My Dad went gently into the good night at 10:30 pm on Friday September 27th 2024.

His last words of meaning to me were a couple days ago when he told me “I want you to live your life.”

His last word occurred earlier today, I couldn’t tell if he was still conscious and I looked at him eye to eye and said “Hey” and he responded with “Hi”

So he left this world the way he came into it.

With a hello.

Day 1

My father passed away last night, and my life will never be the same. To my pleasant surprise, the sun rose this morning, just as it has every day of my life. However, unlike every other day I’ve been alive, I did not have the opportunity to share it with my father. The sorrow, hurt, frustration, and sadness will be with me every day until my end comes.

In what sounds like a Hollywood script, I began brainstorming ideas or lessons my father had taught me throughout my life, just writing down some thoughts that were going through my head as I sat there, listening to my father take his last breaths.

I only got a couple of thoughts down when the breathing began to go quiet, and then, only about a minute later, my father, Richard Carpowich, gasped for air that did not come and passed away. He was in hospice at home, and I was his caregiver. He had been suffering from a relatively short but intense battle with cancer and other ailments, which I will disclose throughout this book.

As a writer and artist, I understand that creative geniuses (in mythology, a genius is a spirit of sorts that helps guide us along our creative path) sometimes don’t allow us to do what we want to do with our art at the time we want to do it. This is incredibly frustrating for artists, but it’s also probably a neurological thing as well, similar to what happens to people who are recovering from a stroke. They may know what they want to say and how to say it, but their brain makes what they want to say come out differently.

The point here is that for many years I have tried and tried to come up with the words for a book on manhood and what it means to be a man in our modern age. I don’t know if it’s the grief, sorrow, stress, or relief that is making me want to smash the keys on my keyboard right now, or if it’s just the right time for these words to flow. Either way, I will continue to write as long as I can, and hopefully, by the end of this book, the strangers that make up my readers will have enjoyed some stories, learned something new, or gained a new insight that might help them along their own individual path of life.

Just as the sun rises and shines light on us every day, it also sets and lets darkness come over us. We live, we die, we feel the push of light and good, and the pull toward darkness and bitterness.

Today was Day 1 for me, and in all honesty, it was not that bad of a day. I spent time with family, ate some good Mexican food at a family restaurant, remembered my dad, cried a good amount, but I also remembered to pick myself up and get to the store to stock my fridge for tomorrow. And I am also sitting down and writing some words to make me feel better.

My dad’s last words to me were that he wanted me to “live my life.”

The sun will rise again in the morning and give me a little more hope and a little more gratitude for the day that is to come. Each day will get a little better. My hope is that when all the days that make up one’s life are added up, we look back, as my dad did, and see them as a life well lived, and a spirit and way of life that continues on after we are gone in the ones we love and care most about.

I will conclude this introduction with a prayer I found in a little book of Catholic Prayers for the mournful. This prayer may also help even in good times, because the message of hope is like that of Rome—eternal.

Father,

God of all consolation,

In your unending love and mercy for us,

You turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life.

Show compassion to your people in sorrow,

Be our refuge and our strength to lift us from the darkness of grief to the peace and light of your presence.

Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,

by dying for us conquered death, and by rising again, restored life.

May we go forward to eagerly meet Him,

And after our life on earth, be reunited with our brothers and sisters, where every tear will be wiped away.

We ask this through Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

Day 2

I woke up today with the thought of controlling what is in my control and accepting what is out of my control. More importantly, I asked myself what I could do to make today a little better. Over the last few months, I’ve learned a lot about what is and isn’t within our control. Obviously, a cancer diagnosis is beyond our control. We can do everything we can to live a happy and healthy life. My father prioritized his health for many years—he made sure to get his check-ups, cancer screenings, remained sober for the last seven years of his life, and exercised daily. But cancer can go from microscopic to a big problem in a relatively short amount of time. Just four months ago, my father was walking over a mile a day, had his blood sugar under control, and had lowered his cholesterol.

Even after his first heart attack and stroke, he was walking, talking, and relatively healthy, except for having what doctors described as severe stage 4 cancer throughout his body. He was given about three months to live. It didn’t make sense at the time, but medically and scientifically, this was a case in which the doctors were right.

Health situations like these are beyond our control—beyond our ability to will ourselves into a healthier, happier life. Sometimes, what we want is just not possible.

However, just like Zeus left hope in Pandora’s box, and hope was the only thing that remained, there are always some things within our control. We can always try to bring a little light to an ocean of darkness. Remember that the sun will rise and fall, and darkness is only temporary. We live in the light of day more than in the darkness of night, and when we live in a way that is better for our health, we tend to shine a little brighter for others and feel a little happier about ourselves.

I honestly cannot imagine going through what I’m experiencing right now without being sober. Sobriety is perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves. When my father stopped drinking several years ago, he realized how precious life was and that he should want to live as long as possible. When people stop drinking, their entire perspective tends to change, and their lives begin to take on new meaning. A healthy and happy life is our God-given right to pursue, and one of the most effective ways to obtain a calmer mind and healthier body is through sobriety.

To ward off depression, I decided to get out of bed this morning. Even though all I wanted was to stay in bed and cry, I got up. I decided that there was one thing I could do today to improve my tomorrows. Even though it’s a small thing that doesn’t cost much money, the metaphorical value of this action gave me a little feeling of being in control of my life.

This is also a “Man of the House” problem-solving task. I recently noticed that the walkway on the side of my house can be quite dark at night when I’m taking out the trash or the once-a-week trip to the curb with the garbage cans. It’s a mild annoyance, but I saw that my local hardware store sells little solar-powered fence lights that you can easily screw onto your fence. So, I figured I’d spend my morning bringing a little light to the darkness. A few dollars and 10 minutes with my drill got my mind off my sadness, at least temporarily, and it solved a minor problem.

But the psychology is what I was after—a simple fix, a small action I took to improve my quality of life by bringing a little light to the dark.

