kids to private school during their formative years?  Check.   Check.   Check. 

Look, I still have no idea about Van & Norma's financial situation, and it's none of my business.  But I will say that just a few months ago, when gold started to go thru the roof and Van knew that I had bought a bit, he called wanting help buying $100,000 worth.  So, even in his late 70s, there was enough scratch around to explore $100k of gold, his insurance (all social security, medical, and State of California, "goddam socialists" was one of his favorite phrases) took care of the medical issues, he owned a house...

Yada yada yada...So, ok, he wasn't Donald Trump rich, but you get my point.  His fortunes rose & fell, but all & all he spent life as one of the 99% richest people in the history of the planet. 

Really.

It's perspective.

Even the poorest people you know or don't know in America are in the top 25% richest people on the planet.  Really.  over half of the planet lives on $2 a day,  and YES that is adjusted for standards of living, etc.

I mean, what could YOU get for $2 a day in the USA??!?  For the record, for a family of 4 the official poverty level in the USA is anything below $22,000 a year.  And, yeah, it's very tough to get by on that.  But at $2 per day per person, 1/2 of the world's families of four live on the equivalent of $3,000 a year.  So, for $2 you can get maybe a cardboard shack, maybe a cup of rice in some putrid water.  And yup, that's about what it's like for oh so very much of the world...

My simple point being that, though he wasn't a gazillionaire, Van did just fine, marvelously well thank you, by any rational measure of finance.

So, again...Why the misery?  What happened?

9

Memory scene 1....A few B's and C's on my report card...Dad: "You are just not working hard enough."

Memory scene 2....Straight A's on my report card...Dad: "Clearly, you are just not taking hard enough classes."

Now, that kind of thing can put a hole in your head.  And yup, it did to me.  You wake up and realize that less than straight A's or even with straight A's, nothing will eve, ever, ever be right enough or good enough.

I graduated Magnum Cum Laude with a Bachelor's Degree from Chapman University in 1980.  There were 8 people in my class who graduated ahead of me.  Jokingly, perhaps, but in reality Van said that "I could have worked a little harder, gotten to the head of the class."

He quickly became ashamed of me yet again, because I "threw away" all that education by becoming "just" a toilet scrubber.  Quotes.  Yup, after graduation I had a housecleaning business.

And then the good time hit.

10

From one of my mini-autobiographies, "Hell In the Kitchen:"

In 1983 my dear beloved father was the manager for the investment division of the Hansch Financial Group. Part of Gus Hansch’s vision was that in addition to the life insurance people and the disability people and the estate planners, the accumulation people would also work in conjunction with all the others. My father was in charge of the stocks and the bonds purchased and sold through the Hansch Financial Group on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Like I said, it was a different world. You couldn’t just set up your own e-trade account, transfer money from your online bank account into your e-trade account, make a couple clicks and buy yourself a thousand shares of stock in XYZ Company. It didn’t work that way in 1983. Remember there were no personal computers back then.

In 1983 stockbrokers generally worked with really rich people. Almost every person who had reason to call a stockbroker had to pass tests called ‘suitabilities.” You had to prove yourself suitable for a particular investment, for a particular type of stock or bond you wanted to buy. It has nothing to do with my story, but if suitabilities (a natural part of my father’s work flow in 1983) were still in place, the economic collapse we are facing now would not have been possible.  But I digress.

During the summer of 1983, Dad had watched me play with my silly little Texas Instruments TI994A. He watched me learn how to do graphics, and on the 4^th of July have the thing do some very primitive multi-colored ‘fireworks’ displays. He watched me learn how to make the thing generate tones and program the opening movement to a Johann Sebastian Bach organ prelude into the machine. He watched me create an accounting system for the co-op I belonged to so that everybody who belonged to the co-op could check off what they wanted to buy on a little computer print-out (I spent more of my “accumulation” on the TI printer extension) so the food co-op would know how much corn, lettuce, how many pounds of beets had been purchased by the co-op and this became, when subtracted from inventory, the order for the next food delivery.

