Mom called and said that she, Brother and Sister had all talked to the reporter already. Apparently they were doing a feature on dad and she wanted to make sure I was given the opportunity to talk to the reporter. I didn’t have a pen with me. I was standing in the middle of one of those huge stores focused on organizing everything in your life. I told her to have Brother or Sister text me the number and I would give the reporter a call. Moments later, a text came in. I love technology.
I finally made it out of the store and called mom back to see if I needed to call this reporter now. She said he was trying to wrap it up tonight, as far as she knew and it would probably be good if I spoke to him soon. I called him and got an answering machine. As I was leaving a message, he picked up.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hi, sorry about that. I sometimes screen my calls.”
“That’s ok. I’m the other son. My mom said I should call you about the article you’re writing.”
“Yeah. Thank you for calling. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. Do you have some time?”
“Yeah, now’s a good time.”
I hadn’t talked about dad much except to tell a few people that he had passed away. I spoke proudly about him and his life. At one point the reporter said something like “It sounds like you’re dad was a real entertainer,” which I found very weird, and somewhat disheartening. Where would he have gotten such and idea? I corrected him politely.
“I wouldn’t say entertainer as much as I would say he was very social. Not a socialite or anything like that. He just really enjoyed people. He was accepting of everyone and he made time for you.”
The reporter brought up something about how dad was more afraid of what would happen to us after he was gone than what was going to happen to him. And that was true. I don’t think my dad was ever really afraid of dying. We talked for a few minutes more and I could feel my voice cracking. I was telling him about what I said in the eulogy. It was the part about how we can honor him by living our lives a little differently. Talking about it made me feel like I was going to cry, but I didn’t. It could have been that I was in a public place, but I should have just let it out. It’s building up in me and I’m feeling emotionally constipated.
