In Memorium: Da
Da was born late November in 1946, the fourth child and only son of French-speaking parents and grandparents who immigrated from Quebec. He spoke French for the first six years of his life and for the rest of said life had a faint French accent, saying things like "t'umb tacks" instead of "thumb tacks," or "de" instead of "the."
Lowell Massachusetts was a working class holdover of the industrial revolution; his first job as a teen was to work in one of the old factories before he took a job at a bank. His skills in mutual funds eventually lead him to be valuable as a software engineer back when everybody did coding on punch cards (if you have no idea what that is ask your parents/grandparents).
During this time he went to a singles club at the historic Old South Churc in Boston, where he met the certain someone who would become his wife. Their courtship started with a canoe ride that, like a romantic comedy script, capsized and left the two of them drenched from head to toe. Undeterred, Da took the both of them to a Marx Brothers movie and then found the most poorly lit restaurant on earth to hide how soaked they were for the rest of the day. The cashier at the restaurant asked if it was raining when he was handed wet and crumpled money. They entertained each other with terrible puns and play on words, enjoyed each others company and watched horror movies. They broke up exactly once, getting into what was to become one of their famous misunderstandings. Time apart made Da realize how special Mom was and, once more like a romantic comedy, tried to find her again by going to places he thought she would be to discover he only just missed her. After six months of looking he finaly found her at the Esplanade and told her, "I lost you once, I am not going to lose you again." They were together ever since.
It took six years to get us, a long story with a twice-blessed ending. Da inevitably bought as many books on twins as he could, and the two of them called everyone they knew to spread the good news.
Da was, above all else, a worker through and through. Programming is a long, intensive job that doubles in workload at quarter end and requires long conference calls with other teams or clients or a 2am call to find out a server has crashed or a program has failed and needs to be fixed immediately. There were parts of the job he hated but in the end he loved his work. When the two of us were in college studying computer science (Another story: he suggested when we were in high school that we should take at least one computer course to have a job skill. Like our Da, we discovered we liked the work and went to college as budding computer scientists) and given an assignment that made categorically no sense, he tried to help us. We stayed up to eleven at night trying to reverse engineer what the program was supposed to do, we wanted to go to bed exhausted while he was excited to have made headway.
Da was also, in many respects, a traditional "man." He was a protector and care-taker. He was always volunteering himself to do favors or jump in to help. To our shame, the two of us sometimes took advantage of this, saying, "Da, if we ask nicely can you do this thing we don't like to do?" and he would do so without protest, even when we added, "It's okay to say 'no' you know." Even when we moved to Connecticut he would make the two hour drive to Mémé's to deliver groceries or foodstuffs. He always shrugged off problems, saying he was fine when he wasn't, doing everything even when he couldn't, making promises that were impossible to fulfill, because he wanted to help. A candy tray at his desk was always filled with goodies for his coworkers. The kitchen was overstuffed with food to make sure we had enough, he would compulsively buy extra things in case it was needed, shelves were consistently overflowing, he was a packrat.
His giving nature, inevitably, made him his own worst caretaker. He neglected his health and did not eat right. This culminated in 2008 when, after years of what we all thought were gallstones, became so bad that Mirror had to drive him to the ER and discover that, in fact, it was not gallstones he suffered from but years of silent heart attacks. His heart was only working a 5% capacity. He had quintuple bypass surgery and two months of recovery. He became a diabetic, and in some ways was forced to finally, finally take care of himself. Or at least, do a slightly better job of it.
