The Passing/ The Memorial

San Francisco 11/23/25

To my sister and brother; Amy and Peter

I remember how for the last year, Dad thought he was already 100. Amy wants to make you lemon cake with the chocolate frosting for your birthday,” I reminded him. “We’ll have root beer floats for everyone.”
With gusto, dad would say, “Yum, Yum, Yum.”
If not for his death, his 100th birthday would have been today.
I remember how it always surprised him that there were no ashtrays at The Sequoias Retirement Community in San Francisco. Once Dad told me he, there was a time he couldn’t write a letter without smoking a cigarette.
I called dad every Friday or Saturday. I’d always ask, “How’s it going?
“I have nothing to worry about,” he’d answer, for the last two years. “All I do is eat and sleep.”
I recall, how after dad died, I’d spent time on our Prescott front porch sipping wine, smoking cigarettes. Numb. Looking up at the constellation, Orion. ‘Come home with your sword or on it, was what the Greek Spartan mothers told their sons. My mom taught me the constellations. I don’t know why of think of this.
I recall my brother mentioning that the nurse told him dad was “transitioning.” I thought immediately of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the 49-day passage after death, during which most sentient beings are reborn. The transitional passage Tibetan Buddhists refer to as The Bardo.
I remember asking the Garchen Buddhist Institute in nearby Chino, if there was a prayer I could recite for my during his death passage, in that he’d be twelve hours away by car away from me, when he died. They sent thirty pages or more.
I remember how dad always offered me a glass of red wine when he was still in his 16th floor San Francisco apartment at The Sequoias. He was always so reassuring. I so often, felt like such a failure. You always do things your own way, that’s the great thing about you,” Dad said.
I recall dad teaching me how to water ski at Lake of the Woods in Oregon, where my mom’s family had a cabin.
I recall how at age seven, he bought me my first Wilson Pro Staff tennis racket and taught me how to play.
In Oregon one summer, I remember hiking with dad on the Pacific Crest Trail in the Winema National Forest and picking huckleberries which weren’t that great.
I recall Dad and I talking about climbing nearby Mt McLoughlin but he thought I was too young to try. We never tried it, but I often thought of it as “our mountain” though they spelled McLaughlin with an “o” and not an “a.”
I remember in third grade on Bonsen Court, near our newly-built house, in Redwood City when dad taught me how to ride a bike. How fantastic it was when he took the training wheels off and I could keep my balance and ride.
I remember helping dad pour concrete for the tetherball court at the end of the lawn in our backyard.
I remember his friend, Dick Gurkey, who had a parrot. He tried to sell dad his bird. Mom thought Mr. Gurkey was a kook and wouldn’t let him into the house again.
I remember dad and mom taking me to pick up Sugar, our first dog, a Sheltie/Collie mix. She was killed by a delivery truck which tried to back up out of our steep driveway. I loved that girl so much.
I remember dad bringing home two cats for us and letting me name them. I named the calico, Rachael, a name I’d plucked out a bible somewhere and the male tabby, Tiger.
I recall dad getting up and walking half a mile or so every day, before taking off for work. I’m certain that this is what accounts for him living so long. I recall that he was almost never sick.
I remember how put up a basketball backboard and hoop for me at the bottom of our driveway in Portola Valley. When I was older, he bought me season’s tickets to Stanford Basketball games. I got to see Lew Alcindor (who later became Kareem Abdul Jabbar), when UCLA played Stanford and slaughtered them. I recall how Dad would drop me off and pick me up after
every game, even though the games were sometimes on school nights.
I recall ho, the weekend before Halloween, because I loved King Arthur, he sawed a shield out of plywood and painted it silver with a red star. I remember how dad cut up an old belt and attached pieces of it to the back so I’d have arm holds.
I remember how dad also taught me snow skiing which was a great love of his and encouraged me to ice skate but I was scared of falling and clung to the rail. I could have snow skied more but didn’t want to go to Sugar Bowl or Donner Pass or Tahoe with the entourage of parents and family friends.
I recall that dad rarely discouraged me from trying anything. It didn’t bother him at all, that I mostly disliked church and quit Boy Scouts after three months.
I remember at age 16 during the summer, playing tennis tournaments around California, traveling alone on Greyhound buses and staying with various country club host families. I remember getting ranked in tennis in Northern California. I recall dad often placating mom who never seemed to stop worrying about me.
How dad took me aside when I was in High School and was staying out until two or so with my girlfriend. He’d laugh: your mothers’ worrying keeps me up all night. Once he said try to be home by at least one. He always left the one house door unlocked so I could slip in quietly. He advised me to take my shoes off before coming in as Mom would be listening.
I recall dad’s parents in Sacramento, California. How dearly I loved both of them, particularly Grandma. He was mostly Irish, she mostly Italian. Grandma told dad he was the perfect mix.
I remember mom saying grandma was of peasant stock.
I remember mom saying, when they had me, that she
expected I would be a girl and that she already had a name for
me.
I remember dad saying, “Your mother gets that way.”
I remember when my son, Tom took his first train to San Francisco, to visit his grandpa; Pop-pop” as all the grand kids called him. Tom fell asleep on the train and missed his Oakland stop. I recall how Dad followed the train for 15 miles to Richmond. He’d contacted the conductor. How he picked up my son after midnight. I remember how he laughed and told Tom that there was nothing better than napping on trains. He was 83 or 84 then.
I recall completely trusting dad and his driving. He was decisive, very smooth and never got lost. He was always able to find a parking space in San Francisco.
I remember how dad loved reading every book in the Patrick O’Brien series about the guy in the British Navy in, I guess, what was the 19th century. Dad once boasted that he’d read every good book in the Sacramento Library. For Christmas and for his birthday, I always tried to buy him books about the sea.
I recall, much later in life, how dad revealed his parents had shipped him off to relatives in Texas. How he had gotten into the Navy and into officer’s school when he was seventeen.
I remember finding an old rubber in a shoebox of dad’s stuff at my grandparents. How his dad, my grandpa, wouldn’t give me dad’s handgun from the Navy.
I remember grandma saying, “Here. Give that to me.”
I recall how I moved in with my girlfriend, freshman year in college, how both my parents and hers cut us off. How dad would send me CARE packages of salami, bread and candy, without mom’s knowledge. He never openly disapproved.
I remember dad giving me my first car, a ‘66 Ford Mustang. Mom had driven it for a few years, but it wasn’t the best car for her. This was in 1969 or 1970. I really loved that car!

