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Thanks to everyone
Mar. 13th, 2011 06:03 pmThanks to everyone for the sympathy and good wishes.
My dad was sweet, as Bobby said, but he was also daunting. Not in a hard-ass way - he was the opposite of hard-ass - but he was incapable of small talk, and he was proud that in his policy analyses he exhibited a hard head. He had a sense of humor, but he mostly kept it out of his prose. His words aren't having a party, though there's a subtle attempt to phrase well that keeps it from dryness. He tended towards the formal and the proper in his dress and behavior, but his prose refused to dress up. He liked to describe Italian politics clearly without evading the mass of complications, so there was a continual drive to say what was happening, and then what was also happening, and giving reasons, and giving other reasons. It's interesting to me that such a well-behaved, carefully spoken man was drawn to a country whose way of doing things was based on "Here is how things are officially done, and then here are how things are really done," bureaucracies invented and bureaucracies corrupted, people exalting back channels and special influence, the refusal to totally get along (I think the average length for an Italian government during the time my dad was writing was about nine months).
At the end, he'd lost some of his memory and most of his interest in politics, but none of his sweetness. When he wasn't sure of what was going on his default was to say "I love you." In the final days he could barely whisper, and his body would be seized by tremors, but he managed to say "Thank you" whenever anyone tried to feed him, or brush his head, or help him.
One thing that struck me was how nice the caregivers were, and the man at the funeral home, and the woman who sold us the memorial stone. Of course this is part of their job, niceness and tact, and withholding judgment while we make choices during a trying time; and they get paid to do it well, but they did do it well.
My dad was sweet, as Bobby said, but he was also daunting. Not in a hard-ass way - he was the opposite of hard-ass - but he was incapable of small talk, and he was proud that in his policy analyses he exhibited a hard head. He had a sense of humor, but he mostly kept it out of his prose. His words aren't having a party, though there's a subtle attempt to phrase well that keeps it from dryness. He tended towards the formal and the proper in his dress and behavior, but his prose refused to dress up. He liked to describe Italian politics clearly without evading the mass of complications, so there was a continual drive to say what was happening, and then what was also happening, and giving reasons, and giving other reasons. It's interesting to me that such a well-behaved, carefully spoken man was drawn to a country whose way of doing things was based on "Here is how things are officially done, and then here are how things are really done," bureaucracies invented and bureaucracies corrupted, people exalting back channels and special influence, the refusal to totally get along (I think the average length for an Italian government during the time my dad was writing was about nine months).
At the end, he'd lost some of his memory and most of his interest in politics, but none of his sweetness. When he wasn't sure of what was going on his default was to say "I love you." In the final days he could barely whisper, and his body would be seized by tremors, but he managed to say "Thank you" whenever anyone tried to feed him, or brush his head, or help him.
One thing that struck me was how nice the caregivers were, and the man at the funeral home, and the woman who sold us the memorial stone. Of course this is part of their job, niceness and tact, and withholding judgment while we make choices during a trying time; and they get paid to do it well, but they did do it well.
