A time to reflect.

I'm going to spend the day gardening and thinking about Dad. Thinking about life and family and time and money and sickness and health.

Dad's passing didn't come as a surprise -- emotionally, I've been preparing for it for months. Last few times I saw him, I knew that he had given up. It was hard in these last few years because we couldn't really talk, he was so deaf.

Then again, for most of my life, I couldn't really talk to Dad. He dominated the conversation, wasn't a great conversationalist. He was a great talker. I remember most our hunting and fishing trips, which I both loved and hated. Dad could be fun, and he could be demanding.

We bonded most, strangely, over his love of knowledge and trivial. He'd challenge me to identify an obscure actor and was always tickled if I knew. On the other hand, I hated the look in his face when I didn't know something he thought I should know.

Spurred me, I think, to gather knowledge and gather knowledge, though as I grew older I realized that I would never retain the amount of knowledge he had. He was just an incredibly smart man. A little frustrated, I think, even though he was an accomplished doctor -- I think he would have been a fantastic history professor.

He could tell some whoppers, and most of us McGeary's learned to parse his stories for what was real and what was exaggerated. Casual acquaintances didn't know how to do this -- they believed it all, because he was a hell of a good storyteller. Better than me. But when he'd start writing, he would lose his storytelling voice, somehow. I think he was impressed that I became a writer.

He was a dutiful father, but not an attentive one. I realized as I got older that I had opportunities at tons of activities that I would never have been able to do if he wasn't willing to back them up. But even though Dad made those possibilities available (or acquiesced on Mom's insistence) he was rarely involved in those activities. I didn't have the Field of Dreams experience with Dad. I never felt that kind of bonding, there was always a little distance.

At the same time, he had a hoarder's mentality and it did cause problems and took a long time for our family to realize that it was a syndrome and in some ways he just couldn't help it.

But when I suffered from depression just out of my teens, he was willing to support me, let me live at home, pay for college years beyond the normal, and gave me support I needed, even though I was being a real pill at the time. Very few families would have put it with my behavior 40 years ago. Without this help, I'd probably have ended up on the street.

He was proud of his family. We all were successful in our own ways, though none of us really followed the traditional routes to success -- which took him awhile to get used to, I think.

I see a lot of myself in my Dad. Many of the things he fell down on, I see in myself. I see where my love of knowledge (or, if you will, trivia) comes from. The love of reading. The independence and self-entertainment aspects of my personality, which are both a hindrance and a blessing.

I see him as man of his times, growing up in the depression, getting ready to go to war, doing the things his father expected of him, though I think in many ways he'd rather have done something else. He understood and appreciated my Mom, and he was proud of his kids. He was accomplished and from all accounts, liked and admired by his co-workers. (Especially for his stories and jokes and knowledge. He was a walking google.)

He was tenacious, even though much of what he loved most in life, Mom and traveling and especially reading, were taken from him. My brothers and sisters were impressively supportive of Dad in these last years. Linda seemed to really like him and enjoy his company, (Linda likes and enjoys most people). I'm glad we were able to be there for him, at the end, even if there was probably more we could have done.

I can feel the sadness, just under the surface, but I also feel the inevitability of it. It's a time to reflect.