I ended the day by making some potato leek soup, which is a comfort food and something that will always remind me of my dad. Potato leek soup was his last real meal, so I thought it fitting to start this new chapter of my life—without my father—with how his story ended.

Below is the recipe for potato leek soup. The soup originated in the south of France and is an extremely popular dish among the mothers and wives of France. Every family has its own secret ratio of potatoes to leeks. I keep it simple and tend to use fewer potatoes than other recipes—just the way I like it.

Day 3 and 4

The alarm went off at 7:30 a.m., but I had already been awake for over an hour, thinking about what I needed to do this morning. The name of the game today is business—finalizing the affairs and arrangements to lay my father to rest.

After a cup of coffee and watching the news in my dad’s spot on the couch, I got dressed and headed out the door. The cemetery is just down the street in my small town, near the Sutter Buttes, the smallest mountain range in the world. The lady at the cemetery was very nice, assisted me in getting a quote, and showed me the grounds. They have a lovely cremation wall near a beautiful oak tree—a quiet, peaceful spot for my dad to spend eternity.

The next order of business was heading to the funeral home to speak with the director about the next steps. The most important part of the meeting was ensuring the information on the death certificate was correct—his name, date of birth, place of birth, and the names of his father and mother.

His father was Edward Joseph Carpowich, an officer in the Air Force who completed 30 missions over Europe with the 8th Airborne Division and another 30 missions in the spring of 1951 during the start of the Korean War. Captain Edward Carpowich was tragically murdered in front of his family when my dad was just four months old. The argument was over rent at off-base housing in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in October of 1951. The landlord picked up a pipe and struck my grandfather over the head. He died a few days later and is buried in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. My grandmother and grandfather were high school sweethearts.

My grandmother was born in Osawatomie, Kansas. Her father was an accountant for the railroad in Kansas City and may have been a small-time member of an organized crime syndicate of bootleggers during the 1920s and 1930s. That’s just a family theory my cousin and I have, based solely on our elementary school homework assignment of asking our grandparents what it was like to live during the Great Depression.

My great-grandmother, Ida Bright, was born in Kansas in 1894. She passed away before I was born, but she was also quite a character. She never cursed, enjoyed beer like many people of German descent, was small in stature, but was also a fanatic for wrestling. In the 1950s and 1960s, when wrestling was in its early years, she would watch every match she could. She knew all the wrestlers and their storylines. All of my aunts and uncles got a kick out of visiting her as kids and watching wrestling matches with Grandma.

After the funeral home meeting and getting a quote, I went to Costco for a hot dog and to browse around. I remember the day my dad was diagnosed with cancer and given about three months to live. He was calm, alert, practical, and business-like. It wasn’t unemotional, but it was a little dispassionate. We still needed stuff for home, so on our way back from Roseville, CA, we stopped by Costco. So many life moments can be traced back to trips to Costco.

I have a pasta bowl set I’ve used for almost two decades that my dad gave as gifts to extended family. My father always gave practical, everyday items as Christmas gifts.

Keeping up with that tradition, I came back from Costco about $200 poorer, but with a shiny new garbage can and an awesome cutting board. These two items will be in my home for years, and I’ll remember the day I got them. Even though his body is no longer here, his heart will always lie in this home and with me.

The next morning, I woke up early again when my alarm went off and got out of bed. To ward off depression, I’m going to continue getting up early. I know my father knew I’ve struggled with depression, and he did his best to make my life better, much more than most fathers do for their sons. Some things regarding my career and a string of bad luck were outside of my control, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. He could tell that the constant rejections I faced took a toll on my mental health, which is why he sent me to Italy for a vacation and got me Lasik eye surgery earlier this year.

Seeing the world with new eyes and gaining a greater perspective on life is a far greater lifelong gift than the few thousand dollars it cost to go to Italy and get new eyes. It was way cheaper than a four-year college degree.

After pruning my peach tree and mowing the lawn, I made quesadillas with turkey, peppers, and onions. I’m planning on going for a drive tomorrow to clear my head, take some photos, distract myself a little, and remember my father. I need to get out into the world a bit after being a caregiver to my father for the past several months.

Days 5, 6, and 7

Today I took one final car ride with my Father to the cemetery where he will eternally rest in peace. When I think of the thousands of everyday life rides we took together that at the time did not mean much, this one meant a lot. Moments in life come and go and we don’t really pay that much attention to going to the grocery store or out to a restaurant, or even a road trip to see family. So much about life is about tomorrow and believing we have all the tomorrows that the world will bring. We conveniently forget that the world is 4 billion years old and our 80 or so years on this planet doesn’t mean much to the vastness that is Mother Earth. We spend so much of this time we have with our loved ones blissfully unaware that one day there will be no more tomorrow to spend with that person. Death is an inevitable fact of life for everyone one of us, but for today and for this past week for me, the point of living in a tomorrow that will not be the same has become my reality.

The absolute final arrangement that needs to be made is purchasing a memorial bronze plaque for the niche. My father was very practical, he did not want an expensive funeral or a big deal made. He thought in today’s day of age the idea of having a body in a casket and buried was just not good for the environment. He told me to just cremate him and drive to the ocean like in Santa Cruz and spread his ashes. Cremation is also significantly a more economical and affordable way of laying someone to rest. The idea of never being able to visit my Father again and share with him the life I will live just didn’t sit right with me. I do not know if there is an afterlife or if heaven or hell exist, none of us know for sure. My father believed in heaven, and claimed to have visited it once in a dream when he was a child where he talked with his father Edward Carpowich even before he knew the story of his father. I would like to think he is there visiting with his father, mother, and grandparents looking down on me. This is a comforting thought to have.

I chose to have his entire remains interred at the cemetery, the idea of spreading ashes in multiple places or all in one place gives a finality to death that I don’t particularly believe in. I tend to believe that the loved ones we have lost in death do not fully leave us, their memories do not simply wash away or blow in the wind. Their life continues through the people they loved and knew. I know this is also the case for many people who wanted their ashes spread at a certain place or done a certain way. But the idea of saying a final goodbye just does not sit right with me. Which is why interring someone at a cemetery is a better option in my opinion, this way I can always go there and visit and say hello again, that is until I die.

