He's not dangerous, he's just a nuisance

There’s a story I remember fondly that says a lot about my late father.

For me, the anecdote captures who he was. How he handled a son who wasn't quite right. How the son has often strived to be more like the father, and too often failed.

Can I tell it?

A few years ago, I had just arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska, where my Dad was living with one of my sisters. On the way in from the airport, my brother-in-law and I stopped to pick up a case of Alaska Amber Ale, one of my father’s favorite brews.

It was early winter and already dark by late afternoon. When I walked through the door, my Dad was there in his wheelchair, wearing his leopard-print shawl to keep warm, waiting for me, expectantly, lovingly, like he did with all his seven children when they were away for any length of time.

“Hey, Jay!” he said.

It was the same phrase, uttered in the same familiar tone, that he used when I was in junior high school, when he’d arrive home from work and ask if I wanted to head out to the local public golf course for a quick nine holes before dark.

That evening in Ketchikan, I handed him a beer (he knew that I’d come packing) and he looked me straight in the eye.

Then he raised the bottle for a clink and a toast.

"Here's lookin at ya," he said.

He always said that.

He was 90.

I don’t think I loved him any more than I did at that moment. That’s not exactly true, of course, because I loved him that much and more at so many moments. 

But that toast, and the warm and lively way he offered it, just said so much about him, how he always managed to rise to the occasion, no matter how he was feeling.

I posted the below photo online the next day, with the words,

“I’m 90 and I’m ready to party.”

John Glionna died two years later, on Thanksgiving Day 2014. Just the day before, he had been flirting with the hospital nurses, in that sweet, innocent way he had about him.

It was always so gentle, like he was teasing one of his own five daughters. 

Nurses loved him. 

People would always say, “Your father is just about the nicest man I’ve ever met,” shooting me a subtle glance that said, “So, what happened you?”

I eventually addressed this discrepancy with the man himself.

“Dad, everyone who knows you considers you such a good man,” I’d say. “On the road of life, you’ve always taken the gentleman’s route. And me, your son, I usually skulked along the scoundrel’s path.

"What happened?”

I was serious. I wanted to know.

“Well,” he offered, “maybe it’s your profession.”

He was proud of what I did, but the probing, nosey questions journalists always asked make him uncomfortable.

“No,” I’d say. “It’s not that. Somewhere, sometime, something went wrong.”

And it did.

I have never been able to become the man my father was, no matter how desperately hard I've tried.

Just prior to his death, he’d taken a fall and broke a rib. He spent the last week in the hospital and I was there by his side, sleeping in an adjacent single bed, playing patient’s advocate, a job my mother would have done. 

But she had died seven years before, in a car accident in Florida. And he missed her terribly, weeping at memories, until my sisters smothered him with so much love that he felt warm again, under an emotional shawl.

This November will mark five years since my Dad left us. The most sentimental ones among his kids still cry at times, for both our parents, but now, more than not, when we remember them in talks and group messages, we laugh.

We celebrate them both, as we should.

My father had a different but equally-loving way with each one of his children.

He named me after himself, the first boy after four girls. But I wasn't the little slugger he'd imagined I'd be. For example, I hated baseball, his favorite sport, and flinched when we played catch in the backyard.

He was quiet, considered. I said obnoxious, inappropriate things.

I was afraid of him early on, fearful I'd anger him with my neurotic misbehavior, that he’d pull off his belt and give me a proper whipping.

It didn’t happen all that often; it didn’t have to. 

I got the point.

As I got older, the smart-aleck in me remained, but my father accepted me for who I was. When I would tell jokes or act the fool in front of his friends, or mine, he’d just shake his head and say,

"Well, you know, we dropped him as a child.”

And people would laugh, harder at his one-liner than they ever did at any of my hi jinks.

My Dad could out smart-aleck me. 

He could beat me at my own game, in that soft, subtle way of his.

When my parents lived in northern Florida, I called often. But I wouldn’t launch into any rap until I had them both on the phone.

My mother would always pick up, usually on the kitchen wall phone.

“John!” she’d yell into the front room where my Dad sat in his lounger. “Johnny’s on the phone!”

When I knew my audience was set, I’d offer my usual opening salvo.

“So, what are you two jackals doing?” I’d say. “Preening each other’s fur?”

