Happy Birthday, Dad

Where's The Party?
Originally uploaded by Ronaldo F Cabuhat

My father, if he were still alive, would have been celebrating his 80th today.

It is hard to imagine him arriving to that age, given the damage done to his body and his psyche by alcohol. Had he continued to live, I am guessing it would have been frought with many hospitalizations, perhaps even being in a nursing home. He would've been more miserable than he already was. There is no question that the time of his passing -- just right for him.

Today is also the birthday of my nephew -- my sister's oldest child. He is now a father himself. Younger than my father was before he ever had children enter his life.

My father never liked birthdays. Celebrations of any kind, for that matter. "Why make such a fuss? It's just another day" was a phrase he often said on these occasions. I often wonder if there was ever a time that his birthday was a happy one ? My mother says that when they dated, before he went off to the ranks of the Marines to fight for his country, my father was "happy go-lucky". It is a version of my father that I never saw, can't even conjure up. It is the image, however, I am hoping is true for him on his 80th birthday, somewhere in the ethers of the heavens.

War and the terrors of war change people permanently. The Korean War stripped my father of "happy go-luckiness" and replaced it with "bitter-to-the-boneness". No more dancing, no more dressing-to-the-nines, complete with fancy cufflinks, no more smiles. Work at the steel mill, put food on your family's table, drown the haunting war images nightly in lots of beer, pass out, and wake up to do it all over again. This was my father's existence.

There was one thing, however, that I can say brought my father a millimeter of pleasure: doing puzzles. On weekends, before he got too blasted to see the pieces, he had a card table in the livingroom designated for puzzles. You didn't disturb him nor were you invited to participate. This was HIS to treasure -- for as much as he had the capacity to treasure something. As an adult, every year on his birthday, I bought him a puzzle. I tried to get really challenging ones to stimulate his mind. His response when he'd unwrap one was usually: "Oh, look at this one." That was about as much excitement as he could muster up and it was, for him, excitement.

So, Happy Birthday, Dad. I hope there's a card table wherever you are hanging out and that you are finding all the puzzle pieces -- perhaps you will have found some of the missing ones that will help you make sense of the life that didn't make sense to you while on earth.

And maybe, just maybe, you are dancing. Or fishing. Or all of the above and more.