Thanks to you all

[marcus]

It's been a strange last four months for me. Undoubtedly, I will
never forget 2009 for many years to come. In early May, I came down
with pneumonia which sidelined me for a few weeks, and caused me to
cancel a trip to visit my parents in Maine. In late May, our 13 year
old dog, Angel, had to be put-to-sleep. Then in mid-June, my father,
bed-ridden for over a year in a nursing home (due to a massive stroke)
began to get worse. In late June, I went to Portland, and on July
4th, my father died.


I've been quite remiss in thanking you for the many cards, flowers,
plants, gifts, emails, and phone calls in the immediate aftermath of
Dad's death. I want you to know that I appreciated your kind words,
thoughts, and deeds very much. And also thank you for sending cards
to my mother.


Obviously, I had not lost a parent up until now, and many of you had
gone through the death of one, or both, parent(s). Your advice to me
was warm and sincere, but I must admit that it was such a confusing
time during those first couple of weeks, that I didn't truly
understand what some of you told me...that the impact of a parent's
death stays with you, and sometimes you don't realize it until you
least expect it.


For the past couple of weeks, I've been staining my back deck. It
hasn't been done in a few years, and was in need of waterproofing.
I've been doing it a little bit at a time, usually when I get home
from work...assuming that some other chore, or taking care of my baby
grandson, doesn't take priority. I've got one of those decks with
spindles holding up, and decorating, the railings. 95 spindles to be
exact. The porch was built in 2003, and although I've stained the
floorboards of the deck a couple of times, I had never done the
spindles...after all, it's a lot of close, busy, time-consuming work.
Earlier this year, before the illness and the deaths, I decided to do
the entire deck, spindles and all.


You're probably wondering what all of this has to do with my father.
Well, among the many occupational handles he wore during his life, my
father was a painter. During the middle 1960s, he was part of the
paint crew for the late Great Danbury State Fair. The Fair ran for
ten days in October, and the crew took about 4-5 months to get ready
for it, painting all the buildings, and exhibits. Then from the late
60s until the early 70s, Dad was an independent painting and
wallpapering contractor. He and his partner, Ken Mitchell, had a
small business called "A-1 Painting and Decorating". They worked
mostly in the Danbury, Bethel, and Newtown area of Connecticut, where
I grew up.


Dad was a very good interior and exterior house painter. He knew his
stuff...what supplies to order, what kind of paint to use, what
brushes were necessary and how much paint each job would need (one
year he won the bid to paint the Bethel Town Hall). One summer in the
late 60s, he noticed that his lazy, would-be-hippie son did not have a
job, and decided that I should work with him.


My wife's late grandfather, upon hearing that I once painted houses
with my father, remembered working on projects with his father, and
said to me, "It's hell working for your old man." And yes, at times
it was...mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. My father was
not a very patient man, and he reserved most of his impatience for me,
in many areas of my life. However, he was different when we worked
together on a job. It became a father/son bonding experience. He
taught me the intricacies of painting...the scraping off of the old
paint (I hated that), painting the primer, then painting the final
coat. He also gave me the jobs that he didn't want to do...the hard
to reach places, the side of the house that had more paint to be
scraped off than any of the other sides, collecting shingles and
painting them separately...well, I didn't think it was fair at the
time, but heck, I was the rookie, so it was inevitable that I did the
"dog-work". He didn't get too angry with me. However, I remember him
yelling at me for messing up a gable end of a house as I watched a
girl wearing a bikini sunbathe in the yard next door.


I haven't painted that much in my adult life...an occasional room,
here and there...but every time I have, how to do it has always come
naturally to me. Suddenly, as I was staining the deck last week,
going through the logical sequence in my mind...always paint from top
to bottom, never break that pattern, that way it will dry quicker and
you can catch any drips that fall on the part to be painted next...it
just hit me...that was Dad inside my head. He taught me that, decades
ago, and I never forgot it. Here it was, six weeks or so after he
died, and I'm sobbing harder than I did at any other time since.


Yes, you told me that it would hit me in waves, or a little bit at a
time, and often in ways that didn't seem to fit what one would
consider a "normal" pattern of grieving. You were so right.


Today, I finished those 95 spindles and posts, and hopefully in the
next day or two, now that I've stained everything on top, I'll give a
coat or two to the floorboards, which need it badly. I don't know if
it was my mind's eye, or a twinkle of sunlight catching me just right,
but I thought I saw my old man, circa 1969, in his paint overalls,
checking out the deck, just as he disappeared around the corner of my
house.

Thanks again to all of you for caring.