Play Ball!

1980

The Phillies 2013 season begins tonight in Atlanta against the Braves, and there is something very special to me about the start of a baseball season. I love my Flyers, I enjoy watching the Eagles (although that organization certainly doesn't make it easy at times), but there is just something different about baseball. Football games have an intensity about them due to the limited number of games in a season, and there is a ferocious elegance to hockey, but baseball is just... baseball. And at the end of  opening day, every fan has the chance to have their team at 1-0, and tied for first place. Each season starts with the promise of what might be if everything breaks just right.

As hokey as the movie Field of Dreams was in many places (ok, most places), there was a lot of truth in James Earl Jones' monologue about the meaning of baseball. Baseball's opening day is Spring. Baseball is Summer. Baseball is something to have on in the background that you can half pay attention to, but keeps you company as you do something else. Baseball is second guessing the manager. About lineup choices, about pinch hitters, about bunting and hit and runs, about pitching changes. Baseball is "what if's" and "if only's". Baseball is the promise that finally, this could be the year...

As much as anything else for me though, baseball is remembering my father. The single most indelible image I have of Dad is him out in the yard on a hot summer day, on his hands and knees, working on the flower beds. Weeding. Meticulously raking out the beds. An old radio is propped on a folding chair so that Dad can listen to the Sunday afternoon ball game. Harry Kalas does the play by play and Ritchie "Whitey" Ashburn provides commentary.

As another opening day rolls around, I can't help but to think of Dad, getting this year's tomato seeds going and waiting for Mike Schmidt to strike out with the bases loaded and the game on the line. But time marches on and things change. I believe that somewhere out there Dad is getting the tomato seeds going. And waiting for Ryan Howard to strike out with the bases loaded and the game on the line...

Dad - One Year Gone

One year ago today, at around 7:30am, my dad died. It has been both a long and a short year since then. They say that time heals all wounds, and in a way I am sure that is true, but in other ways it is not. The passage of time has made it such that I do not feel his loss as a painful thing, but I do still feel it as a hollowness, a kind of emptiness that he is no longer in my life. And unfortunately, I will always now associate the Thanksgiving season with Dad's passing.

I am thankful that I had him for 44 years, and sad that I didn't have him longer. I am thankful that my children knew him at least a little, and that they will remember him in some way, but sad that they didn't know him as the vibrant man that I knew. I am thankful that he was a dedicated father, an involved part of my life, and a father in action and not just in words. I didn't always agree with him in many ways, and our relationship was strained at times (as many father son relationships can be), but I always knew that he cared, and that he was there for all of us.

I will also always have a pang of... I don't know... regret, I guess, that after all those hours at his bedside I wasn't there with him at the very end.

Thanks Dad. I miss you.

Dave has posted a nice note here.

Happy Anniversary

September 7, 1963. The day my parents got married. Today would have been their 48th anniversary, but Dad isn't here. Another one of those firsts since his passing last November. 47 years married is a long time. Something to aspire to, and something which is almost hard to imagine. 20 years seems a very long time. 27 more beyond this seems... hard to comprehend. Congratulations Mom and Dad. Happy Anniversary!

Mother's Day 2011

This Mother's Day was Mom's first since Dad's death, and it's a little hard to imagine what she must have been feeling, although I am sure that with every new event or holiday, there is another first that she has to deal with. The weather was beautiful today, though, and I had talked to Dave previously and knew that he was going over to Mom's house to do some work cleaning up the flower beds and planting some flowers. This seemed like a very nice way to honor Mom, so my whole family went to pay our respects and pitch in.

Dave and I were apparently thinking along the same lines, which is no surprise given the years living there as kids. Growing up, the two kinds of flowers that could pretty much always be found at our house were geraniums and marigolds. When we arrived (with a few pots, some geraniums, and some other plants), Dave was already out front planting marigolds.

