"Sing me a Song"

Today is St. Patrick's Day. Given that my father had nothing but Irish blood in him, despite being a few generations deep here in the United States, St. Patrick's Day was a celebratory time. Always a singer, his Irish songs started creeping in and repeating probably right after Valentine's Day. (There were a bunch of Valentine's Day songs too, but those were personal between my parents - my mother always laughed when our father sang them. I think we kids intuitively knew not to ask.)

When I was growing up, I never understood that other families didn't have these singing fathers. I probably only realized it when I had children of my own. As we traveled in the car or did things at home, I was always singing some crazy song. I'd make up the words if necessary, or if I was making up the whole song for their amusement and to fit the occasion, I would sometimes insert right into the lyrics, "I'm making up this song, lalalalala..." One day my oldest daughter asked why I always did this singing and it dawned on me - my father had done it all the years of our lives. There were twelve of us children so when the youngest was too old for silly songs, there were grandchildren to continue the singing to. My answer to my daughter that day? "I do it because of Grandpa." It was one of those moments when I learned anew who I was and where I had come from.

I always sang my children Irish songs as I was putting them to bed, nearly every night when they were very young. They learned the words from sheer repetition. Grandpa and Grandma lived more than two hours away and though we visited, we also called regularly. One year on the morning of St. Patrick's Day, I gathered the kids around me and with two phone extensions we sang to my father. We sang An Irish Lullaby, When Irish Eyes are Smiling, and My Wild Irish Rose since those were among my favorites and the kids knew them best. I can only imagine what we sounded like, three children aged 2, 4, and 6, and their perpetually 29-year-old mother, warbling into the phones with varying capabilities of both song and speech. My mother said my father was thoroughly delighted and told everyone about it. Life was simple then.

This past year of 2007 was my father's last. He went from cautiously healthy in January to a minor health condition that became sepsis, then pneumonia, with complications from existing diabetes, then full-blown end-stage Parkinsons, all in the space of 7 months. He came back home twice, only briefly, between February and September, celebrated his 84th birthday, his 56th wedding anniversay, and accepted the fact that he was dying. It was a difficult journey but he maintained the best spirit one could under the circumstances, alert, aware and charismatic throughout. One morning a nurse asked him how he was feeling and he said not too good. She asked if there was something she could do. He thought, and then responded, "Sing me a song." She laughed and asked what he wanted to hear. "You are my sunshine," was his response. She gathered several of her colleagues around his bed and they sang to him. He asked for another song and they did that too. Thank God for caring professionals and my father's ability to accept what he could not change.

There's still grieving of course. Today will be difficult for every one of us who knew him well. What a legacy though, an unimportant man to the world who had hundreds of people attend his funeral, a tribute to the life he led and the family he created with our mother. Success can be measured in so many ways. My father was one of the most successful people I have ever known. These Irish eyes are smiling... in memory of him.