I have written in my other book, that history is more or less a series of unrelated coincidences that become a story. The final days and hours of my Father’s life reinforced this belief I have that history and life are interconnected, at least it is for me and my father. I mean what are the chances that the assistant and caregiver the Hospice agency assigned to my Dad just happened to have moved to this area the same time we did 3 years ago. And not only that what are the chances that she used to live in the very same town we used to, Suisun California, or that she used to go to my friend’s comic book shop in Old Town Suisun? Some may call that kind of coincidence the world of God, or fate, or fortune, or some kind of cosmic alignment of the universe by some higher power. To me I just think of it as history, because the more I study history the more I think of it as unrelated disconnected coincidences that eventually become a connected story. For example; this real life coincidence connected to Suisun CA, is the same kind of coincidence of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln being born on the very same day. Or our neighbors across the street having the same surname as my aunts and uncles because Tinsley was the surname of my Grandfather, or my grandmother’s second husband.

As I write the final lines on my Father’s memorial plaque and take care of the final piece of “business” in laying him to rest. I am also attempting to turn a new page and write my own story and start new chapters in my life. Some basic finality has come after the oxygen tanks and hospital bed were removed by the medical supply company. Now I have the work ahead of me of rearranging the furniture in the owner’s suite to my own liking and doing my best to bring new energy to the home which will help me and my family heal.

Invitations are being printed for a celebration of my Father’s Life. New arrangements in everyday life things are already doing the trick, the garbage can and lights on the side of my house do actually help me reframe everyday life to some degree. I do still cry uncontrollably at times, I feel all the emotions flood all at once, which is okay and healthy. But the work continues.

As far as going out into the world on the road trip, I did enjoy retracing some old steps my father and I took when I was a kid. I have an old photograph somewhere here of me as a 4th grader in front of the miner in Auburn CA. I remember going on a road trip with my Dad down the 49 when I was a kid and we stayed in Auburn for the night. I had so much fun with my Dad riding in the car learning about CA gold rush history, seeing the twists and turns of the road through the foothills. It was a healing road trip my Dad and I took after a very tough and long divorce, it was good for both of us and we remembered it for a long time afterward. It just was not the same to drive without him in the car, but he would have wanted me to get back to my own life and enjoy doing the things I enjoy doing. Which is learning history, taking photographs, and writing.

On this trip I decided to do some things I have never done before, just to remind myself that life will not be the same for me anymore, so I should do something that I have never done before because there will be a lot of that sort of thing going forward for me. It is easy to become creatures of habits and routines, but it also good to not become prisoners of those habits and routines. It’s okay to go to a different restaurant or order something else from the menu of the restaurant you go to all the time. (Ignore what you just read, I will never order something different from Jersey Mikes, because my Dad and I enjoyed too many Roast Beef’s with Swiss)

On my solo mini road trip I visited the gravesite of James Marshall in Coloma California. Like I do when I visit historical places I read the plaques, and something important struck me about the story of James Marshall. If you are reading this and are unaware of the importance of James Marshall, he is the individual who discovered Gold in California while building and working on a mill for John Sutter. John Sutter who is the namesake of the county I live in was from Switzerland and originally a farmer near Yuba City California. His success in farming the California Valley convinced the Mexican authorities to issue him a larger land-grant a little bit south, the land-grant became the town of Sacramento CA, the Capital city of the Golden State. He had many successful and failed business ventures, and this saw mill in Coloma with James Marshall in 1848 was just one of them.

James Marshall discovered gold first, but his story is not one of riches and success. You would think that because he had discovered gold first and had some time before anyone else found out that he would have bene able to mine as much as he could and become California’s first millionaire. Unfortunately, the story of James Marshall did not turn out to be one of immense wealth and success. He had some success in business as a ferry operator and in planting vineyards, but he died alone in a cabin without a dollar to his name. In life. I think he deserved a little better of a fate. For a man who contributed so much to California, moving it from one of the most remote and unknown places on earth to a place where everybody wanted to come to and achieve their dreams, for him to have died alone in a cabin without any money basically homeless, is a little bit of a shame on the pioneers and out of towers who came to California in the 1850’s and 1860’s.

Luckily the Native Son’s of the Golden West decided that in death James Marshall was to be recognized for his contribution to the history of California and erected a magnificent monument in his honor. Below is the text of the plaque at the monument.

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200th Anniversary of James W. Marshall's Birth

On the occasion of James W. Marshall's 200th birthday, the Native Sons of the Golden West rededicate this monument erected in his honor. Born in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey to Phillip and Sarah Wilson Marshall on October 8, 1810, he was the oldest of four children and the only male. He arrived in California via Oregon in 1845 where he worked for John Sutter before acquiring a small cattle ranch. In 1846 he served with John C. Fremont during the Bear Flag Revolt. Marshall partnered with Sutter to construct a sawmill where he made the discovery that would cause the cry of "GOLD" to reverberate around the world. After his discovery of gold in 1848 Marshall found some success operating a ferry, Hotel and a vineyard but by the 1860s fell on hard times and relocated to Kelsey. At the time of his death August 10th, 1885 Marshall was penniless, living in a small cabin. His body was brought to Coloma for burial. Immediately thereafter, Placerville Parlor #9 of the Native Sons of the Golden West in 1887 successfully advocated for the construction of the monument you see here today, the first such monument erected in California.

Re-dedicated October 8, 2010

By Grand Parlor

Native Sons of the Golden West

James L. Shadle, Grand President

2010-03

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My road trip continued out of Coloma through the mountains on highway 50 to South Lake Tahoe. As a native Californian I have seen Lake Tahoe many times in my life, and some regards it has become nothing more than a big blue lake in the middle of the mountains with constant traffic. The amazing spectacular sight that is Lake Tahoe has diminished a little as I have aged. But I decided to go to Carson City Nevada the state Capital city of Nevada, simply because I have never actually been to Carson City Nevada.

