Remembering my father, and the measure of success

My father always seemed surprised when my two brothers and I were together. He was that way in his final days, too. He told us, “the essence of a man is that he is loved by his family.” And I think he was taken aback by his own success. My father expressed a lot of guilt his final night to my younger brother, Evan. He even called himself a bum. He was upset Evan didn’t get to see the version we did. That they couldn’t play hoops. My brother said he was wrong, that he “had a great dad for 15 years. Not everyone can say that.”

All my father could reply was, “really?”

I think toward the end, disbelief is the best way I can describe it. Not that my father couldn’t comprehend he was dying, but that he had created this world out of where he came from. Three sons. Five grandchildren. A lot of dogs. Not bad for a kid from the Bronx who was high every day, at one point, for 27 years, as he always said.

Yet while he might have been surprised, I wasn’t. My father never measured himself like other people.

We tie personal worth to money, job titles, degrees on the wall. If you go by these marks, you could argue my father never reached his apex. He didn’t graduate college. He failed the same test, at the same job, for some 30 years. We never had a ton of money. We would share two slices of pizza and a drink between three people. Or each get a McDonald’s burger and he’d eat the fries.

However, I doubt anybody would call my father unsuccessful. I think he understood what mattered in ways people only tell themselves they will. He had that clarity in his final days, even if he struggled to hold it. My father could have brought up a lot of regret. The standard second-guess playbook of eternity. But the only thing that surfaced was playing basketball with his youngest son.

This made me think of something from a couple of weeks earlier. He called me and told me he was sorry. Sorry he was leaving me, because he knew I needed him. I didn’t say much. My toddler was screaming. The moment caught me a bit. And besides, he hung up before I could reply anyway, which was one of his signatures.

But what I wish I had said was, “no dad, you’re wrong. I don’t. Not today.” It would have been a lie, but I wish I had said it anyway.

Maybe that would have caught him off guard, too. But the truth is this: It was his fault.

My brother was a jerk growing up. He needed constant attention and I needed hardly any. I’ve met a lot of people who share a similar story. Yet generally we fork in a key place. I’m not seeking approval as an adult. I don’t have self-confidence issues or wonder who I am. I’m self-deprecating, sure, but even that’s just a reflection of him.

And here’s the reason—I’ve been alive 37 years. And my father was never been disappointed in me. No matter how insignificant whatever I was doing was—writing for a small, crappy newspaper or getting a poem published in elementary school—I never had to worry about impressing him. I’ve been around long enough to know how crazy that is. I could live my life, at every stage and turn, understanding what I did and who I was mattered to him.

When I was 16, my girlfriend died of leukemia. She was diagnosed one day and gone a month later. When I told my father, he cursed and came over.

He joined me at the wake, the funeral. Stood outside the door the morning I walked into her room, wearing one of his suit jackets, and tried to say goodbye.

My father never told me to get over it or pick myself up and move on. He’d read what I’d write, and once even brought some to a professor to see if the guy thought it was as good as he did.

Despite everything, my father was never exhausted by me. I was exhausted by me. But I don’t remember him ever saying hold on, or put your issue aside while I work on mine.

A few weeks later, we drove to Myrtle Beach. We did so every year to play golf, stay at a cheap hotel, and eat at the same roadhouse restaurant every night. I wouldn’t say we had life-changing talks in golf carts or anything like that. He just tuned in.

My father saved my trajectory in life. I know that now. And yet he did so without his own baggage blocking the view. He did not achieve the dreams he set out to do when he was younger. He was not wealthy or famous, the shortstop of the New York Yankees. And yet my father gave back more than what life gave him. And that, to me, isn’t the essence of a man; it’s the mark of a great one.

I tell people about my “Uncle Danny” sometimes, who passed away a few years ago, and they say, “that’s kind of weird. You had an uncle with the same name?” And internally, I think, the truth is much stranger. My father adopted a crotchety, old man who would smoke a pack of cigarettes every morning and put his head in his hands. Uncle Danny took him in during his early days of sobriety, and for that, my father paid him back for decades. He lived in our upstate, New York house. He started two antique businesses—both failed. He would buy countless knick knacks and find other ways to spend my father’s money. Not to mention, run off most of the women. Along the way, Uncle Danny also helped raise my brother and I.

Why did my dad do this? Did he feel like he owed this man a debt? No, although he often painted it that way. Uncle Danny and my father both knew that was a cop out. So do I. My father unfolded his wallet and sanity, at times, because he valued the right things in this world. I’m trying, every day, to become more like him. Maybe a more filtered version, but striving nonetheless. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there.

But I can say, regardless of where I’ve been or where I end up, that he won’t be disappointed. And for that, I’ll always be grateful.