An introvert, Da's favorite pasttimes were reading or watching TV. He had shelves and shelves and shelves of books and DVDs and old VHS cassettes, things he either bought or recorded or loaned from the library. He was most relaxed stretched out on the recliner, watching an old black and white documentary on WWII, or reading from his History magazines, or reading some kind of 50s high adventure or mystery. All four of us would spend our Sunday nights watching Charlie Chan, or Nero Wolfe, or Sherlock Holmes, or some other show or serial or mystery. I've lost track of the times we've come in on him watching the Hunt for the Read October, and it was a yearly tradition to spend the Fourth of July watching Gettysburg. He loved the history or war, and his favorite war was WWII. In high school I once had to do a report on the Battle of Gettysburg and asked to go to the library. Instead he walked into the den and walked out with a dozen magazine articles and books for me to use as resources. For music he was a fan of the classics: often he was listening to the Song of the Volga Boatmen or popular music done in panflute. He also like the Opera.
Because of his computer and banking background, Da was great at mental math. Not as fast as Mémé, he could tally grocery items and know what the total would be. His wit was renowned, if only because everybody would groan at his terrible puns. There is a story from work of a manager coming in and giving a great analogy about knowing work environments by examining bathrooms, and Da didn't miss a beat by saying, "Well, thank you. We're positively flushed with pride." A common game at supper was to point to various objects in the room and use them in some kind of groan-worthy pun. Bananas are appealing, fork over the next joke, we give three chairs for that one, and so on.
And then, last Wednesday, he game down with the flu. He of course said he was fine, only admitted he was sick enough to stay home from work (which for him was as much as an admission as anyone would get that he was very sick). His heartrate and blood pressure were off, and as the night wore one he lay in bed with Mom watching TV. He went to the bathroom, came out, and instead of going back to bed staggered out of the room.
The stairs open out just outside their door.
He fell down the flight of stairs. There were screams, CPR, two resuscitations and two hospitals, but Da's spirit had left as soon as he fell. He was sixty-nine.
Da, we know you're French through and through, but we're going to give you an Irish blessing as you journey back to God:
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rains fall soft upon your fields.
'Til we meet again, we meet again,
May God hold you in His hand.
It was a pleasure knowing you, Da, we loved you more than words could say. We look forward to you giving us puns in the future, burping our backs and calling it a hug. We look forward to going to Harkness and sitting on your bench, and we look forward to knowing that you will still see us off to work, just in a way that we can't see.
Nous t'aimons. Bon soir.
Lowell Massachusetts was a working class holdover of the industrial revolution; his first job as a teen was to work in one of the old factories before he took a job at a bank. His skills in mutual funds eventually lead him to be valuable as a software engineer back when everybody did coding on punch cards (if you have no idea what that is ask your parents/grandparents).
During this time he went to a singles club at the historic Old South Churc in Boston, where he met the certain someone who would become his wife. Their courtship started with a canoe ride that, like a romantic comedy script, capsized and left the two of them drenched from head to toe. Undeterred, Da took the both of them to a Marx Brothers movie and then found the most poorly lit restaurant on earth to hide how soaked they were for the rest of the day. The cashier at the restaurant asked if it was raining when he was handed wet and crumpled money. They entertained each other with terrible puns and play on words, enjoyed each others company and watched horror movies. They broke up exactly once, getting into what was to become one of their famous misunderstandings. Time apart made Da realize how special Mom was and, once more like a romantic comedy, tried to find her again by going to places he thought she would be to discover he only just missed her. After six months of looking he finaly found her at the Esplanade and told her, "I lost you once, I am not going to lose you again." They were together ever since.
It took six years to get us, a long story with a twice-blessed ending. Da inevitably bought as many books on twins as he could, and the two of them called everyone they knew to spread the good news.
Da was, above all else, a worker through and through. Programming is a long, intensive job that doubles in workload at quarter end and requires long conference calls with other teams or clients or a 2am call to find out a server has crashed or a program has failed and needs to be fixed immediately. There were parts of the job he hated but in the end he loved his work. When the two of us were in college studying computer science (Another story: he suggested when we were in high school that we should take at least one computer course to have a job skill. Like our Da, we discovered we liked the work and went to college as budding computer scientists) and given an assignment that made categorically no sense, he tried to help us. We stayed up to eleven at night trying to reverse engineer what the program was supposed to do, we wanted to go to bed exhausted while he was excited to have made headway.
