When my father passed away (I think it was in 2007), there were only 13 people in attendance at his funeral. His four children and nine invited friends, a paltry amount of people considering all those he met and befriended in one way or another over seven decades. Memories of him being just Dad, or “Pop”, as we often called him, linger in my mind and can’t recall him being a poor parent or experiencing many hard times because of him. We had what I would call a “busy” relationship, in that as almost everyone was busy being a kid and got busy growing up while our parents both worked. There were good times and not so good times, but I can’t recall everything I’d like to at the moment, which is quite unfortunate, as I recall certain things, but pure memory tends to be quite an unreliable narrator if solely relied upon.

I recall hearing of his death from a relative who was “caring” for him and how disgustingly clinical the explanation was. I’ll admit my brain has since (more or less) blanked out almost every memory I had other that the time he took me to work (he was once a motorman for the MTA) and showed me how a subway train worked. Then, he let me take the train he was driving into the final stop on its route for about 25 feet or so (detailed here). Anyway, flash forward to now, that annoying relative has made a return at the very worst of times for everyone and I’m just not a happy camper as of this writing (to say the least). NO, I’m not planning anything drastic or dramatic at all. My life needs a lot less stress these days, period.

I do kind of need to borrow one of these, however:

-GW