Excerpt from the Book

I was at my father’s funeral when it finally hit me. Was this what I wanted? Was this how I wanted to be remembered? What kind of legacy was it when nary a soul could step forward with a single fond remembrance of a man who had lived almost seventy-six years? It made me stop and think. No one knows what happens after we die, but if we’re able to look down (or up) at our own funerals, this had to be an embarrassment for the Old Man.

Somehow, he deserved better. He wasn’t a bad man, certainly not evil. I just don’t think he was equipped for life in many ways, not really up for the job of parenting. That probably wasn’t his fault. Maybe it was nobody’s fault. But there were only two of us who knew him as Dad.

My name is Brad Underwood, the only son. This is the story of how my father helped me far more in death than he did in life. Even then, he couldn’t quite finish what he started, and just as in life, his motives were always questionable at best.

First, there was the question of whether to even have a funeral. There had been mixed messages from my father over the years, but it seemed that in his last several years he hadn’t really wanted any funeral at all. He was miserable, gradually declining with a variety of serious medical conditions, including emphysema, kidney failure and diabetes. To be around him was toxic. Who wanted to be greeted with “I’m dying” before “Hello”?

The truth was that he was never what one might call a jovial sort of guy. He drank and smoked too much, committed adultery, and had managed to pass the time married, in theory, to the same woman for fifty-two years. He and my mother barely spoke for the last five years or more. They slept at opposite ends of the house and were on completely different sleep schedules. It seemed a matter of convenience that they were rarely awake or in the same part of the ten-room house at the same time.

Still, my mother was devastated when he died. No longer was he there occupying the couch for fourteen hours a day. The TV wasn’t on constantly. She was alone in the big house, and with a failing memory and ever-growing confusion, it was easy to understand how she missed him so much.

My father was a negative man. I don’t know if he was that way from birth or if life had worn him down, but I suspect it was the former. He didn’t leave much of a mark on earth, I fear, apparently even less of one than I anticipated when I decided he should have a funeral after all. I was just trying to do the right thing.

Don’t get me wrong. My father wasn’t particularly mean and certainly not abusive to me and my sister. Only twice do I recall being spanked, and I don’t think it even hurt that much, though I’m sure I cried to get it to stop sooner. He could best be described as a non-entity, sad as that was. I could never quite figure out what his purpose within the family was, and I’m not sure he ever knew either.

But back to the funeral. There were plenty of dour faces among the twenty-five or so mourners present, but I got the feeling that it wasn’t so much because of mourning as it was displeasure at having to be there at all. When the minister asked if anyone wanted to share any happy memories of my father, no one stepped forward, but there was a lot of seat squirming and staring at the floor. No one cried except for my mother, and I only cried ever so briefly, but only because I was watching her cry.

And so the service finally ended, and I was left wondering if the six- thousand dollar funeral expense just might be among the worst six-thousand dollars ever spent. But I received quite an education in that hour and a half it took from the start of the service until his body was lowered into the grave. The Old Man had finally taught me something. I now knew that I did not want to end up like him. Negativity will get you nowhere, and will only serve to send others scattering like bees from a nest struck with a baseball bat. I had to be different. Things began to change drastically for me the day after the funeral. To say my life would never be the same is a laughable understatement.