Last one

A number of subjects, I find, I have become obsessed with on this blog. Perhaps obsessed is the wrong way to put it. Anyway - one of them is Miller, Henry Miller, and the other one I think is my Dad, and his death. In both cases, I decided at one point to never mention them again, at least just long enough to permit me to think about other things, to write about other things. But this self restriction right now, at 1:43 a.m. - the night before a plane will take me to other worlds - seems construct; seems wrong.

First off, maybe, because I have just received about three Miller books from a dear friend - her name is Anais Nin II C. Secondly, I really think most of you should read the speech I prepared for my father's wake.

These two thoughts seem like parallel lines thrown into the future, never meeting at any point (help me, what's that term), but they aren't. They are elbows. They are ensembles.

Here is the thing I wrote for dad, I wrote it on Blogger because I can't write on Word anymore.

Dad spent the last years of his life painting and telling stories. And although he painted much worse than Van Gogh, I always find it interesting to note how much these two men, Van Gogh and my dad, share in common. Both were middle-aged, sick men, long past the crest of life, when they started to paint. And they each lived in hospitals when they first took up the brush. I picture dad's eternally paint-covered clothes, caloused hands, and crazy manic thirst for expression, all guided by an illness of the mind and soul, and then I think of Van Gogh.

But if I was asked to really pick a comparison, more than anyone else, I would say Dad was a sort of Don Quijote. It was stories and dreams that became him these last years. He bent after windmills of riches and wealth, churned by the great winds of certain fame. Every single day this was him, the wise fool, the bumbling, innocent knight-errant. If it wasn't a coin collection or a rare antique postcard signed by George Washington, it was his close partnership with Bill Gates or his new book, an apolitical manifesto.

Of course it was clear to everyone that these must have been illusions, that dad lived in his dreams. Who knows just how far Andy deceived himself, but I think for the most part, he believed his own riddles because he had to, because he understood the power of stories and the pain of life. Andy was brave and smart and talented enough to carve out a hundred good stories and live a thousand lives. This was perhaps the most rigourous, enduring way he fought Parkinsons -- with fictions, with stories.

Now that he is gone, it is beautiful to see how precious Dad's stories have become, now that they are soberly, truly, finite and endowed with a kind of magic and symbolism.

Yesterday in the car on the way to Dad's home, my brother Andy was worried the nurses would have thrown out the scraps of paper which my dad always had scattered everywhere, on which he scribbled poems, prose and his ambivalent insights. But when we arrived, the place was pretty much spotless and these scraps were no where to be found – Andy was on his hands and knees, just looking for any random scrap of paper which had suddenly become priceless to him.

Dad’s bedroom in the nursing home is splattered from wall to wall with acrylic paint, crowded by canvases framed in impressive dark black and blue wood and gold and glass, and all over the place are paint-covered books, chairs, desk, and old poems he printed and painted over on heavy carton and photo paper.

We searched, somewhat desperately, for good poems, for his wonderful play, for presentable paintings, anything that we could use at this funeral to tell his story. You might have noticed on display, this one magical, beautiful painting, the one which is about 5 feet tall, a brightly coloured sort of abstract stone cavern.

Everyone in my family knows that Dad didn't paint this one - it was a family gift, from Joan O’doherty... But one day a few months ago, while a few of us were visiting dad, I was looking at this work which he had hanging on his wall, and I realized there was a new addition in the bottom left corner of the piece in red, messy paint. It was his signature.

"That's an A.J.D original," he told me. "Yep. One of my best." After some debate he admitted that perhaps Joan helped him chose the colours, or hold the brush, but nothing more. It was his own work, and he had the signature there to prove it.
(Hi Joan ... thank you for being with us today... )

After Andy died, I went out and bought a new digital voice recorder. I feel it is important to collect every single story about dad. I know it's impossible, but I regret never sitting down and really asking him about his own life. So I ask you all now, his friends and relatives, to come talk to me after if you want to share a story with me.

In his last days alive, Andy had us believing one last amazing, miraculous story. He was a very convincing man, and although his blood tests and diagnostics were severe and negative, the whole family felt he was going to fight and win this battle, like he had done some many times before. He even had some of the doctors convinced. When he was first admitted, Dr. Kortan told us with his sad eyes and a hand shake that our dad had days, maybe hours to live. There was no way to help.

The next day, we came back and Kortan had spent some time reading Andy's rather immense medical file. You could see it in Kortan’s eyes, a certain kind of intrigue I imagine doctor's must experience whenever they get a hold of a unique patient: Dad's medical history itself must read like a Shakespearian harmony of ups and downs. A damn good story and the doctors knew it.

And added to that, Dad seemed to be getting better. His eyes were open. He was talking again. He would scramble in his bed, ripping off his oxygen mask, shoving away spoons of water, declaring: "I drink like a normal person! I breath like a normal person!"

And suddenly we felt he was back. Dad was still sick, but perhaps not dying, not just yet. I haven't quite figured out why dad's stories and creativity, and the stories others have of him, seem so important now. Maybe it is just how every son feels after his dad dies.

But I have a feeling that we missed the point while he was still living. Somehow, all his stories, all his illusions, now seem truer than they did before. They seem true not because of fact or anything bookish, but because they have actually now become the story we tell when we talk about Andy. When we talk about the man he was.

I loved my father very much. He taught me about honesty, and responsibilty, and he inspired me to go to university, become a journalist and he gave me my first guitar. But his best gift to me, without any doubt, are his stories.
I love you Dad. Thank you.