What struck me about Carson City is that there is almost nothing special about the place except for it being somewhat near Lake Tahoe and about a half hour from Reno. It has all the same stuff you see in every other suburban town in America. The Capitol Building of Nevada is also nothing to write home about, it is nice, it is fancy enough, but it is pretty small and easily could be confused with a City Hall of a large city like New York or Los Angeles. San Francisco City Hall is much more of an impressive architecture and building than the state Capitol building of Nevada. But there is one interesting thing about Nevada, it is a modern place that is basically stuck in the 1800’s unless you are in Las Vegas, the rest of Nevada outside of Las Vegas is a time warp that doesn’t make much sense. The landscape of most of Nevada is that of a lifeless desert where nothing can grow and the only thing that is important in Nevada is that it is on the way to California or Utah. It is a Wild West type of state, which is also one of the few things that makes it unique among the 50 states in the USA.

For example, Carson City is keeping up with the Wild West tradition of having casinos, bars, and prostitution near Capitol buildings of states. Sacramento in the 1800’s was like that, so was Arizona, Washington and Oregon. In the early 20th century this tradition went away, but it still exists in the 21st century in one state, Nevada. There are multiple casinos within a couple of miles of the state Capitol, one is just a few blocks away within walking distance. There are legal brothels just on the outskirts of the town of Carson City, and there is even an adult entertainment venue a couple blocks away from the state Capitol. The point being is that one can make an argument that Carson City is a place of “Toxic Masculinity” and exploitative of women.

This combined with the fact that the people in charge of the state, the elected officials in the state house, also known as “The Patriarchy” are mostly comprised of women. The State legislature of Nevada in 2023 is 62% female, and they make up the majority of both houses.

This tradition of mixing sex and politics has gone out of fashion long ago, Washington D.C in the 1970’s and 1980’s around the area of Chinatown was full of burlesque show venues, seedy bars and adult venues where politics and sex and booze were all mixed together. But now, that area has cleaned up and is a hipster paradise.

But that memo of cleaning up the neighborhood never got to Carson City Nevada, those traditions are more or less alive and well, which makes it unique among the 50 states.

I concluded my day trip by going to Reno for a few minutes, and then returning to the land of normalcy in California. I had lunch in Truckee and then took highway 20 through the hills back home to the Buttes. Highway 20 remains to be one of the more interesting drives you can take in California, it goes from Highway 80 about 30 miles from the Nevada border, all the way to the coast about 5 miles south of Fort Bragg. I have really only done the beginning and end of the road, but what I find special about the road is that it begins and ends much the same, with a drive through a forest. The Mendocino forrest from Fort Bragg to Willits is a wonderful drive, just as the drive from Highway 80 to Grass Valley or Nevada City.

Days 8, 9, 10

The sadness of my father’s passing has begun to subside a little, I have reduced the amount of times per day in which I lose my emotions and begin to cry uncontrollably. I guess this is a good thing. Now that I know that he is at his final resting place at a cemetery not too far away from here I have felt a little better.

One remarkable thing about my Father’s death process was that he never once mentioned a single regret or a single word of self pity. For weeks he kept fighting, kept hope alive, and kept being strong for his family he loved so much. Even when the doctors all but said that no hope existed, he still tried to keep getting better, not wanting to die but wanting to live. He wanted to live up until the very last hours of his life when his body shut down and he said his last word of “Hi” to me.

As a man there is nothing more masculine than deciding how you go out of this world. How we end our lives says as much about how we lived our lives then almost anything else. Where there times in my father’s life in which he felt sorry for himself? Where he felt that he deserved more from his life than what he was able to achieve? Absolutely.

But at his end, he remained calm, collected, grateful, and almost joyful at the life he had lived and the accomplishments he achieved in his life. He never stopped laughing, smiling, or telling me how proud he was of me and how much he loved me, even when he lost the ability to form complete sentences due to a stroke. His eyes did more communication without saying a single word than novels do in hundreds of thousands of words. For me and my growth as an individual man, these last few lessons in how to live and how to die my father gave me are some of the most cherished memories I could ask for.

I have begun to contemplate my Father’s life story and how colorful it was. He was not a historical person in the sense of great politicians or writers or artists or notable celebrities. He was a man who had a deep love for history, at times a flawed and vulnerable man with problems, but also a many who fought, scratched, and clawed for every inch of success sometimes in the face of people and odds that went against him. He had a tendency to speak the truth to people in power, based what he said on facts, was never really a “yes man”, and did not like to conform to other people’s opinions of what he should be doing. In his retirement he got healthier, sober, and did what he needed to do to live a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, cancer had other plans.

My father died from lung cancer, he had smoked cigarets before it became unpopular to do so. During the 1970’s and 1980’s he and my mother would smoke cigarettes, this of course was before American society began to view cigarette smoking as undesirable and wrong. He quit cigarettes for many years from about 1990 to 2015, but then picked the habit up again for a couple years from 2015 to 2017. I for one have never smoked a cigarette because of the childhood trauma my father put me through when I was three years old.

To quit the habit my father attended a quit smoking class at Cabrillo Community College in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. This was a night class once or twice a week for an hour that was free to attend for people wanting to quit smoking. The teachers would show slides of lung cancer, esophagus problems, skin issues, etc. Basically making the point that smoking was a disgusting habit. One of these classes my Dad took me to they handed out samples of what a healthy lung looked like, and that of what a smoker’s lung looked like. They showed just disgusting slides and photographs of what happens to the body if you smoke cigarettes. The images as a three or four year old haunted me forever and I just never had any desire to smoke cigarettes at all.

