Two Years Later.

It has been a time in which much has happened.

Probably most important for my life was the death of Paul's and my father on January 2, 2014. He was 98. Somehow I had thought he'd live forever, at least the rest of my life.

He had Alzheimers  the last 5 or 6 years of his life which took him away from us. He still recognized the main members of his family. But much else shutdown. I suspect it was enhanced by his progressively deteriorating hearing.

In his good years he had loved music of all types, loved going to live stage plays in New York or London. And enjoyed pithy conversations, though in these he often found himself a participant of one because the other members of the circle were not of a similar caliber intellect.

He was a popular man in his age cohort.

An inveterate crossword puzzle fan, and a constant figure-rer. From his childhood he could sit by the hour and work out math problems long hand in his cribbed hand. We would often find long columns of computations along the margins of newspapers or magazines where he had simply worked out a long question of the square root of a number or the percentage of another or the profit he'd make on an investment.

My good fortune was that he was my father first before my brother Paul came along, and the step kids from his second marriage. Because of my favored place in the family order I had the treasures of spending time with the younger man who had served in war and in peace, and who held his family above all in his world.

My bad fortune was that he was my father first before my brother, . . . Because it required of me a stricter standard of behaviour and performance which sadly I often failed to meet. For that I still apologize to his ghost each day.

But hindsight is so clear. And if you could talk to yourself back then what might you say, to that headstrong lazy fellow I was, which could make any real difference?

So Dad's ghost haunts me. But not in a bad way.