I remember dad teaching me how to tie my tie before going to church.
I remember hating ties, though now I can still do a Windsor knot, thanks to him.
I recall, that though he was a Sunday School teacher, who served for a few years as Senior Warden, he would rather be playing tennis on Sundays or listening to 49er games while he tended to projects in the yard for mom.
I remember dad putting me to bed when I was very young. How he always kissed me on the side of my face goodnight
I recall dad and I talking about Europe. He loved to paint, to play the recorder and to sing- he took singing lessons with the wife of a guy at church who owned a successful garbage company. I thought that funny and weird.
I remember dad saying that he wanted to go to Europe alone, one summer to paint, after he’d met mom at grad school at Stanford. How mom told him that if he went, she wouldn’t wait for him. How he never went. He didn’t comment, no affect. He just left it at that.
I remember, that when he became a successful businessman, he took mom on numerous vacations to Europe, once to China, and once Russia, almost every year. He wanted to go to Egypt but mom and the other couple were scared. He worked hard to fund everything mom would have ever wanted, and had enough money to put us all through college.
He put family before everything.
I remember how dad’s dog, when he was a youngster, was named Queenie.
I recall our old Ford Fairlane station wagon, our family trips to Oregon for vacation, the cabin on Lake of the Woods, halfway between her hometown, Klamath Falls, Oregon and, Medford, to the west.
I remember how warm and secure sleeping in the station wagon was, listening to the engine (we often drove at night). The murmur of mom’s and dad’s voices. Knowing dad could get us through anything.
I remember dad saying to me, when I was in high school, that he worried about running out of saying things to “Your mother.” “ Your mother is so much smarter than me. Always marry someone smarter than you,” he added. “You’ll never ran out of things to talk about.”
I remember mom saying, “Your father always wanted to be a professor, but he didn’t think he could make enough money to take care of us the way we deserved.”

I recall when dad’s brother Ralph, Uncle Bud, was dying from prostate cancer. Uncle Bud’ worked at the Lawrence Lab at UC Berkeley for 40 years. Ho, once a week after work, on Fridays, dad would drive from Palo Alto to El Cerrito in the East Bay and read to him. Later he would visit his grave every month for a year or so with our Aunt Pat.
I remember dad taking an interest in my putting together a box trap, so that I could trap chipmunks and squirrels near the family cabin in Lake of the Woods. He let me take a chipmunk back to California but convinced me that I should release him at the border.
“He’ll have a better life here” dad said.
I remember how self-effacing and self-sacrificing dad was. But how quietly confident and certain he was about rising to any occasion. I remember how my sister told me many years later, that our grandma, my mother’s mother, said that her daughter didn’t deserve to marry someone as handsome as dad.
I remember dad letting me go off by myself in third grade to the fields around Woodside High School, how I’d get so self-absorbed, I’d disappear for hours. I loved to catch blue belly lizards, alligator lizards, gopher snakes and king snakes and collect the baseballs in the weeds behind the high school baseball field batting cage.
I remember dad going to a pet store with me, to buy my first pet, a guinea pig, named George. I would take George in his cage out to the front lawn and slide out the aluminum bottom pan, so he could graze on the grass, always remembering to put two bricks on top of the cage to weigh it down. I recall how the neighbor’s German Shepherd knocked George’s cage over and killed him. . I remember crying with dad and telling him how I wanted to kill that dog. Dad was going to talk to the neighbors but mom didn’t want him saying anything.
I remember how mom had said George always made such a mess.
However, it was mom who bought me books on birds, on butterflies, other insects and on wildlife. It was mom who bought me my first telescope and my first microscope and who always encouraged me on my Science projects.
How dad and mom worked well in tandem. How their lives seemed to mesh together so well.
I had a small paper Dad Sign, I’d tape up to my desk lamp every Friday to remind me to call him. I never let up on dad about the-lemon cake-with-chocolate-frosting-and-root-beer-floats-for-his- 100th-birthday bit.
I recalled that sometimes on our vacation trips to Oregon we’d stop at the A &W in Red Bluff and get root beer. He remembered that vividly.
Dying as he was at 99, seven weeks before his 100th birthday, he responded to me as he typically did. He always laughed, “You know where to find me. I won’t be going anywhere.”
I still feel the urge to call dad every Friday at 4:30 Pacific Standard Time before the Sequoia’s serves dinner on the Memory Recovery Unit where he lived after turning ninety six.
For the last six months, more often than not, Dad seemed to be in bed.
Suddenly I recall the Victorian euphemism, about aging, dying people, “Taking to the beds.”
I’ll never forget dad’s quick loving smile.
“Call me any time you like,” he always said.