Today there are medications that help people quit smoking, but back when “smoking or non smoking” were sections restaurants in California there were not. If you are reading this and would like to quit smoking cigarettes but cannot, you can try this old school trick that worked for my father back around 1989/1990. They suggested at first to make no change in your smoking habits, you can smoke as much as you want, all you had to do was get a gallon sized mason jar and put all of your butts in it. After a week you would have a family sizable amount at the bottom of the jar, and they were supposed to put a couple cups of water in the jar at this point. The next step was to smoke cigarettes as you normally do, but try to reduce it by half, if you feel like you wanted a cigarette just open the jar and smell the old cigarettes, but if you really “needed one” it was okay to have one during this second or third week, just keep putting the butts in the jar.

So by the third, fourth, fifth week of doing this practice, the water had begun to turn the butts form the first week into a moldy rotting disgusting mess, that even for the most ardent smoker was not an appealing smell. Eventually this creates a cognitive shock to the system and trains the brain to associate cigarettes as a disgusting nasty jar of horrible rotting nicotine and paper, and the desire for smoking a cigarette is reduced because it involves opening a disgusting smelling jar of cigarette buts. By week 6 or 8 or 10 or however long it takes, the brain sort of just stops wanting to go through the routine of smoking a cigarette or smelling a nasty disgusting jar, and voila, the person stops wanting or feeling a need for cigarettes anymore, which is 90-95% of the battle. This is one way to “Pavlov’s Dog” yourself off of cigarettes through psychological conditioning and association.

I remember this because my Dad one day, looked at the jar and decided he was done with cigarettes, and then he washed it out and began putting his loose change in it. The jar still exists in what was his office, almost full of loose change which coincidently is becoming less and less common, like cigarettes. This worked for my father for 25 years, so there is some good results that came from the method to this madness of smoking cigarettes.

As far as childhood trauma goes and how people tend to view it as a lifelong thing that stays with people forever and there is nothing we can do about it. I tend to disagree with this psychology to a degree. It’s not as if childhood trauma does not happen, or that it is not important, or that it does not cause issues. I have had my fair share of childhood trauma caused by my mother, and Mother Earth, living through the 1989 earthquake in Santa Cruz California was no small thing.

But as far as letting these traumatic events define my life, I have always fought against that idea. Bad things sometime happen, drama sometimes happen, but if we dwell on it, obsess over it, and constantly worry and think about these events from our past then we become psychological prisoners of sorts. Bad events in one’s life rather it be from childhood or adulthood sometimes make our psychology feel stuck in a cell, consumed, managed, defined, and told what to do and how to live by other people, very much like a prison.

We can easily and conveniently forget that even though our biology is made up entirely of cells, our psychology does not have to be like a prison cell. Psychology is very much like the cells in our body. Our psychology can move and circulate into other areas we did not think of before, it can change, grow, get stronger, healthier, better, and yes eventually we can put old thoughts, beliefs, and events in our life aside and let them die.

The cells in my father’s body developed cancer at the microscopic level and did not show up on scans. The cancer spread into various parts of his body including his bones and brain before they became large enough to be detected by scans and treated. By the time the doctors realized there was a problem, it was already too late to save my father’s life. But even with his body dying from cancer, his psychology of being a fighter and wanting more from life never wavered. My father did not want to die, and in many ways even though his body is no longer around and has turned to ashes, he is not dead, he lives on in his home that he worked his entire life to build and in the countless students he taught in school who remember him, and in his family who love him dearly and cherish the memories we had with him.

Days 11, 12

I have found that the mourning process for everyone is a little bit different, it can become so easy to just lay in bed and not do anything and get depressed. What has helped me over these last few days is thinking about habits and routines. Our cognitive thoughts can easily go all over the place if we let them, this is true for normal everyday life as well as difficult times such as dealing with the loss of a loved one.

We are in many ways our habits and routines, our behaviors, actions, are often times automatic once we reach a certain age in life. We just sort of do what we have always been doing, usually this is something that our mother or father did. For men and women we tend to become more like our parents as we reach our 30’s and 40’s. Eventually we tend to come to the realization that our parents had something to offer to us, and our youth inexperience and immaturity of our rebellious teens and 20’s tends to go away like everything else.

Life begins at birth for all of us, but it also begins again at some point when we get our first big paying real job that allows us to move out of our parent’s house. For some people their life begins a little differently; for example: there are a few high school female classmates of mine who did not go get a real career oriented job out of high school or college. Instead, they fell in love with a man who had one and within a few years after graduation become mothers. Statistically this also is not that bad of a career move, the unemployment rate for parents is almost always lower than it is for single people. Society still values putting food on the table and clothes on the back of children.

Our habits and routines are influenced by these life decisions, and people can often times feel like they are behind or ahead of other people based on how they measure success, usually financially. Money in the bank is how society and usually how other people judge us as being successful or not. This is because it is easy to measure, and has a clear bright line, success is our individual monetary value to society. This is partially why “society” in an etymological sense and traditionally speaking meant the affluent people in New York City, or London, or other big cities. The idea of being “High Brow” or “High Society” is still around today because the Social Register is still being published.

I bring this up, just to point out that my father was never part of this upper class of privileged people in American “Society.” Even though he was very much a scholar, and he was incredibly gifted in having tremendous insight, and had a deep love for history and art. He was always more comfortable among regular common people, because he was a common regular guy.

In college my father had the opportunity to study abroad in Europe for a year, he attended St. Andrews University in Scotland and studied history in 1971. My father was the youngest person in his classes because the American custom is for people to continue their higher education straight out of High School. Whereas in England at the time it was more customary for people to take several years off and away from school before attending University. The idea was that the first 18 or so years of one’s life was to get a basic education to prepare someone for the world. The next 8-10 years was to go out and experience the world a little bit, travel, have some fun, work some jobs that did not mean much, make a bunch of mistakes, learn some real world stuff first. Around the age of 25 people would choose to attend University and get serious about their career and what place they wanted to have in British Society. Over time the British University system has become more like the American education system and the average age of Freshman is about 18.