As Dave has written in a post over on his blog, there is something peaceful about having your hands in the dirt, and that was certainly true today. Being on my hands and knees in the yard of the house I grew up in, with my wife and kids playing and talking to Mom, and my brothers working alongside me did make for a very pleasant afternoon. But there was one bittersweet thought that kept occurring to me; we were doing Dad's work. We shouldn't have been doing what we were doing, because he should have been. It made me glad to be there, and sad to have to be there at the same time, if that makes sense.

So thanks to Dave for the idea to go there and do this today, because I think we not only honored our mother, but honored the memory of our father as well.

Three Months Gone

It occurred to me a little earlier today that it has been three months to the day since my Dad's passing.

I miss him.

I miss him in the obvious sense. The phone doesn't ring anymore with him on the other end of the line, wanting to know how the kids are doing, and how I am doing. Even this little passage of time has faded the frustration of many of our conversations in recent years, where he would ask many of the same questions and I would give him many of the same answers. Conversations that were apparently new to him every time we had them, while not new to me at all. I regret my eye-rolling, literal and figurative. I regret the times when I was in the middle of something else and the phone rang and I could see my parents' number on the caller ID and didn't answer the phone, knowing that we would talk again soon. Which we always did... but still...

But I also miss him in a more subtle way; one that I will probably do a poor job of trying to express. As a child, parents make you feel safe, or at least mine did. I always knew that mom and dad were around to protect me, and I had an unshakeable faith that as long as mom and dad were there, nothing bad would happen to me. I think that in some ways I have carried that belief with me into adulthood. It's not something that I consciously thought about, but I do believe that I still had that notion that mom and dad were there serving as a last line of defense against trouble in my world. And that as long as they were there, nothing bad would happen. And nothing ever really did. But now one of them is gone.

Even though I am surrounded by family and friends, and am fortunate beyond measure in so many ways, I feel a little bit more alone in the world than I used to. And it makes me sad.

Laying Dad to Rest

Friday November 26, 2010

Today we did one of the hardest things I have ever done; we laid my father to rest in Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill.

Fittingly I suppose, it was a cold and dreary day, with a threat of morning rain which thankfully never materialized. Amparo, our girls and I arrived at the chapel on the grounds of the cemetery a little bit after 11:00 am, and joined the rest of the family in remembering Dad and preparing for the day to come. The public viewing was scheduled for noon, followed by a service in the chapel at 1:00 pm, with interment to follow.

The chapel was starkly beautiful in its simple elegance. Dad, as a combat veteran of World War II, was entitled to full military honors, and the first of many times today that I lost my composure was entering the chapel and seeing his flag-draped coffin. As I write this two weeks to the day after the fact, the tears are streaming down my face as I look at the picture and remember the strange mix of anguish and pride I felt on seeing that sight. I am humbled at the thought of a time when a 17 year old boy would lie about his age to enlist in the army and go to fight in a war half a world away because he, and everyone else, had no doubt that it was the necessary and right thing to do.


The viewing seems somewhat surreal to me, and I have few concrete memories of it, other than gratitude to the people who came to pay their respects.

At some point, the viewing turned into a memorial service, but once again I am a bit fuzzy on the details of how and when that happened. As a part of the service, Dave, myself, and our friend John (our other brother) were all going to say a few words. I had agonized over what to say, writing and rewriting, and worried about how I would get through it. Sitting in the front pew, I was pretty sure that I would be able to get through my remarks with some semblance of composure. I was wrong. Dave had shared the draft of his remarks with me, so I knew what he was going to say, which was a very nice overview of Dad's life. As I sat there listening to his words, the weight of the moment collapsed on me. When my time came to take the podium, I had a hard time even beginning. I ended up completely losing my composure on numerous occasions, and only managed to hit a few of the highlights of what I had written, skipping much of it. I wish I could have gotten through it better. Nobody got to hear what I intended to say, although family would get to read it afterwards.

After attempting to speak, I'm not sure I remember much of anything of the rest of the service other than the moving and heartfelt words that John spoke. Thank you, my friend.