Da was also, in many respects, a traditional "man." He was a protector and care-taker. He was always volunteering himself to do favors or jump in to help. To our shame, the two of us sometimes took advantage of this, saying, "Da, if we ask nicely can you do this thing we don't like to do?" and he would do so without protest, even when we added, "It's okay to say 'no' you know." Even when we moved to Connecticut he would make the two hour drive to Mémé's to deliver groceries or foodstuffs. He always shrugged off problems, saying he was fine when he wasn't, doing everything even when he couldn't, making promises that were impossible to fulfill, because he wanted to help. A candy tray at his desk was always filled with goodies for his coworkers. The kitchen was overstuffed with food to make sure we had enough, he would compulsively buy extra things in case it was needed, shelves were consistently overflowing, he was a packrat.
His giving nature, inevitably, made him his own worst caretaker. He neglected his health and did not eat right. This culminated in 2008 when, after years of what we all thought were gallstones, became so bad that Mirror had to drive him to the ER and discover that, in fact, it was not gallstones he suffered from but years of silent heart attacks. His heart was only working a 5% capacity. He had quintuple bypass surgery and two months of recovery. He became a diabetic, and in some ways was forced to finally, finally take care of himself. Or at least, do a slightly better job of it.
An introvert, Da's favorite pasttimes were reading or watching TV. He had shelves and shelves and shelves of books and DVDs and old VHS cassettes, things he either bought or recorded or loaned from the library. He was most relaxed stretched out on the recliner, watching an old black and white documentary on WWII, or reading from his History magazines, or reading some kind of 50s high adventure or mystery. All four of us would spend our Sunday nights watching Charlie Chan, or Nero Wolfe, or Sherlock Holmes, or some other show or serial or mystery. I've lost track of the times we've come in on him watching the Hunt for the Read October, and it was a yearly tradition to spend the Fourth of July watching Gettysburg. He loved the history or war, and his favorite war was WWII. In high school I once had to do a report on the Battle of Gettysburg and asked to go to the library. Instead he walked into the den and walked out with a dozen magazine articles and books for me to use as resources. For music he was a fan of the classics: often he was listening to the Song of the Volga Boatmen or popular music done in panflute. He also like the Opera.
Because of his computer and banking background, Da was great at mental math. Not as fast as Mémé, he could tally grocery items and know what the total would be. His wit was renowned, if only because everybody would groan at his terrible puns. There is a story from work of a manager coming in and giving a great analogy about knowing work environments by examining bathrooms, and Da didn't miss a beat by saying, "Well, thank you. We're positively flushed with pride." A common game at supper was to point to various objects in the room and use them in some kind of groan-worthy pun. Bananas are appealing, fork over the next joke, we give three chairs for that one, and so on.
And then, last Wednesday, he game down with the flu. He of course said he was fine, only admitted he was sick enough to stay home from work (which for him was as much as an admission as anyone would get that he was very sick). His heartrate and blood pressure were off, and as the night wore one he lay in bed with Mom watching TV. He went to the bathroom, came out, and instead of going back to bed staggered out of the room.
The stairs open out just outside their door.
He fell down the flight of stairs. There were screams, CPR, two resuscitations and two hospitals, but Da's spirit had left as soon as he fell. He was sixty-nine.
Da, we know you're French through and through, but we're going to give you an Irish blessing as you journey back to God:
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rains fall soft upon your fields.
'Til we meet again, we meet again,
May God hold you in His hand.
It was a pleasure knowing you, Da, we loved you more than words could say. We look forward to you giving us puns in the future, burping our backs and calling it a hug. We look forward to going to Harkness and sitting on your bench, and we look forward to knowing that you will still see us off to work, just in a way that we can't see.
Nous t'aimons. Bon soir.