Death Anniversaries
I’m sitting at the counter in my mom’s kitchen with my laptop open, tying to write something about my dad’s death anniversary. It’s been four years. He’s still dead. We’re still grieving. The expression of grief has evolved over time but the feelings are still right there, barely under the surface. My mom keeps talking to me...
About my dad, who died four years ago today.
About her wedding ring, that she stopped wearing a year ago.
About this house, where I grew up, and where my dad died. My mother has completely transformed the space. The scars my dad left where he gouged the walls, trim, and cabinets with his wheelchair have been patched and painted. The house is still a little cluttered (definitely my mom’s style) but it’s light and warm and a nice place to spend time.
About the last four years and how much weight she’s lost and how proud my dad would be of her. He would be proud of her! My mom is 62 but has somehow figured out reverse aging. Every year she gets younger and I get less young. People often ask if we’re sisters. Hopefully I got those genes.
About dating and how hard it is to talk to men. She hasn’t dated since she was in her early 20s.
About the plant she just noticed that needs water.
About how high to set the oven to cook bacon.
We all process grief differently and I’ve often felt like my role is to support my mother in whatever way she needs. Often that means being here to hear her inner monologue as it flows out of her. I inherited this lack of inner monologue from my mother. Last night she talked about the actual moment my dad died, his last breath, and reminded me of the exact place and position I was laying when it happened. I remember, but I don’t think of it often. Maybe it’s good to force myself to be transported back to moments like that. Maybe, in a way, they define me. The moment I became fatherless. The moment my mother lost the love of her life.
My sister is coming over for brunch this morning. I’m sure we’ll laugh, and sing. We always sing. The kids will play. There may be dancing. There may be tears. The idea was to come together, here, to remember and honor my dad. Maybe the fact that we’re here together in this house, where he took his last breath, where we spent so many happy days and nights together, is enough. I miss him every day. I miss him more today.
I’ve put this call out before, but if your dad is still around please give him a call, give him a hug, tell him that you love him. I’m sending a lot of dad love out into the universe today.
My tribute to Guy Standifer, the obituary I wrote for him and read to him before he died. His only suggested revision was that I add that he was voted “most kissable lips” in high school. I did not add it to the obituary but felt it was worth noting here.
I read this obituary at Dad’s celebration of life - April 15th, 2018. This is a picture of me reading it... I was too thin, and fighting a cold, my marriage was at rock bottom, and things at work were crashing and burning (I'd just signed a retention agreement / termination because they were closing down the Portland office). My birthday was a few days before this and we did Karaoke in Portland. Joint birthday party for me and Raquel. I got sad drunk and sobbed the last hour we were there. It was such a tough time.
Jack of all trades, master of everything?
Guy Standifer, an all-American man, died on February 13th, 2018, aged 79
He was the son of a preacher man. The youngest of five, born to George and Brookie Mae in Bryson, Texas in the midst of the 1938 oil boom. Though the population of Bryson surged that year, so much so that people were forced to live in tents, a recession hit the US economy and unemployment climbed back up to 19%. This was the same year that the War of the Worlds broadcast sent the eastern United States into panic, the same year that the first Superman comic was released, and the same year that Adolf Hitler was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”
Times were hard in the years leading up to World War II, and George and Brookie Mae scraped by. The family of seven lived in close quarters. Guy ran wild in the open prairies and woodlands of North Texas. When you have nothing, creativity and imagination turn sticks into rifles and rocks into bullets. The land was his playground and with minimal supervision he tumbled through his early years, narrowly escaping death on more than one occasion.
Conditions at home presented their own challenges, but a mother’s unconditional love leaves a unique imprint on a boy, that he carries with him into adulthood, and Brookie Mae instilled a deep sense of loyalty and compassion in her young son. George, an immoral evangelical preacher, balanced Brookie Mae’s unconditional love with criticism and physical abuse. Guy learned to fight for the people he loved, to stand up for people who couldn’t fight their own battles, and that doing the right thing wasn’t always easy or well received. The adventurous boy grew into a charming, handsome young man with strong resolve. As a high school senior in 1955, he was the star of the varsity football team in Graham, Texas. The Graham Steers only lost one game that year, to Breckenridge. At seventeen, Guy left his home, his family, and the life he knew to join the submarine service.