Dad made a crucial decision at this point in my story. He had to have some accounting software for the Hansch Financial Group that would keep track of every bond and stock that is bought and sold on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. He couldn’t find anyone who could put this software together for him, so my father went out and in 1983 dollars spent $4,000 on a brand-new Compaq portable IBM PC compatible computer complete with an Epson printer. He brought it home, sat it down on the kitchen table, called me to his house and basically challenged me to write the accounting software he needed for the Hansch Financial Group.

The proposed program was so complex that I asked him to stop talking so that I could go out and buy a tape recorder and some blank tapes. Then for an hour and a half he talked into the tape recorder and explained everything he needed the software to do. I don’t want to talk above my audience, but the hardware is the machine. Again, the machine is just a dumb box with a bunch of on/off switches. The software is simply what we tell the on/off switches to do. In my Dad’s case, he needed to know the names of the stocks, the names of the customers, the names of all the stockbrokers, the name of the customer who bought which stock through which broker at what price on date at what time of day.  As it added up and changed over time, he needed to see how many shares of XYZ were bought and sold, how many shares stockbroker A was responsible for selling, how many shares customer B was responsible for buying, all part of a very complex system of commissions and overrides and how much the customer was charged for making purchases and sales, etc., etc. etc. Dad had to be able to do this with great flexibility because he wasn’t certain he even knew everything the software needed to do for him and for the Hansch Financial Group.

Dad’s challenge was somewhat intimidating to a guy who had just spent a summer trying to make his TI994A explode a graphical starburst for the 4^th of July. But the challenge was not half so distressing as the prospect of the beige box with the green screen, the Compaq portable IBM PC compatible computer complete with Epson printer that my father had paid for with $4,000 of his own money. The Compaq had 256,000 bytes of memory compared to my little Texas Instrument’s 16,000 bytes. This baby was a monster. It didn’t use cassette tapes but used 5 ¼ “ floppy discs. They really were floppy, and held 360,000 bytes each. This computer had two floppies.

The date was August 20^th, 1983, approximately 10 weeks after I purchased my TI994A. My father hands me all the material, the hour and a half long tape, the Compaq computer with 256K memory storage, the 720K bytes of storage capacity and said “I’m countin’ on you, son…”

Seven days later I gave Dad his completed working program.

Now, you may not believe me, but frankly I could not care less. It is the truth, and I know it. Remember, you are reading an aging man’s post-traumatic stress disorder therapy journal, and I would be at counter-purposes if I were to lie to my own journal. Lying wouldn’t help my healing process.

Yes, indeed, the truth is, seven days later on August 27th, 1983 I gave my father a fully working copy of his software….

I was somehow able to stitch together the finishing pieces of my father’s stock market accounting software application. Day, week, month or year, stock or bond, stockbroker or customer, my software could now tell anyone what everyone is doing, with profits, losses, overrides, commissions and a whole host of other details properly calculated. What mattered was on the beige Compaq with the green screen and the 256,000 bytes of memory and the two 360,000 byte floppies, I delivered to my father a complete working piece of accounting software.  Dad sat there seven days after the initial lecture with a full working system and said “OK.” He described a few features he would need modified, but he was basically pleased.

That is a crucial aspect of my entire life: I went from professional toilet-scrubber (which I still was in August 1983 while I was programming my father’s Compaq) and seven days after his initial description, with the IBM PC book, with prayer and meditation and talking to the master’s degree in computer science, I delivered to him a complete working version of his software.

By Dad’s acclimation, my efforts earned approximately a B-.

B Minus

Over the course of time, I developed many axioms, saying and proverbs in the world of computer science. One of them is, you have only two options: perfection and failure. More times than I would ever want to count in my career as a software developer, I would later find that once you delivered something with all of your hundreds of thousands and millions and eventually billions of on/off switches firing exactly right at exactly the right time, and all of your hundreds of thousands of lines of code working absolutely perfectly with basically the same amount of quality assurance that we measure the space shuttle program by, you would then get a check-mark and a passing grade. The tiniest little deviation from perfection would be called failure.

