To The Man Who Taught Me The Love Of The Game

This one might be a little longer than the others.

On June 25th, 2024, my father passed away. Known by Chip by all he knew, he was a man’s man. He knew how to fix everything. He played and loved sports his entire life. He was my first coach, my first hero, and one of my first role models. My best example of what it means to be a man, a father, a member of your community.

My Dad wasn’t an angel by any means. He was hard on us kids; much harder on us than I am on my own. It made me tough, a fierce competitor (doesn’t mean I always win!), and a stiff-upper-lip kind of guy. Stuff those emotions deep down and move on. It made me intense, for sure. Dan Patrick calls it “going jawface” and I’ve used that phrase to describe it more times than I could ever count. I remember hot summer days when I’d have the catcher’s gear on and he’d be bouncing short hops into me to teach me how to block a ball. We’d do it until I was in tears. His initial reaction was to tell me to quit crying and get back up in my catcher’s stance. Then when we were driving home from the field, he’d tell me how tough I was and how proud he was of me. He’d insist I swing my bat at least 100 times a night when we got home from practice or a game. Oh, I was so pissed at him for this at the time. So boring! Hindsight being what it is, I can see that he was teaching me what it was to truly commit to being the best I could be at something. I don’t half-ass anything, and that mindset came from Dad first (and Mom as a close 1a).

I have thought about him every single day since his passing. What I can’t seem to recall is the last conversation we had in person. He called me to tell me he was in the Emergency Room and they believed he had dehydration. He seemed a little off his game, and I knew deep down that it wasn’t merely dehydration. When I went to see him the next day in the hospital, he wasn’t himself. He was mad at Mom because she was making him eat his breakfast. I went home and told my wife that this was worse than the last time and it wasn’t looking good, including the caveat that I hoped I was overreacting. He was in and out of sleeping, and the next time I’d see him he’d be in a coma that he never came back from. I don’t know if he could hear us or not, but we played music that he liked and we busted balls of both visitors and those in the family in the room - Dad included. We said our goodbyes to him late on that Monday evening, and I cried in the car when I got to the parking lot with the understanding that I wouldn’t be seeing him alive again. My Mom committed to calling my sister and me when he did pass, and I can’t imagine that feeling. I’m told by my Mom’s former nursing coworkers that there’s a phenomenon where parents will hold out days if not a week until their children leave the room in order to pass away. I suppose I take comfort that it wasn’t just us experiencing that, as I still have the feeling that I abandoned Mom and him that night.

You see, though, my Dad has been sick for nearly as long as I can remember. When I was in middle school, he had a sudden illness and before I knew it, he was going to Ann Arbor to get some expert opinions on his condition. Then I was told we were driving to Ann Arbor with my family and then we were saying our final goodbyes to Dad. He had cancer (spoiler: he didn’t) and didn’t have long to live. All of a sudden, some days or weeks later, he was leaving the hospital and it was determined he had a condition known as retroperitoneal fibrosis and that this had formed blockages in his vena cava (main vein of the body) that then caused superficial vasculature to form in his legs to move blood. The body is a magical thing - it knows that it has to create alternate GPS routes to get the blood to/from wherever it is. I’m sure he had other conditions that I’m glossing over so forgive me for that. Dad would struggle with the pain of this for the rest of his life, and that brought many attempts at finding pain relief. Truth be told, I don’t think he ever found the point where he wasn’t in pain. The touch of a dog’s tail would send him into agony. This wasn’t the man who I saw countless times hit his thumb with a hammer and then merely said F*** and keep hammering. The guy who taught me that when we were working on electrical work, if he started to shake from the electricity I’d have to bulldoze him over to disrupt the current from entering his body.

Fast forward to January 2023. Dad has more health concerns and he ends up in the hospital again. Again we’re told he’s going to die, but this time we were with him as he was at Borgess in Kalamazoo. He was in Mom’s old unit, actually. Red carpet treatment - the care team was incredible. When we were settling affairs and saying our final goodbyes, Dad reiterated a point that was very important to him: I was going to be the “man of the house”. He asked me to give the eulogy so I wrote it that day. The idea of being the patriarch of the family is not a responsibility I take lightly, as my family means the world to me. My Mom is a saint on earth, and I’d do anything to protect her from harm or sadness. Little did we know that we’d have nearly 18 more months of extra time with Dad. During that time, I was reminded countless times how the women in my life that I was meant to look after - my wife, my sister, and my Mom - are perfectly capable people who don’t need much from me. Often I get in the way. Mess with them and I’ll drop your ass. Perhaps that’s what Dad was saying. I’d move Heaven and Earth to make sure they are able to traverse this world without strife.

That time in 2023 is when my regrets started, and one of the main reasons I’m writing this blog post. I didn’t take those 18 months for granted, but having experienced my Dad bounce back from health concerns my whole life, I truly believed he might outlive me. Not that I’m some Adonis by any means, but I’m a 38-year-old man who, outside of obesity, is actually in good health. But Dad was the guy who taught me to “spit on it, rub a little dirt in it, and get back in the game”. I figured it would take an act of God or a statistically improbable situation to take him from this world. So I went on living my life and him living his, and I’d see him a fair amount, but I got word from my Mom, my sister, and my wife that he wanted to see me more often. It broke my heart then, and it breaks my heart today as I type this. I took him out to breakfast a couple of times, and (according to him) I called him a lot on the phone. But I did what most of us do… get wrapped up in my own world. You see I know he didn’t fault me for this, as he told me all the time I was doing great. Always encouragement coming from him. He was so proud of me for many things, but I think he was most proud of me as a dad. He loved my girls with everything he had, and another regret I have is that they’ll grow up without him in their lives. The videos I have of his voice are us recording the girls doing kid things.

I’ll never be as handy as Dad was - perhaps one of his biggest regrets. I’ll never run a 4.60 40. I’ll never be blue-collar, and I’ll never ride motorcycles. What I will do is continue to live while honoring his memory by being the best damn husband/father/person I can be. I’ll honor his wish of always being there for Mom, Sam, Kelly, my girls, and whoever else comes into our lives.

You can read the eulogy I gave here. Rest in peace, Dad. I love you so much, and we all miss you dearly.

P.S. Eat a bag of shit, Meta/Facebook. I tried to post the picture there of Dad and me, along with details of his upcoming funeral, and they took it down and labeled it “spam”. To this day, it’s still in review by their team and it’s been two weeks since I tried to post. The reason for the post was to make sure people knew that he had passed and where they could pay their respects on that Saturday. Despite Facebook being AWESOME, people showed up in droves to the funeral. Standing room only. Dad would be proud. And I’m sure he’s telling Facebook to eat shit from Heaven.