He often joked that he would have joined the Marines if the guys manning the table hadn’t been out to lunch the day he walked into the recruiting office. Guy enlisted in the U.S. Navy, the seaborne branch of the U.S. Military, on January 31st, 1956. That same year the Navy authorized the construction of eight submarines, the largest such order since World War II. Aboard the USS Trumpetfish (SS-425), Guy sailed for European waters and participated in training exercises as he crossed the Atlantic. The Trumpetfish snorkeled off the coast of France, Italy, and other parts of Western Europe before returning to Key West, Florida.
Aboard the USS Trutta (SS-421), in 1959, Guy was part of a mission to rescue Cuban refugees in the months following the fall of Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship over Cuba and Fidel Castro’s rise to power. The Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded two years later but Guy was safely back on land. He had enlisted in the years following the Korean War and, as a Petty Officer Second Class, left the Navy in the years preceding the Vietnam War. Though he did not serve during times of war, he had many brushes with death and when he talked about his time in the service his eyes often welled with tears. The Navy turns boys into men. Guy’s sense of loyalty deepened, and his compassion cemented itself behind a thick shield of pragmatism and skepticism. Near the end of his service, in his mid-20s, he met a young woman. They were married, had a son soon after, then another, and then another.
The telecommunications industry was a natural extension of Guy’s experience in the Navy. He joined Pacific Telephone in San Francisco, California and quickly climbed the ranks. He held multiple managerial positions throughout his career in telecom. He fought to close the gender pay gap, stood up for the people that worked for him, and upheld strict ethical standards. It was at Pacific Bell that he met Stephanie. She was the seventh of nine in a large Italian-Catholic family. Her parents immigrated to the United States to build a brighter future for their children. A friendship blossomed into romance and a love so powerful it would endure in health, and sickness, and even in death.
Together Guy and Stephanie had two daughters, moved their young family from California to Oregon, and started a new life. This new life meant new opportunities for Guy. He left the phone company and tried his hand in real estate and construction. He worked hard, and though his endeavors were not always successful, he always believed that he could do anything he set his mind to. This somewhat blind perseverance carried him through tough times and gave him the confidence to try new things. He eventually found his way back to telecom at Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, in Portland, Oregon. He retired in 2004, at the age of 66, and was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease in 2010.
Though his 60s were peppered with health issues – prostate cancer, a brain tumor – he kept his head up and he kept moving. He approached illness the same way he approached everything in life: he ran right toward it ready to tackle it head on. His hubris was almost enchanting, and paired with other winning characteristics, Guy was easy to root for and easy to like. He told terrible jokes, never read or paid much attention to rules or directions, but always got to where he was going. If Guy was anything, he was strong willed.
He approached parenting in much the same way. What he lacked in tact and empathy, he made up for with quality time – he coached sports, helped with homework, tucked his kids in at night. He taught all his children how to stand up for themselves, when to advocate for people who couldn’t fight their own battles, and that doing the right thing was important but not always easy. He was a good dad, and a devoted husband. Stephanie’s love for Guy softened him, and the calluses he’d formed over the course of his life slowly faded as the years passed. Though he softened, the core of him remained the same.
His fierce resolve to be right, about everything, made him impossible to argue with – not because he was actually correct or because he pursued the truth, but because no matter how much factual evidence was presented he either still believed he was right or was too stubborn to admit otherwise. He gave unsolicited advice on how to cure any illness from the common cold to a broken heart – “drink some water, you’re probably dehydrated.” He provided coaching and advice on subjects about which he lacked any relevant knowledge or experience. It was hard to fault him for it. That was the way Guy Standifer moved through life: pretend you know what you’re doing, figure it out as you go, and don’t look back. He was a jack of all trades, and a (self-proclaimed) master of everything.