So if any of you are reading this for the purpose of trying to learn what software development is really like in the real world, learn this lesson very well:  you have two choices: perfection and failure. There is no in-between. It is either absolutely what the customer needs within the customer’s technological framework, within the cost/benefit analysis of what your customer (your boss) can afford, and it works exactly as specified OR if it costs too much, if people don’t like it enough, if it has the tiniest little bug in it, it is an abject failure. I learned this lesson very early in my life. Thanks Dad.

Rewind to 1976. I was a freshman in college. During high school I was a decent student but never did I get a 4.0 or straight A average. In my freshman year of college I finally managed the magic combination. I was taking Advanced Calculus, English Composition, Introduction to Physics and Shakespeare, where every week we had a lecture about a Shakespearean play, took a test on the play on Wednesday and on Fridays we watched the movie of the play. Finally, magically, I brought home this 4.0 straight A grade report. My father’s response? “That’s only because you’re not taking hard enough classes!”

Oh boy, was that a difficult thing for freshman in college me. It seemed at the time that everything I had done that was less than perfect needed improvement, and when I finally reached the pinnacle where no improvement could be made, it was only because I wasn’t doing anything challenging enough to need improvement. My father’s response drilled a hole in my head.

But I will tell you, now that I’m looking back on 25 years of my ‘hell in the kitchen,’ that was the best preparation for a software development career that my father could have possibly given me!

So on August 23^rd 1983 I’m delivering his complete accounting software on his own IBM PC platform and he expresses his thanks, noting the many things that needed modification. Dad’s father never praised him; Dad has always found it difficult to praise me, and we learn to live with all of it. However, in the scheme of things it turns out that ‘all of it’ was going to be small change.

What had happened behind the scenes that my Dad had mercifully not told me was the Hansch Financial Group had, in downtown Los Angeles (we lived in the ‘burbs 50 miles south) one of these multi-million dollar mainframe computers. Over the previous six months, the people who ran the mainframe said that my father’s application was too complicated, required too many variables, they couldn’t program it and they couldn’t support it.  That, it turns out, was the reason my father spent the $4,000 on the beige Compaq with the green screen. It turns out that is the reason why he came to me with his software needs. It was with the transcendent subconscious/a miracle from God/my savant ability (you can decide for yourself what to call it) that seven days later Dad was looking at a fully working copy, after the people who ran the mainframe said it couldn’t be done. 

Suddenly, young Ahyh the toilet-scrubbing, easy class-taking slacker who graduated with a Bachelor’s in the World’s Religions, trained to be a prophet and priest, who merely ten weeks before had bought his first baby step computer…was now known as the computer expert for the entire multi-million dollar Hansch Financial network.

And it all happened just like that.

So....There was one of the key, essential turning points of my life.  That computer program lead to a career that, like my dad, did not make me Bill Gates rich, but really really provided a very nice business and income.  I essentially retired a week before my 48th birthday.

So...Extremes of emotion...here I sit in my outrageously lovely home, listening to my outrageously wonderful stereo, recalling my outrageously lucrative computer programming career made possible in part due to the years I spent in private school education, and...I OWE IT ALL TO MY FATHER, VAN HUPPERT. 

Sure, I had to play my part, exerting a lot of effort, but everything, literally EVERYTHING was made possible by Van.

And yet...the anger...the disappointment...the antipathy...Oh Dear God!!!!!!!!!!!!

11

The "good time" between the time when I joined the finance world as a computer programmer and Van left to do the prison ministry.  We would, could and did lunch together, discussing this and that and him and her, good ole normal business stuff.

Yet there was always the undertone of disappointment & sorrow.  Also from one of my autobiographies:

The Productivity System [a database program I wrote] was now complete. At a demonstration and sales conference (which I did not attend), Bill Staake [one of the key people in my computer world] presented my Productivity System to a roomful of life insurance agents and financial planners. At one point, Bill demonstrated one of the features. A gentleman stood up and said “I want you to know that I used to work for Ashton-Tate (the big database sales leader in those days) for several years and we tried to make what you are describing happen. I’m here to these people that you, sir, are a liar. What you are describing cannot be done.”

