Father's Day and the Beatles

This is my second father’s day without my dad. I’ve made it a tradition now to do the hour plus drive out to his gravesite to see him, the whole subjecting myself all the songs and memories I can associate with him, his life, and his death. The soundtrack of this trip is the Beatles collection ‘One.

This is a time when I want to be cut off, if just for a few hours. It makes me nervous that my cell might ring. I leave it on just in case something goes wrong, but I wish it was off and out the window. I call my wife about ten minutes into it to tell her I’m going to stop by my grandmothers for some coffee before I come home. I hate talking to my wife right now, which is strange to me because I love her very much; but right now I’d be pissed if even God wanted to stop in for a chat.

I skip over “Yellow Submarine” because this morning it just doesn’t seem appropriate. I hit the turn to Clermont and think that Dad would have said this was the slow way to go. “Penny Lane” gets skipped too. No in the mood for the cheerful John and Paul. “All you need is love” isn’t a bad song for the moment. It stays on. The tears, just a few start halfway through the song. Not uncontrollable, but there nonetheless. This time going down I have some big fighter pilot type sunglasses so it’s easier. “Lady Madonna” kicks up and my chest feels heavy. I play it twice for good measure, just to make sure.

“Hey Jude” has to wait for awhile, that one and one other are the heartrippers. In my idyllic world I’m like Gore Vidal, Vonnegut, or Lear and someone reads this and cares about the detail that my mother in law has a chair on her front porch painted with all the titles of the Beatles songs, and little illustrations for most of them. A tall lanky John, a blue meanie, and so forth. When I see sometimes I think what my father would thought of it. He would have loved it, he would have smiled, studied it, and commented on how neat it was.

I’m twenty six and Beatle mania is long gone for me, Lennon died the year I was born, and I don’t get how influential the White Album was. However their songs are a part of my life, little stitches in the tapestry of my days. When I first started to date the woman who would become my wife I remember she had a painted stencil of ‘Imagine’ on her wall. The connection I have with these English fellows is odd, but real. I’m not going to say ‘they’ve been there when I need them’ or some other trite analog, but to be true, they’ve been a part of my journey for sure. Not just on this June 17^th, but my whole journey. I don’t know what a ju-ju eyeball is, but I’ve know that phrase since I played with transformers. It’s a legacy I must pass down to my daughter. At one and a half she’s a smart, clever girl, so I know she’ll get it.

I have to listen to one of the two now. ‘Let it be’ hurts me. When my uncle rotted away of cancer when I was in high school I played that song until it was Pavlovian for me. When I hear it, the man defenses come crashing down and I cry. It is my pain song. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I have to hear it today. The opening piano is like a gunshot. The Phil Spector wall of sound is like a vice around my temples. I cry like a madman. I cry like a hysterical madman. My jaw clenches and unclenches, by reflex I fight it like it was trying to strangle me. I fight it and part of me hates it, but those piano notes and the line about ‘being parted’ murder me. Alone in my car I let out the stored anger I have. I don’t buy into that macho horse shit that men don’t, or can’t cry. My father taught me better.

I play the song six times, enough to get messed up on it like some drug. I skip over to ‘Hey Jude’. By the time it goes into four minutes of ‘na-na-na-na’, I’m gone. This is the wet works. I see him, I see me. I think about bagpipes on a rainy day in January, I think about seeing his coffin above the earth. I think about my friends so ripped up by the ordeal you would think their fathers died. It’s touching and it’s what today is about. Like some madman I scream. I laugh. Oh lord I laugh.

I don’t spend long at his grave. What I had to say, I said on the way down. I stay long enough to pull weeds, clean it off, and mumble a few words. Dad wasn’t big on visiting graves, coming down here is something I inherited from my mother. I don’t know if my father looks down from some heaven. I don’t know if he appreciates me coming. I want to think he does. Most of all though, I come down here for me. Me, John, Paul, George, and even Ringo make this trip. It’s good, it clears the pipes in a way, freshens up the insides. Things like this fathers day on a hot morning remind me of good days in the past.

The waterworks are locked down when I walk out of Holy Cross Cemetery. I still miss him, but life seems to be a collection of speed up and slow down. Today is no different. I play ‘Help’ when I driver off. Not because I’m hurt anymore, just because I like the idea of being ‘not so self assured’. It reminds me why we need fathers. My daughter will never want for that, I’ll stand beside her and behind when the time is right. Maybe one day when I’m gone, she’ll make a journey like this, and it will renew her idea of parenting. She’ll leave some cemetery not with tears, but with a focus on doing the very best she can in loving her children. I can only hope so. Somewhere I know my father agrees.