Birmingham Blues

Is it possible that it’s been a year? We’ve been through the usual birthdays, holidays, wedding anniversary without my father. And the one thing I don’t think he could have imagined — the death of his son. We’re still standing; wobbly sometimes, but carrying on.

Daddy was 79 when he died. He had a successful life. For most people, it would have been a long one, but we had different expectations for him. After all, his mother was well into her 104th year when she died. He and Mama had always expected and planned that she would go first. I thought he’d be here to see all of his grandchildren into adulthood.

He grew up in a tiny south Alabama town, farming and playing basketball, but he ended up traveling the world during his time in Naval ROTC and the Air Force. He graduated from Auburn University and became a registered pharmacist. The medical profession ran in the family: his older brother was a physician, and his younger brother is now retired after starting his own medical equipment business. Daddy had the good fortune to spend most of his career in pharmaceutical sales for Merck, back when it was run by physicians, doing well by doing good. It’s ironic that just around the time I completed my MBA and went to work in the corporate world, Daddy, a lifelong pro-business Republican, began to realize that the marketing whiz kids and financial gurus were changing his company into something almost unrecognizable.

He and Mama were always very careful with money. She still lives in the house they bought shortly before my brother was born. They took out a short-term mortgage — none of that 30-year stuff for them — and paid it off early. He never liked owing money, and he died with no debt, even after paying to send two children to college and one to grad school and helping us out whenever we needed it. Daddy traveled every week when we were young, and Mama, like many women of her generation, stayed home to raise the children and run the household. They were a team, and they achieved their goals: to raise healthy, reasonably happy, children; to get them settled into adult life; to have fun with the grandchildren; and to make sure all of us had basic financial security.

I’m sure he faced disappointments during his time here. For one thing, he never quite figured out how he managed to raise two Democrats. But he never let his own struggles get in the way of taking care of us.

He lived a good life. I wish it had been longer. I miss him.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Rest In Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.