Sentence of Guy

We returned from Naples, Florida late last night on Frontier Air-- which is most definitely a seat-of-your-pants budget-type airline . . . but though we were cramped, Frontier got my family there and back on time-- unlike my brother and his wife who are still stranded in Florida-- they were supposed to leave Sunday but their flight was canceled due to wind and all the Frontier flights were full on Monday night and they don't really have reciprocity with other airlines or give vouchers, so my brother and his wife are flying out on Tuesday night-- hopefully because Frontier doesn't fly on Wednesdays to Fort Meyers-- but though the flights were sketchy, my father's Celebration of Life service was a great success: my wife did an incredible job collecting pictures of my dad and made a comprehensive slideshow of his life, which I set to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, two of my father's favorite musicians and then several people spoke about my dad-- I led off and spoke about my dad's impressive career in corrections and what a privilege it was to work with him . . . I wrote up my dad's expert witness reports, and then I talked about how my dad, despite his incredible career as a progressive prison director and designer, always expressed how proud he was of me, despite the fact that I haven't accomplished anything near what he accomplished in his life, and then I threw in a few literary allusions because I'm a bombastic jackass, and so I mentioned Turgenev and The Great Santini and Biff from Death of a Salesman and touched upon that classic trope of the son trying to impress his father, usually to no avail, but that I never had to worry about that because my dad always sincerely expressed pride in whatever I accomplished, teaching, coaching, being a dad, playing sports, whatever-- and that gave me so much joy and confidence;

then my brother Marc talked about how my father was always there for him and so he missed his best friend and confidant;

then my older son Alex. who just turned 21, recalled a time when he was very young and thought his Poppy was the coolest old guy in the world and how he thought that his Poppy was called "guy" because he was the original "guy"-- he was THE "guy" and Alex remembered how when he was older and needed help for a Model UN event, Poppy set up a lunch with Alex and his friend who was an FBI agent and the agent explained all the things Alex needed to know;

then my younger son Ian, who is 19, described how strong-willed and stubborn my father was and then he described what his Poppy would do when he did something stupid and idiotic-- Poppy would ask Ian to "step into my office"-- and Ian remembered how annoyed he would get when he heard this, when he knew he was in for a lecture, but then he finished his speech by saying though the phrase "step into my office" annoyed him then, now all he really wanted was to hear my dad say it one more time;

then some of my father's friends spoke-- his consulting partner Tony Ventetuolo explained my father's awful sense of direction and recounted an anecdote about a bridge in Sioux City and then he had us close our eyes and imagine my father missing a two-foot putt and asked if we could hear him from above, yelling profanity from Heaven;

and Mr. Apgar donned a pair of reading glasses with the price tag still on them and told a slew of stories, from Cape Cod-- how my dad would go to the Christmas Tree shop and "borrow" a pair of reading glasses and wear them with the tag on so he could read the prices and how he was there when my dad told him how excited he was that Catherine and I were going to teach overseas and he was hoping we'd land in Italy or Switzerland or Spain and his reaction when he got the phone call and we were going to teach in Damascus and how they had to go to the Chatham bookstore the next day and look at a map to see exactly where that was and he talked about what a great golfer and competitor my dad was and some other things I can't remember-- 

so we crammed in my mother's condo for the long weekend and celebrated my father's incredible life and I was really proud of how well my children spoke of him and how they comported themselves all weekend, putting up with a bunch of old people reminiscing-- and amidst all the eulogizing and sadness, we also had to celebrate three recent birthdays: my mom just turned 80, I just turned 55, and Alex just turned 21.