It hardly seems possible, but it's been exactly one year since my father took his life. Rather than serving as a creepy, public rending of shirts, the following is meant as a loving tribute to a truly unique man.
My father, Robert David Roth (Sr.), was a complex man - equal parts Marlon Brando rebel and Norman Rockwell conservative, Ray Charles hipster and James Taylor americana, Lenny Bruce iconoclast and Johnny Carson classic. He was a lover of jazz, fine chianti, travel, movies, gadgets, children and animals (in small doses), science. The Simpsons, The Sopranos, Stanley Kubrick, literature, art, ladies, history and blue humor. He was the most charismatic person I've ever met, and he was my favorite Republican. (Elvis Presley is a distant number 2)
As a boy I literally believed that my dad could stop the rain - really. I'll admit that it was a little tough growing up in his shadow. I was a strange boy who would become a strange man, and he was a guy who seemed to just "get" people. He made his living as a wholesale furniture rep, but that's not who he was. In my mind he was Joe Namath, Neil Armstrong and Jackson Pollock all rolled into one. Perhaps it's this rather claustrophobic melange of characteristics which made him difficult to disagree with. He was a jock poet - what's more confusing than that?
And boy did we disagree. As the years went on and I graduated from art school we had plenty to disagree about. In the fall of 1988 I moved from Detroit to Chicago. After having worked full time and carried a full load of classes I was primed and ready to party. I moved into an apartment with my lifelong pal Sully and proceeded to let the games begin. By this time Dad had calmed down a bit. The raucous late night blow-outs at Michigan State were behind us, and he was settling into his new life as a real estate man in The Sunshine State.
Not long after my move he called :
"David," he said in the dramatic, stentorian voice that was a little like James Earl Jones performing Darth Vader on ouzo, "I'm coming up there. We're gonna bury the hatchet."
"OK," I said, "but be ready to put it all on the table."
And that, as they say, was that. We had a great visit, and that weekend found us sitting in a beer garden on Broadway, talking frankly about all the bad mojo which had passed between. For the first time in my life, I felt that my father viewed me as a man.
There were other conflicts, and of course some were not so easy, but that's not germane, nor is it important. In the frenetic tumble of day-to-day life it's easy to focus on those things which slow us down and get in our way, but it is our good memories which sustain us in retrospect.
Dad was a real charmer, and I've been thinking about this aspect of his personality a lot lately, because it's rather incongruous with his intolerance for BS. But he was charming and charismatic, and I realize something now that I never quite got before. There's a reason people respond so favorably to charm and charisma, and it's this: somehow, someway, it fills you with hope. Charming people, at least some charming people, fill you with an innate sense of well-being and acceptance, and it's this sense of acceptance which can somehow convey that things can get better.
I had the pleasure of helping Dad move a couple years ago, and we walked into a Home Depot looking for tape and bubble wrap.
"How are you?" he said to a total stranger.
The woman looked at him, blinking.
"Are you having a good day?"
"Uhhh, yea." She was taken aback, but she smiled.
"Great!"
I did my best to blend into the drywall and two by fours.
Once, on a transatlantic flight, he was in the aisle, dancing to a Motown song on the endlessly looping in-flight radio. It was on that trip, at age ten, that my future came into focus. At the end of the trip we arrived at the Cistene Chapel, and it's the first time I ever saw him cry. Seeing that ceiling and the impact it had on him, I realized that I wanted to study art. And yes, I'm happy to report that both of my parents, and my two beautiful sisters were very supportive when I chose to chuck two years of pre-law for the highly lucrative bachelor of fine arts degree.
Dad was an artist, and a good one, at that. My sisters and I grew up with his work, primarily a large, monochrome, inscrutable abstract canvas called something like "Truth Shines a Light on The Darkness." It was a roiling black canvas with a swirling, bright white circle in the lower left, tethered to the upper right with a pristine white line. There were skillful renderings, too, and the house was filled chock-a-block with the work of other artists as well.
He was a lover of music, from Bernstien, to Beethoven, to the Beatles. From Ray Charles to Willie Nelson to Townes Van Zandt and back again. He was not a religious man, but, in his own way, he lived a profound spirituality of human-ness. "There's a beat," he was fond of saying "find yours and dance."
I have said that I have many, many fond memories of childhood with my Dad. We used to watch nature shows together, and I think he enjoyed it even more than I did. There was nothing to compare with seeing him get excited. Once, when I was probably 8 or 10, I walked by the bathroom one Sunday morning as he was shaving.
"Davey boy - get yourself dressed, and be sure to bundle up! We're going to see Broadway Joe Namath and the New York Jets play your Detroit Lions!"
In those days the Lions played at Tiger Stadium, outside. I have never been so cold in my life. Once again my father demonstrated his pragmatic side "here, have some of this, it'll warm you up." And thus began my rather long and storied relationship with bourbon.
If you ask me "what kind of man was your dad?" I could run down the essential telling details: 5' 9", thinning hair, frameless glasses, you know the drill. But none of that would lend any insight into the essence of the man. So, to that end, I'm here to tell you that he obliged the one lesson of existential wisdom. It's a simple dictum, and it goes like this:
Live until you die.
The effort to find meaning in all things is human nature. But it is not possible to know every chamber of the heart of another. In the end we are left to ponder the imponderables, to balance our knowledge of the wonderful chaos of life with the silent abyss that is death. "Truth Shines a Light in the Darkness," indeed. In this case we would all do well to observe the daily truth of Dad's life - live until you die.
There's a wonderful photo sitting on my desk of Dad from his glory days as a high school full back. It's a night game, and the glare of the flash bulbs has turned his fiery eyes white. Number 57 runs upfield, ball clutched tightly under his left arm, right fist knurled into an instrument of pain and will. Behind him, on all fours, is a dazed defensive lineman. In front of him is a hulking behemoth, easily 6' 6", and still convinced that he has the upper hand. Boy was that guy in for a surprise.
To me, this snapshot is symbolic, and it tells you everything you need to know about my old man. The soon-to-be-bruised defensive giant is the grim reaper, and number 57 is about to give him what for. Dad died as he lived- on his terms, the captain of his own ship. He lived until he died.
This is a touching piece, Dave. Sad yet beautiful, like the Blues or Satie's Gymnopodie No.3, or like life itself.