Paul Wilczynski's Observations

My dad

My father passed away on January 9, at the age of exactly 88.5. My wife and I went out to the Chicago area - where my sister and brother-in-law live and where my father lived - for the wake and funeral last week. 5 years ago around Thanksgiving, my mother died, and Dad missed her terribly although he didn't show it that much because he wasn't an expressive kinda guy. Every night, though, he kissed a handmade wooden cross that was on her coffin, and kissed her picture. Dad was a practical, realistic man - a planner. When we were visiting or on the phone, he'd always say "Don't get old!". That was the exception to the realism. In WWII, he served in the Army as an utilityman. He was proud of that, and so we asked the Army to give him a military funeral with the flag on the casket and the bugler playing a haunting "Taps". The memory of receiving the folded flag and listening to that is, I'm thinking, always gonna evoke a reaction. We never discussed deep stuff. I'm not really sure why. I do know that, more than anything else, he wanted the best for my mom, my sister, and me. He was a man of his age and generation, and as my sister said during the Mass, a man of two countries - the United States and Poland. Those who knew him are going to miss him. Lots.

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 1:00 PM