One lesson I have learned from my father’s life is the respect and value of traditions, some traditions are just there for a reason and it has been around for a very long time and we should be humble enough to understand that our opinion on that tradition just is not that important. At St. Andrews University in 1971 they had standards and traditions that by today’s standards and even by 1971 standards would be considered a little old school. Which makes sense for a University that was founded during the Middle Ages.

Here is a tradition I find interesting. To eliminate plagiarism or copying from someone else, the University required that every essay and paper to be hand written in cursive on a legal pad in pen. Even though the typewriter had already been around for 50 years in 1971, it was too new of a technology for the University to change the way they had been doing things for the past 550 years. This tradition embodies to me what it means to have a “liberal education” which is to put your own individual thoughts on paper by your own hand.

My father’s experience at St. Andrews influenced his entire life, he very easily could have become a professor if he wanted to. When he turned in his transcripts at UCLA and the classes got credited towards the UC system he ended up just a few classes shy of a Master’s Degree in History from UCLA. Unfortunately, my father decided that he was done with college and being a scholar for a while and did not complete the few courses he needed to. He also had a very dramatic experience while living with my uncle in Venice CA in the early 1970’s and decided he had enough with Los Angeles.

In a scene from a Hollywood movie, my Dad was living in an apartment in Venice CA because at the time it was a cheap place to live. There were vagrants and mentally ill homeless people on the streets, my Dad and my Uncle were barely scrapping by living cheaply in an apartment. One day my father was taking a nap on the couch while my uncle was making some kind of dinner. When my uncle went into the living room he saw a homeless guy who had broken into the house hold a knife to my father’s throat threatening to kill him if they did not give him all the money they had.

My Dad and uncle may have only had $100 between them, but probably more like $50. Luckily my uncle kept calm and said “yea sure it’s in the bedroom let me go get some money for you”

Of course my uncle did not return with money, but returned with a loaded 22 hunting rifle he had from my Grandpa. He said something along the lines of “How about you just leave and I don’t kill you”

In a moment of self preservation the intruder removed the knife from my father’s throat and left the apartment. My father was never a gun owner, in part because he never thought there was much need to have one. Except for this one incident in his life in which he was glad my uncle had their father’s rifle.

Soon after this incident my father and uncle decided that they had enough of Los Angeles and moved. Eventually finding their way to Santa Cruz California.

I tend to be in agreement with my father and uncle that people in a generalized worldview of sorts are pretty good at heart. People tend to love their family, care about their jobs and friends, want other people they interact with to be successful and happy. It was my father’s belief and mine as well that the core of human nature is a desire to do good towards other people.

For me thinking that people are out to use me or take advance of me, or that people are liars and cheaters is just not a happy way to go about everyday.

With that said, my college education and desired career path was in the business of politics, and in that business there are people who do lie, cheat, our out to use other people for their own gain, and yes at times have taken advantage of my overall good nature. But these experiences are few and far between, and overall I have found people to be genuinely good at heart, and helpful, even in the messed up business that is politics and making history.

As far as habits and routines are concerned, this chapter and story is not necessarily about habits and routines. But in some ways it is, how many people out there simplify masculinity as being “Toxic” or define masculinity in American society as simply owning a gun and a truck and preferably multiple guns with one of them being in a pick up truck. These two extremes represent a psychological habit people tend to be in. On one side anything any man does is toxic for some reason, on the other hand only men with guns and trucks are masculine and every other guy is either gay or a loser to be ignored.

Today I changed a habit I’ve had my entire life with a simple $17 purchase. For as long as I can remember I’ve been grabbing silverware from these teal plastic organizer containers my Father purchased probably around 1978.

This is literally a dumb thing to have kept in the drawer for so these decades, but it also was just one of these “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” situations. It did its job more than well enough for a very long time and to be honest the plastic is in good shape and it can go another 50 years if I wanted to. Countless times I suggested getting new ones for no reason to my Dad, and each time he would just say something like “Well they are kind of old but I don’t like these ones, and why spend money when we don’t have to”

But I decided to make a change in tradition and break a lifelong habit.

It’s okay to break habits and routines if the change is an improvement over what was.

That might be a good habit and routine to adopt.

Get into the habit of breaking old habits and routines and replacing them with new and improved habits and routines while also respecting tradition.

Maybe by the end of this book I would have replaced my flatware set and dinnerware set that I’ve been eating off of for the last 25 years. But I’m not quite there yet.

Days 13, 14, 15

On my way home from my eye exam I stopped by the store to pick up some artificial flowers to place on my father’s tomb. By the time I got home I got an email from the artist who will be creating the engraved brass memorial plaque for my father. I gave it my final approval, I kept it short, simple, and to the point. My Father was a no nonsense kind of man at times, and at other times he loved to talk about what was on his mind and didn’t mind having a conversation go off into different tangents.

The next morning I went down the street to visit my father, I could not stay long simply because I began to cry. The sadness has subsided from an all consuming all day everyday sort of feeling, to just some momentary feelings of deep sadness. I try to keep myself occupied and busy with things around the house to do. Sometimes it works, other times not so much. Tonight was the very first night I slept in the same room my father passed away in, it will be my room from now on.

I began thinking about how people tend to handle difficult situations. I guess there are two main camps people march towards. The first camp is people who march in every single other direction except the camp that is in trouble. When times are difficult, when the proverbial “Life Happens” it can feel as if our home base of safety is under attack. It is not necessarily wrong to want to flee and run away from problems or stress. There is a reason why it is called the fight of flight response.

The second kind of camp people tend to fall in are the people who face the problems head on and battle them, eventually either overcoming difficulty, or being consumed by difficulty, but eventually more often then not they become stronger and better by going towards the problem as opposed to running away from them. I wrote that last sentence mindfully, because there are smart strategic ways of facing and fighting problems, and emotional somewhat idiotic ways of facing and fighting problems.

