Happy Dad’s Day

Dad prepared my sister and I for a lot of things we would face in life but I don’t think he prepared us for his death. Not the emotional part. Not the loss we would feel.

He died more than six years ago and the loss has faded, but the memory of him springs into my head at the most unusual times, usually when I’m trying to fix something in the house and I’m using the very same tools he used.

He was a quiet man but had a lot of presence. In a group setting, he’d quietly listen and observe in a way that made it seem he wasn’t paying any attention; then out of the blue, he’d say the one thing that became the most significant part of that conversation.

He was the consummate do-it-yourselfer, and not just with little projects. He built the house we grew up in, nearly by himself. That sturdy little cottage in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans survived the Hurricane Katrina floods. The contractors who rehabbed it told my sister (who has lived there since right before Dad’s death) that it was built more like a commercial structure than a residence.

This is my favorite picture of Dad. He was just a few years older here than I am now. I like this because it captures his classic look and smile. Parkinson’s disease robbed him of that look many years before he died and this shot takes me back to a better time in his life. We honored his long-standing request for a closed-casket funeral, but we placed a framed 8 x 10 of this photo on the casket. More than once that day we heard someone say, “there’s the Benny we remember.”