Yes, I called my own parents jackals.

I was their loving, smart-aleck son.

My mother would laugh, usually.

My Dad would go silent, like a comedian observing a beat, before returning his own volley.

“Well,” he’d say to my Mom, with me clearly in his sights.

“He’s not really dangerous. He’s just a nuisance.”

Either that, or he’d call me a blockhead. 

That was his favorite phrase for me when I was being foolish. 

He also called me Jay.

Or Jaybird.

During the few short years he lived in Alaska, I’d fly up for a few days and sit with him at the kitchen table of my sister’s house. I didn’t have to go anywhere, do any wild Alaska things, or play tourist.

I just liked being with him, by his side, sitting at that table, looking out over a southeastern Alaska bay with its icy-blue waters.

That was enough for me.

My father had good eyesight. He could spot hovering eagles long before I ever did.

I will never forget those moments. 

Once, years before, when he was in the hospital in Miami, after taking another fall, I sat by his hospital bed, iPad in hand, trying to keep his mind off his pain.

I’d find his favorite country songs, sung by crooners Marty Robbins or Burl Ives, and play them for him, loving the look of surprise and the memories the old melodies brought to his face.

One afternoon, after a medley of songs, he turned to me and said,

“Jay, how many songs you got in that little box?”

Later, the nurses complained he wasn’t drinking enough fluids, so one morning I force-fed him two Ensures, with ice and a straw.

I laid the empties side by side and asked him, “Dad, do you think could do one more bottle?”

He looked at me.

“Do you think that bottle could fit up your ass?”

Ah, I always brought out the best in my Dad.

Toward the end, he began to suffer a bit of dementia, forgetting small details, which I know frustrated him.

But he never lost his sense of humor.

At that kitchen table in Alaska, we’d sit over our morning coffee, staring out the window, on the watch for sounding whales. 

Suddenly, we’d make eye contact and he’d crack a wry little smile, as if to say, “C’mon, what you got?”

I never wanted to let him down, so i invented some foolish little insult or word play.

“You know, Dad,” I said one morning. “I wonder how many wild animals are out there in those woods. I’ll tell you what, I have a way to find out. Why don’t I push your wheelchair out there in some clearing, someplace well off the path and, after I retreat to a safe distance, we can see how many predators come sniffing around your chair?”

“What do you think?”

He’d kept my gaze for a moment and then he smiled. 

“Have you ever been incarcerated?”

Boom.

I loved that man.

He was a smart-aleck as a boy, like me, always in trouble. He was never given a middle name, but he told us kids when we were young and gullible that it was Vince.

I believed him for years. 

He got me. 

I’d been had.

After his last bad fall, as he lay in that hospital bed, I’d help the nurses roll him over to prevent him from getting bed sores.

I’d be right there at his side as he grimaced at the pain of his broken rib. In time, I think he began to associate my face with that pain.

One evening, a nurse gave him a shot that I could tell hurt him.

As I lay in the next bed, he looked over at me, confused and angry, and said, “If you were over here, I’d punch you right in the face.”

I leaned over him gently and said, “Dad, if it makes you feel any better, hit me. Go head. God knows I deserve it.”

Suddenly, his eyes got wide. He looked at me and said.

“No, son, I couldn’t hit you. I love you!”

In the end, pneumonia took him. The old man's best friend.

I'd had to leave Alaska for work, but had gotten a call from my sister that the end was near.

My flight from St. Louis back to Ketchikan was delayed and so I arrived back at his hospital room after he’d been given his medication for the night. 

He was sound asleep.

All night, I lay awake in the next bed, listening to his steady breathing, anxious for the morning light when he would awaken, so I could tell him yet again how much I loved him, and how proud I was to be his son.

I must have fallen asleep before dawn, because an orderly tapped me on the shoulder.

“He’s gone,” he said.

I got up and kissed his forehead. I wanted him to open his eyes and put me in my place one more time with a gentle swipe of humor.

But he was gone.

A year later, I was back in Alaska, on Thanksgiving day. 

That night, leaving a party, I walked home beneath the stars and felt his presence.

And I talked to him, out loud, all the way home.

I told him once again what a gentleman he was.

I said my greatest hope in life is still to become half the man he was.

And he heard me.

He told me a joke.

But that's between us, me and my Dad.