As I have mentioned, Dad was a veteran and as such was entitled to military honors. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but in discussing preparations with the funeral director, she had mentioned that she had put in a request to the local veterans organization to see if someone could come out to the grave site on that day. Knowing that the funeral was to be on the Friday after Thanksgiving, she wasn't sure whether anyone would be able to come, but she would hope for the best.

As a military history buff, I think perhaps I may have more of an appreciation for the pomp and ceremony attending military ritual than most people. But I can honestly say that nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when we arrived at my father's graveside. Despite the cold blustery Friday on a holiday weekend, local veteran volunteers had turned out to provide a 7 man honor guard, a bugler to play taps, and 3 other men to perform the flag-folding ceremony and recite the poem "In Flanders Fields". There were a few moments available before it was time to carry Dad's casket to the grave, and I was so moved by the presence of these aging veterans (many seeming to be near Dad's age themselves) that I walked down the line of them, one by one, mumbling my thanks for their presence. I cannot describe the pride I felt when each and every one of them replied with the same simple comment: "It's our honor". I can barely type through the tears...


I remember carrying Dad's casket to his grave. Dave, me, Chris, Ryan, John and Ted. Six men who I think, and hope, would have made him proud to carry him to his final rest. I remember thinking how heavy the casket was for a man who had wasted away to nothing. I remember the veterans performing the flag-folding ceremony and presenting the folded flag to Mom. I remember 7 veterans firing 3 times each for a 21 gun salute. I remember completely losing it at that point. I remember one veteran collecting the spent shell casings from the 21 gun salute and tucking 3 of them into the folded flag. I remember taps. I remember a veteran reciting "In Flanders Fields". I remember feeling everything... and nothing.

"On behalf of a grateful nation..."


"...honoring our deceased comrade Fred B. Lyons..."

There are no words...

Dad, 1926 - 2010

Tuesday November 23, 2010, 7:30am

My father died early this morning at the age of 84. He passed away peacefully in his sleep in hospice care at Delaware County Memorial Hospital after having been seriously ill for the last several months, and having battled a number of health concerns over much of the last decade.

I am actually writing this post a couple of weeks later and backdating it. I haven't been able to put some of this down earlier, and I haven't been sure that I wanted to. But now that some time has passed, I think that this blog is first and foremost about my family and my life, not so much just about books and geocaching and wargaming, and not to recognize such a monumental event in my life would be too glaring an omission. And where the thought of sharing some of this earlier caused me great pain, I think I have gotten to the point where sharing it may bring me comfort. I know that my brother Dave on his blog has been telling some stories of his memories of Dad, and they have been a joy for me to read. Perhaps my doing the same here will help ease my sadness.

So today I lost my father.

Dave called me at about 7:20am to say that he had just gotten to the hospital, things didn't look good, and that I should come as soon as I could. I was in the car and on my way within 10 minutes, but had to fight my way through rush hour traffic. It was almost 8:30am when I arrived. When I got up to the room, Dave, Mom and Chris were already there, and Dad was already gone.

I feel guilty that after all the dozens of hours spent at his bedside over the last couple of weeks that I wasn't there at the end, but I am not sure that Dad was really there either. He had been in a deep sleep and non-responsive for the last day or more and I am not convinced that his body wasn't just carrying on without him for a little while.

I feel guilty that one of my first emotions was gladness and relief for him that his ordeal was over. There is a part of me that didn't want to let go and would have been willing to do whatever necessary to keep him here with us, but that part of me is only a small piece. That is not what he wanted, and not what any of us would have wanted for him. His life had become very difficult, his world had become very small, and if there is such a thing as it being someone's time, then I can believe that this was his.

I am heartbroken for what Mom must be going through. I have been married for 20 years, and that seems like a very long time, so I cannot imagine losing a spouse of 47 years. I hope I can be the son she needs me to be in the coming months and years, and do whatever I can to help her and Chris.

But today feels like a selfish day, I am sorry to admit. More than anything, I feel overwhelming grief and sadness for myself. They say that no amount of time to prepare for something like this will ever make you ready for it when it does happen. I believe that. I am not prepared. And I am not ready.