Bill Staake, nonplussed, said “Well, perhaps Ashton-Tate couldn’t do it, but our programmer did.” He invited the man to come to the front of the room and look over the software. The man sat down at the computer, clicked the keys and looked around, clicking and reading, and after about two minutes simply muttered under his breath, “Holy shit.”  Yup.  That, too, really happened.

One of the most revered members of the financial planning business community was in attendance that day: Sir William McMurray. He had been partners with Gus Hansch (again, the father of financial planning) since they were young businessmen. Bill McMurray was easily twenty years my father’s senior, and my father looked up to him as one of his cornerstones of the business community. Bill McMurray called my father and related the foregoing incident in very glowing terms, praising yours truly.

That night, I was programming my computer as usual in my ocean-front house and my father called. I am quoting exactly, because I will never forget. He said “I want you to know, son, that from the day you were born the only thing I ever wanted was a jock son to play sports with me. I never understood why God gave me an egghead for a son. But I want you to know that I understand now, and I want you to know that I am very proud of you.”

I love my Dad in many ways; and not just due to filial piety, but for all he provided for our family, for his work ethic, for his commitment to us, for his genuine concern for other people. He had made possible my brand-new career by giving me the opportunity to deliver his accounting software. I know in his heart of hearts my father was being as kind and loving and supportive and encouraging as he possibly could be. It is the curse, sometimes, of human communication, that what we intend to say is not nearly what is heard, because for me, his words were sharp, stabbing wounds into my heart.

Though he didn’t mean it, I felt at the time that my straight A’s in those really tough classes weren’t the least impressive to him. The organ concerts I used to give were not notable. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, but the bachelor’s degree in the World’s Religions that I received magnum cum laude was not remarkable. Just simply who and what I was as a person was unsatisfactory. But now that Sir William McMurray had told my father I had done something that really impressed him? Now my father could be proud of me.

I’m glad the event happened and I’m glad that I went on to have a career my father could be proud of, but it always caused me to ponder. One of the Proverbs in the Bible says “Raise a child up in the way he should go and he will not vary there from.” Most people interpret that to mean “Raise a child up in the way you want him to go,” but that’s not what it says. It’s very hard for parents not to see their children as a reflection of themselves. I’m convinced that parents take way too much blame and way too much credit for the failures and the successes of their children. It’s one thing to have a child who fits your image of what he should be; it’s another thing to give that child enough love and opportunities to enable that child to become what he wants and needs and should become.

12

Memory scene: I go on to have this little website, the ministry that many around the world have found very helpful.  Van visits my wife & I in Nashville in the summer of 2008.  He can go to the Wednesday night Bible study I'm teaching, hear his son speak directly to people, a chance he has not had in literally decades.  But he opts to stay home to watch a college softball game.

13

And then the anger...1998 I changed my name.  This was one of the most horrid things I could have ever done to the man, and to this day I'm sorry it was so hurtful.  The reasons why have been published to the Web for years, you can read the letter here.

Screaming.  Yelling.  The hurt was so great.  I'm so sorry Dad. 

He was able to articulate it.  In the summer of 2000, after one of our many fights, he sent me the following letter:

Dear Son:

My apologies for the alcohol induced rage when you visited me on Father's Day,

How inadequate that sounds, I know.

If I even try to connect with the pain I have caused you, my shame and guilt leads me right back to my bottle. I don't know if I will ever be able to quit and be the man you deserve to have as your father.

From the time you were a little boy, the stark realization I could never be for you the father you could look up to with respect has haunted both of us. My ego just couldn't handle having such an exceptional young man as competition in my own house. You possess all the qualities I mistakenly assumed were not "manly",. You are sensitive and very connected to the beautiful in life. I grew up thinking I had to display my "manliness" through sports and had to reject my softer side. It frankly frightened me. A part of me was real sure I was a piece of crap and I have spent much of my life drinking and proving the theory to be true.

The only thing I could seem to hold on to was: I had given you your name. You were always my son Mark. That would never change. But it did. And then, I knew the full extent of my separation from you and all I could express was rage.

