Given this afternoon at his funeral. The interment is tomorrow morning.
"I feel like my dad was generally amused by me in life, and
so I wouldn’t be doing my part if I didn’t also try to amuse him today. We used to stand together at the back
of the few funerals I’ve ever attended, and neither of us could understand the
appeal of anything stuffy— once we even had to walk off together because either
he or I had started to smile at the sheer lameness of another relative’s service. I can’t remember who was at fault, and it
might have been both. But I
strongly believe that my dad wouldn’t want anything too flowery or too
humorless, so I wanted to speak to who he was as an actual person instead of an
idea. And because my dad was
self-admittedly bored by my dense writing style, I thought I’d deliver the
following as a business-like list, since I think corporate writing was his
favorite of all.
So here are the things that I will miss most about my dad
even though they had me continually exasperated:
1. His
obsessive-compulsive need to call me up to twenty times a day without leaving messages
because he said he didn’t like to talk to machines. I’d be working in the living room and hear the dial-tone
buzzing on the tape every fifteen minutes, and then it was basically like he had left a message because no one else has
a habit of doing this.
2. My
dad’s obsession with cars and his eagerness for me to do business with some
Toyota dealer he really liked who lives nowhere near me. When I sought my dad’s advice earlier
this year on finding a truck that I only wanted in an electric blue, he began
sending me link after link….to maroon cars. I told him that I was definitely not interested in anything
in maroon. He argued that there
was a great deal on a maroon truck in Tustin. I said blue.
He emailed me with a picture of yet another maroon car, another good
deal. I told him that I thought
all the maroon cars were such good deals because no one wanted them. When I finally found my truck and
brought it to show my dad, he smiled and told me it was a very nice blue.
3. How
he used to send me the most obvious possible websites every time I became
involved with something. Like when
I got hired to teach at Loyola Marymount University, I received an email that
read: www.lmu.edu. With Chapman
University, he immediately messaged me: www.chapman.edu. Every time we made
plans to go eat at a restaurant, he’d preemptively email me the menu.
4. His
love of bathroom humor. This also
combined with his love of Internet shopping, which I’ll mention next, but if
he’d come across a toilet tank that doubled as an aquarium, then you could be
guaranteed he’d be considering having it delivered to my home. If my brother was seriously excited
about a sports team, then my dad was probably browsing their memorabilia toilet
covers. If you went out to dinner
with him and there was any sort of food that’s tough on the system, then you’d
be guaranteed to hear detailed, graphic stories about some time that food went
wrong for someone, told with great joy.
And if you ever happened to mention constipation in his presence, then
he would likely regal you with stories about how as a child I used to willfully
constipate myself and all the creative ways that he used to combat my quest.
5. The
aforementioned Internet shopping.
But it just wasn’t Internet shopping because it was swap meet shopping
and catalog shopping and department store shopping too. My dad really, really loved to buy
gifts, which was ironic because he didn’t enjoy receiving them, and he
definitely had a unique eye for selection. Purple heels with pearls would show up on my doorstep. A bike with a basket for my dog to ride
in, despite her being so high strung that she will never, ever be able to
handle sitting in a moving basket.
I believe my brother received a stool that appeared to be standing on a
football player’s legs. There was
the watch with the ticking movie camera and scene slate minute
hand. The witch statue with the
porcelain head and straw body. The stuffed bumble
bee that shook when you pulled a ring out of its something I don’t think I’m
supposed to say in a church. The
French Bulldog sweatshirt that reads, “This is my happy face,” which I actually
like. Just many, many, many
strange and perplexing gifts over the years that I can’t help but treasure
because they have my dad all over them.
Hanukah always turned from eight nights into twenty, ten of which would
be immensely confusing, like the glass gecko I have sitting in my bookcase
because I’m not sure where that kind of thing goes. But with my birthday coming up next week and Hanukah just
months away, I know soon I’m going to miss his imprint on all those very Larry
gifts. I’m going to miss opening
something, going, “Hmmmm,” and my dad, his face aglow, excitedly explaining why
it made him think of me when he saw it.
I’m going to miss the phone calls and the machine
hang-ups. Monday night someone
called and didn’t want to leave a message and I turned to my boyfriend and said
that my dad was still up to it.
I’ll miss him during my next car purchase, when he would have tried to coax me into
a great deal on a used taupe Cadillac at Toyota of Anaheim. I’ll miss him emailing me the link to
my book when it pops up on Amazon, a book which has been dedicated to him. I’ll miss him telling everyone about the
gigantic metal yardstick he used to keep in our garage when I was going through
a certain clenched phase. I’ll
miss all the things that he’d buy for me that I didn’t know I needed, and I’ll hold onto
everything he ever gave me. I’ll
always take pride in the exasperating qualities he handed down to me, like how
we both grow extremely tired after a minimal amount of company and hate making
small talk, which is why I’ll honor him by bailing right after this ceremony,
skipping the reception, and going home to nap. First I’ll make some Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, which we
always used to share a bowl of together because everyone else around us hated
it, and then I’ll nap.
I thank my dad for being fantastic to me, for just being a
fantastic guy in general. I
send him my love."
