Remembering Dad

He wasn't my biological father - I was part of a package deal when he married my Mother - but no one would have known that if I hadn't told them. 

He was a son of Italian immigrants; those who traveled to America and encountered hardship after hardship after doing so. His last name started as Manzone but was shortened to Mann when Italians couldn't obtain work in the coal mines because of their nationality.

He was a Depression youngster; his home was home to many aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Anyone who made the long journey was welcome.  He had numerous stories of those hard times including how his uncles "stole" his paper route money and how, when he stole some penny candy, his mother told the police to keep him overnight to teach him a lesson.

He had a habit of checking everyone's plate at a meal.  I once asked him why he did that and he told me that when he was young, the men who were employed ate first;  the children had whatever was left.  He always looked for the left-behind food.

His parents didn't understand and/or read much English so it was easy for him to have them sign paperwork for him to join the Army at age 17.  That began a career that lasted almost 30 years.

He taught me much.  We played Battleship before it became a board game; using graph paper and pencils to mark our boats. He taught me how to play poker, Parcheesi, Checkers, and how to scramble an egg with leftover spaghetti sauce.  We spent many hours on the Chesapeake Bay fishing in a boat that he made and I learned how to bait a hook with finesse and to not be squeamish when taking crabs out of a trap.

Other children were born after me and each of us had a nickname that follows us to this day.  I was "Squeeze", his namesake was "Ant-ny", the next in line was "Rosebud" followed by "Bones" and the classic "Strunge".  It was only after my youngest sister left home that she found out what her nickname really meant.

He never finished high school, but became an officer by obtaining his GED and working his way up through the ranks. We never knew what his work really entailed; he had a top secret clearance, but we amateur sleuths have deduced (through investigations of military records) that he was involved in a nuclear missile program.

He was quirky - he laughed and joked often and his childhood nickname of "Happy" followed him throughout his days.  He was a joker and didn't care if the joke was on him, since he could give back as good as he got.

He was not ashamed to cry -  I have a picture of him wiping away tears after walking me down the aisle.  He cried tears of regret at the death of a dear friend from whom he was estranged, tears of sadness at the tragic passing of a granddaughter, and tears of joy when he held my daughter's first child.

He loved to gamble and any game one played with him had some stakes attached.  After his retirement from the Army he held several jobs but his favorite was working at the race track where he could bet on the horses.  When casinos opened in Indiana he was probably first in line; and Las Vegas was his heaven on earth.

His actions sometimes didn't make sense sometimes and I commented in his later years that he could have Alzheimer's and we wouldn't know it because he was such a goofball.

Unfortunately, my statement proved to be prophetic. 

As we siblings watched Dad spiral down towards the end of his life, overtaken by this disease, we each shared stories that were indicators to us that the disease had taken him long before any real diagnosis.  Each of us had attributed his actions/quirks to him "just being Dad".

We spent his last week with him. His son from his first marriage, who didn't really know all of us that well joined us in our vigil and became closer to all of us.  We sang to him; we talked to him; we prayed over him.  One of us was always in his room. The Hospice worker shooed us out at one point because she thought he could hear us and didn't want to leave us.

But leave us he did.

His physical body left us seven years ago this week.  His spirit and the memories of him will never leave us and all of us who knew him will be forever thankful that God gave him to us for as long as He did.  We love and miss him and always will.