I know it's always about me, and not you. I have been very self-absorbed. My cup was never filled, and there was not ever enough to flow into yours.

Your perseverance  to succeed in spite of the lack of love and support shows a strength of spirit I do not possess .... I see the love of the True Father radiates within you and around you and is making you whole.

Sincerely, Your Dad

It just would not go away.  Even in August of this year he was greatly incensed about my Facebook screen name, and once again said we were "Done."

14

And then another unforgivable...Sept 2009 Van was going on about how Obama shouldn't be talking to the nation's kids, "That's exactly how the Hitler Youth started."  Then he said he wanted to talk to his grandson, my son Isaac.  Isaac's mom, my wife Libby heard this, grabbed the phone and said, "What do you want to talk to him about?"

This was unforgivable rudeness.  Libby was never again allowed to talk to him, or be a consideration at all.  Another non-person.

Van once wrote his daughter, my sister, Chris out of his life, for almost 10 years, for two unforgivable sins: teaching her kids at home, and being a vegetarian.  Cutting her out of his life was the only way he knew, he told me this, to try to get her to see the light.

So...mountain out of a molehill, you say?  It was constantly like walking on eggshells.  I tried, really TRIED to befriend him and get to know him in the early months of 2010.  "Why did you become a stock broker?"  "Why did we leave Pittsburgh?"  That kind of thing.  So, at one point I say, (this is all happening on the phone) "Libby & I were talking the other day, and she was wondering, Why did you put me in private school to begin with?"

Seems simple enough, right?  But there is an Unforgivable in the question.  Can't see it?  Neither could I .  It took weeks of emailing to finally get to why he was so very angry immediately afterwards, and for weeks after:

Your second response " I thought .....life's history" was not relevant.  You never asked a question about anything, You said "Libby wanted to know"

 

You can't ask a question that is wrong!  Questions for others do not carry this promise.

See?  I phrased the question "...she was wondering why did you put me in private school."  Libby was a non-person.  I had committed (again) an unforgivable.

It was like that for so many years growing up...Things would appear to be going essentially well, and then my mom would say just the wrong thing, and Van would spend literal weeks giving her & the rest of the family "the silent treatment."

Ye gads.

For years.

15

And then, there was always the booze.

My whole life.  Alcohol everywhere, all the time.  Brother Bob drunk when he was 10.  The summer of 2008 when Van visited, in those 4 nights he drank 2 "handles" aka 1.75 liters apiece, aka basically a gallon of straight gin in 4 days.  Go ahead, you try it.  You have to train for that kind of accomplishment.

He died of heart failure brought on from liver failure from alcoholism.

Even to his dying day he denied that booze had anything to do with his health problems.  Or any other problem, for that matter.

His heart started to fail, so he started to pass out, couldn't get to the bathroom, so he had to be in the hospital, so he couldn't drink, so he started going thru what we used to make jokes about on TV and in the movies: The DTs.  Delirium Tremens.  "https://health.google.com/health/ref/Delirium+tremens"  He had it all, including the seizures and hallucinations, ants crawling all over his skin...that's why he had to be in restraints with the mitts on his hands...

It would be easy to say he was "just a drunk," had the disease of alcoholism, and leave it at that.  Case closed.

But...it's just not that simple...

Look, friends....with the exception of crystal meth there's hardly a street drug I have not encountered at some point in my life.  It's one of the reasons you'll never get a holier-than-thou trip from me.

And, with my family and history, I really know booze.

The happy drunk vs. the angry drunk is real.  I've known both sides of the equation.  The booze never creates things, it only amplifies what is already there.  Right here, right now, there are things inside me that I could / would / am really mad about.  But with this current frame of sober mind I am able to control it, and express the anger and frustration along with the hopes and love.

Alcohol really amplifies the anger centers of the brain.  It doesn't "make" you mad, but it encourages the free expression of the anger that is almost always, to one degree or another, there.