I think sometimes it can be easy for people to believe they are facing and fighting their problems. In our heads we sometimes believe we are doing the right thing, but towards other people it appears as if we are not. In situations such as this, when we realize that what we are doing to fight our problems is actually causing the problems in our lives to get worse, a reset is in order. Examples are easy to think of, such as people start getting into destructive habits such as drinking, or substance abuse, they begin to self medicate to feel something different. Eventually the feeling that caused pain originally goes away, and voila we tend to believe our problem is solved. But to other people and the people close to us, we become more of a problem than before. This is just one hypothetical example, but I’m sure you can think of situations in your own life in which you felt you were solving a problem but in reality were sort of making something worse, this happens to us as adults in our real life as well as 4 year olds trying to clean up a mess by spilling all the cleaner on the floor on accident. This is the emotional and somewhat idiotic way of attacking a problem head on with no battle plan or larger strategy thought out before hand.

A more practical and strategic way of fighting one’s problems would be to create a plan and stick to it and implement better behaviors and actions that lead to better results. For example, when my father quit drinking for good, he did not just try to go it on his own. He enrolled in a program at Kaiser that used psychology and group settings to help get people to quit drinking, he attended each class, completed the program, and then went to the bigger program, each week he attended a support group that was not AA but something called LifeRing which is like AA minus the Higher Power stuff, a more scientific and secular version. Eventually, this created better healthier habits, and the problems of drinking were eliminated.

The reason why this worked for my father for so many years at the end of his life was because he had a long term strategy of wanting to live a long and healthy life. He developed a plan to attack a personal problem, implemented the plan was committed to the course of action and changes, and eventually overcame a problem. This is a better way of fighting one’s problems then the more commonly seen 4 year old strategy of just trying to solve a problem emotionally without really thinking it out first, probably making a mistake along the way that causes a bigger mess then existed before, then waiting for someone else to fix it, usually Mom.

I have made more then my fair share of emotional somewhat idiotic ways of facing and fighting problems that in all honesty has probably caused more problems to my metaphorical home base then it has done solving problems in it. But I do think all of those problems eventually subside and I feel that my mental health home base has never been stronger. After being a caregiver to a father who was dying of cancer, is there really anything that is more intense than that experience?

I mean hypothetically if I would find the right woman, fall in love, and get married, the line “To Death to us Part” has a lot more meaning to me now then it ever would have before. Because, I have already lived and cared for a loved one until death has separated us. Also if someone else I love in the future gets diagnosed with the worst possible health news which is a few months to live because of Stage IV cancer. That is something I also already lived through, learned from, and will eventually get stronger because of it. Short of having cancer and overcoming it myself, or being a wounded veteran, I’m not sure if there is anything else life can throw at me that would be more difficult then the situation I’ve lived through these last few months.

As I went to bed the words “Live your Life” rang in my head. This is such a simple phrase that has different meanings for each and every one of us. In life we sort of become like the people we spend the most amount of time with. It is inevitable that I become more like my father than I ever thought imaginable as a teenager because we spent so much time together. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine my life being any different and even if I could wave a magic wand or get a genie to re do my past, I wouldn’t want them to. My father died without expressing a single word of regret about any part of his life. He died loving every minute he lived and loving every minute he spent with his family and friends.

Was he angry at times about dying? Yes absolutely, who wouldn’t be.

But bitterness, regret, remembering his mistakes, anger towards others for past things that couldn’t be changed? Not even for a second. He remained open towards others, expressing love towards others even on his dying day when a pastor sung Amazing Grace by his bedside.

If I could live the rest of my life just achieving a fraction of how my father died, I would count it as a life well lived.

After pondering this thought a little I work up a little early, it was Saturday and the US Navy was having their Fleet Week celebrations in San Francisco. I got up early and drove a couple hours to Vallejo, hopped on a ferry and went to San Francisco. I did my best to live my life this day, I took some photographs, made a few videos, remembered to stay hydrated and snacked on some delicious popcorn. By the time I got home I was tired, exhausted, and went to sleep. Days like these are events in one’s life that we consider “Living Life” it can be as simple as going to your child’s baseball game or soccer game, or dance recital, or it can be as big as going to your child’s wedding or graduation of some kind. These are sort of like “Hallmark” events in peoples lives that are big and small that we remember in the future and tell the stories of them in our old age over a campfire of some kind with friends new and old.

When you add all these events and moments up, and count each one as a blessing, and are grateful for having them, I think you realize that thinking about what you didn’t accomplish, or what you did not do is a pointless exercise that leads to negativity and inhibits our ability to fill our life with love and gratitude. I think that is what my father discovered in his dying days, it is what his eyes communicated every second when his brain wouldn’t let him use his voice.

When you add all those moments up, you end up with something called “A Life Well Lived” which really is all any of us could ever ask for.

But it is also easier said than done, it takes some hard work and some troubled times to achieve one of these. But I think attempting to live my life this way is worth every minute.

Days 16-21

This week started off with the first family gathering since my father’s passing. I made BBQ ribs, corn bread, and a salad. My aunt and uncle came over and we had an overall pleasant afternoon visiting. There was a deafening silence that was missing, my father was no present and his conversation, his zeal for family and love for his family was missed by everyone. Although the sadness I felt in the immediate aftermath of my father’s passing is slowly subsiding, there are moments where the emotions become too much. I think this is going to be a lifelong thing for me, where I will come across something of my father’s years from now and just become overwhelmed with emotion and begin to cry.

This week covered an anniversary for me and my family that went unnoticed, in part because baseball playoffs are on and people have busy lives. But October 17th, 1989 at 5:20 p.m. is a date and time that is forever engrained in my memory. Even as a three year old child, the roar and thunder of the earth shaking underneath the home my father and mother were renting in Watsonville CA is something that I will never forget.

My father was in the kitchen preparing a roast chicken for dinner, my uncle who visited earlier this week was at Candlestick Park ready for an eventing to see our San Francisco Giants take on the Oakland Athletics. I remember wanting to go play with my sister outside who was playing with a jump rope. My mother had just finished tying my shoes when the earth began to rumble, the roar was deafening and the old school television began to be flown across the room towards me. My father who was just around the corner, came in from the kitchen, picked me up and took me outside, he was scared that the house was going to collapse because the house was built on stilts.

