When I was two, my dad bought me a tiny wooden bat, a tiny glove and a little rubberish ball...oh yes and a tiny Yankees uniform. He instilled in me a passion for the Bombers that has lasted to this day, taking me from our home in Philadelphia to the Stadium to see Yankees' games. This passion was but a very small bit of the legacy I owe to my father, still the most principled individual I have ever known.
My father died a week ago. After a 15 month battle with stomach cancer, which he had fought to a draw, a bout with viral meningitis, which he won but at great cost, he succombed to yet another infection, of unknown origin, which unexpectedly shut down his organs over the course of 24 hours. I had the excruciating and terrifying experience of watching him go.
In the days immediately following, I resumed my habitual activities and thought I could get on with life more or less normally. But emotionally things have gone from awful to much worse and I find that outside of my family and my friends I have lost heart for everything: for work, for sport, and, yes, for this blog. The need to attend to my father's illnesses has been behind the hiatuses in the blog this summer and now, having caught up the few things I have been meaning to say lately, and with apologies for my truancy, I am going to pull down the curtain, as I probably should have done for good at the end of last season. Good-bye and be well.
I'll give my Dad the last word:
"The problem with mediocre people is not that they are themselves mediocre, but that they have a vested interest in preventing others from rising to excellence." http://williamdvalente.blogspot.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Joe V. - My sincere condolences on your loss. My feelings about my dad mirror yours. I lost him to cancer in 1994. I still miss him like it was yesterday.
May God bless your dad and your family during this difficult time.
--Munson
Not sure if this will ever be read, but I just disocvered this site now some 6 months after its end. First and foremost I hope you and your family are doing well and that you are at peace. Secondly I want to thank you for your blog. I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed it and agreed with so many points you've made. Now that Torre is back with a book, I'm sure you're as happy as I am that the man has been exposed, and will hopefully never be regarded as st. joe again.
-thanks again for all the laughs
Jason
Post a Comment