So, yes, alcohol was a constant issue in Van's life.  In the 52 years I knew him, there were maybe 200 days total when he was not drunk.  But it wasn't "just alcoholism."  That expressed the anger.  Anger that was fueled, again by his own admission, of listening to & watching, in the last years of his life, Fox News 14 hours a day.  Yup.  He could have been exaggerating, but that's what he said.

16

My mom died in 2003.  Her literal dying wish was that Van not know she was dying of cancer until after she was dead.  "I don't want him to be able to gloat."  They were married 33 years, and the 1987 divorce was not exactly pleasant.  He basically dumped her for a chickie half her age...I'll leave it at that.

My brother & I called Van the afternoon after Mom's funeral.  All he wanted to know, his one and ONLY concern, was why he had not been informed of her illness and hadn't been invited to the funeral.  He never once, not even a hint, expressed any empathy or sorrow that his only children had lost their only mother.

Wow.

17

Memory scene: Dad & I are in the good time, yes, the good time, when computers & finance brought us together.  My hair was short, he was proud of me for my computer invention, we could spend time together, and it was, without question, the best time for us.  We were having one of our dinners, and I remember it so clearly.  Many hours of expressed anger and frustration.

Me: "Dad, you have just got to let all this anger and resentment go."

Dad, very calm, very deliberately: "If I let the anger and resentment go I'll have nothing left.  Anger and resentment are all I have."

Wow. 

Just like alcohol tends to focus the mind on anger, we can choose what in life we focus on.  The good, the bad, the ugly.  The accomplishments, good days, or the frustrations.  The failure.  The disappointments.

What makes one choose one attitude over another?  Hope & Love vs. Anger & Resentment. 

I just don't know.

18

My mom used to say, "The older people get, the more they become what they really are."  She died sweet, charming, with friends and family.  There were over 100 at her funeral.  I played the piano at her second wedding, and I preached at her funeral.

But there will be no preaching at Dad's funeral.  Nor at a memorial.

There just won't be one.

Norma & I had a very frank discussion about it.  The 3 kids have financial / life considerations, and yes, of course, Norma knows and appreciates that we really would fly to Bend Oregon to spend time with her.  But she does not need that, we 3 kids don't really need it, we would be doing it out of a sense of obligation to Norma, and there is literally no one else.

I remember preaching at mom's funeral, and how many people told me it was "the best memorial they ever heard."  Touching, lovely, glad I could say something that inspired.  And I know for a fact that things I said at that service helped her second husband Stan to do what he really wanted to do with his last months.

And I've preached many times, and really do mean it, and really try to live it (on my good days), what would you do if you knew your time was over?

19

Thanks to Norma and "the goddam socialist medical system" (another exact quote) my Dad died just about as well as could be expected, all things considered.  The drinking had taken its toll.  The bitterness and resentment had done its number on his soul, for reasons I guess no one this side of the grave will ever know.  He was in a safe hospital, and not some cold street corner.  He had Norma's love and concern, and I have tried and will try again to express to her my honor and respect, and gratitude for all she did for him.

But God was gracious to take him when and how He did.  The likelihood of Van getting sober and finding peace was very small.  At 79, it hadn't worked over the last 5 years, and it was unlikely it would work in 5 more.  So let's just grant that.

If he'd been released to go home with Norma, things would have been bad...He really just could not take care of himself at all.  To have her deal with the biological unpleasantries of him dying right then & there in the house, with her, would have been cruel punishment for all involved. 

Which only leaves one thing, the most incomprehensible of all.  He couldn't stay in the ICU for the rest of his days (well, I guess he really did, come to think of it) so at some point he would had to have been moved to an "old folks home."  This would have been the final outrage, and if he had ever come around enough to understand what was happening, the shock and disgrace would have killed him anyway.

So, examining the mathematical possibilities (something I do when things are emotionally tough) all I can say is that, all and all, things were as good as they could have been.

20

So, there will be no memorial, no gathering.  I guess that's why I've spent today, Monday November 8, 2010, writing this little memoir.  I guess this is my funerary farewell.

I tried, I really tried, to communicate with Dad, and give him some comfort.  In August, after the last "we are done" blowup over my name, I sent him the following email.  It said, and still says, everything really on my heart.

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