I still remember looking back at the house and seeing the roof move in waves like an accordion. The earthquake only lasted about a minute but the damage was extensive throughout the entire Bay Area and especially in Santa Cruz California. Many houses were red tagged as uninhabitable including a few on our block. By some kind of divine providence our house on stilts remained strong and we were allowed to go back inside. I remember in the aftermath there was a fear for weeks afterward that the Loma Prieta Earthquake that caused so much damage was just a small earthquake a prelude to a bigger one that would come later. Every aftershock sparked a terrible fear that the earthquake was going to be bigger then the big one we experienced. Luckily it was only aftershocks, only waves of energy generated deep within the earth that was giving us a shake. This is why my Father decided that we were going to camp in the backyard for a couple of weeks just in case a bigger earthquake occurred. Eventually life more or less returned to something resembling normalcy, but Santa Cruz CA lost a lot of its charm and appeal for my Father. We needed a new beginning and a couple of years later we arrived in the little town of the Bear Flag, Sonoma CA.

During the time of this earthquake my father began studying Spanish as well as getting his teaching credentials. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s believe it or not, getting hired as a teacher was not necessarily the easiest of tasks even with a college degree. My father took an interest in ESL education during his studies at UCSC. Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Salinas and the surrounding area in the 1980’s had a lot of migrant farm workers. Some of these workers lived in Mexico and would come to the area and work for a few weeks or months and then return to Mexico, come back and work and then return. Others would stay even when harvest season was not going on, they would find work in construction or as a house cleaner, or something else like that, some were working 2-4 different jobs to support their family in both the USA and Mexico. My father found work as a substitute teacher during the day, and at night he would teach English as a second language in adult school. This gave my father work experience as a teacher, perfecting his ability to communicate, learn, and teach. But it also provided the migrants a leg up on their competition, they recognized that in order to get ahead in the USA learning English was a beneficial part of their dream of improving their lives. My Father also realized that if he knew Spanish that would make him a more desirable prospective teacher to schools because not every teacher knows a foreign language.

Although I did not grow up in a bilingual household where Spanish was spoken regularly, I have been around the language my entire life. My father would routinely call me “hijo” which means son. When we would be getting ready to go out and do something he would ask the question “listos” which means ready. Estoy muy triste porque nunca volveré a escuchar a mi padre hablar español. Lo siento escribe in espanol, pero la lingua es mejor expresser emociones de Ingles.

I was raised by a single father during a time in which single fathers were more rare to find than it is today. Soon after we moved to Sonoma my mother who always has suffered from mental illness began to fall deep into her mind and lose all grip on reality. When I was 7 years old my mother and father got divorced. My father’s story is not one of ease, comfort, wealth, or prestige, he did run into his fair share of historical people kind of like a real life Forest Gump. But he was not wealthy, he did not have access to the movers and shakers of the world, he also had to fight and struggle for every step of success he achieved.

My father graduated in 1971 at the height of affirmative action, which overall I don’t think my father had a major problem with. There were legitimate reasons in society during that time that needed some social pressures to put on the market place to make things more equitable when it came to hiring minority candidates for jobs. However, this did not help my father’s case of finding a good job out of college in the early 1970’s, as a smart white male. It was bad timing for him to graduate college during a time when the capitalist world became hesitant of hiring white male college graduates due to laws that were enacted. The economy of the mid to late 1970’s was also not the best, and for men in their 20’s friends and socializing became more of a priority than a career.

My Dad did find work in the local cannery in Santa Cruz California, it paid minimum wage which at the time was only about $2.00 per hour. The job was manual labor canning green beans and other crops. One secret about canned goods is that the generic stuff is usually the exact same as the name brand stuff, they put different labels on the cans but the products come from the same trucks and the same farms. Which is something to keep in mind the next time you are at the grocery store.

During the 1970’s my father had a series of different jobs, he worked at the cannery during the harvest season late summer early fall. He also painted houses as a small business owner during the spring and summer, he also took up an interest in photography. In the late 1970’s he opened an art studio called Fog Bank Gallery next door to a bank in downtown Santa Cruz CA. You can see what was the location in the movie “Sudden Impact” which was filmed in Santa Cruz during a time in which my father and uncle lived in Santa Cruz, it also features a scene in the hospital in which I was born in.

The story of the art gallery is that the Bank next door owned the property and wanted to expand their building by bulldozing the building. The building was one of the older buildings in Santa Cruz and a local group of Historical preservationists sued to stop the expansion of the local bank branch. This put the property’s future in limbo. One day my father was walking in Downtown Santa Cruz and noticed a “for lease” sign on the door and made an inquiry with the bank. The bank agreed to rent the space to my father and his business partner to open an art gallery that would be filled with the works of local artists. From the Bank’s perspective this gave them more of a case in their case with the historical preservationists, because they were doing something good for the community, which was allowing an art gallery to use the space in the interim until the court could decide what to do with the building.

After a year or so the court case was settled, the Bank won and the lease was not renewed, and the lease was conditional on the court case any way, which made the rent cheap. My Dad’s art gallery “Fog Bank Gallery” closed. But it was fun while it lasted.

During this time the term “affordable housing” did not really exist because housing was more or less affordable for people. Here is an example, my father rented a large victorian home with about 5 bedrooms on Taylor street in Santa Cruz for only $125 a month. Which means that it cost about $1 per day in rent to stay in a place. He rented out the rooms to some friends and stayed there for several years. By the time he left around 1980 the rent had increased to about $150 a month. Which means that even if you had a job that paid minimum wage of about $2 per hour and worked 8 hours a day it would only take about 2 days worth of work to pay for a month’s worth of rent for a room.

It was around this time around 1980 when one of my father’s friends named Roy began talking about his cousin who was going to visit from Bloomington Indiana. Roy wanted my father and his cousin to meet because he thought they would hit it off. Roy’s cousin is named Jean Elaine Enright, and became my mother.