The Little Prince - A Celebration of My Dad's Life

My dad loved words.  He loved words because words strung together become a story.  And my dad loved stories and story-telling in all of its different forms.  He loved books and music and theater and movies and letter-writing.  Because all of them are ways to tell a story.  And so I am going to do my best to tell you a story about my dad using one of his favorite stories and some of his own words.

One of my father’s favorite books was The Little Prince.  This is a story that he used to read to Sarah and me before bedtime.  It is a book that he encouraged me to read again when I was a teenager.  I can vividly see his copy in my mind because it lasted throughout my entire childhood.  When Alex and Allie were born, he gave them each a copy.  Inside he wrote, “When you’ve learned the magic of reading, you’ll find The Little Prince has much wisdom to offer.”   After my dad died, I decided to read The Little Prince again.  This time through a much different lens than before.  This time I read it to hear his voice.  To connect again with my father and his wisdom.

The Little Prince is a story told by an aviator who crash lands in the desert and meets a Little Prince who came from another planet.  The aviator and The Little Prince spend a year together and over the course of that year the aviator learns a lot about The Little Prince and about life and love.  The Little Prince tells the aviator about his life on the star from which he came.  That he owned a flower.  A flower that he cared for everyday by shielding it from the wind and protecting it from caterpillars and every night by placing a glass bell over it to shield it from the cold.  The Little Prince told the aviator about a fox he encountered when he landed in the desert.  The fox wanted The Little Prince to tame him but The Little Prince didn’t know what that meant.  The fox explained that “to tame” meant to establish ties.  He said, “If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world.  To you, I shall be in unique in all the world.”

By that definition, my father tamed almost everyone he’s ever met.  He was very intentional about establishing unique ties with the people in his life.  As a father, he worked hard to know Sarah and me as people, not just as his children.  Because we went to high school 30 minutes from our house and most of our friends lived as far, we spent a lot of time in the car with my dad.  We would talk the whole time.  He didn’t just want to know what we were doing or what we liked or what we wanted.  He wanted to know what we were thinking.  And why we were was thinking it.  In a letter he wrote to me in my mid-twenties, he said, “I love you.  Beyond love I like you.  One of the great joys of being a parent is seeing a tiny, crying infant blossoming through childhood and adolescence, to become a happy, healthy adult.  One’s child will always be one’s child.  But it is the idea of having an adult relationship with one’s child that brings a sense of fulfillment to a parent.  As you were growing up, we were not only father-daughter, we were friends.  I think we always enjoyed being together and doing things together.  And I want that to continue through your adult life and as I grow old and crotchety. 

And he brought to grand-parenting the same need and desire to establish unique ties with each of his grandchildren.   My father poured himself into his grandchildren.  He wasn’t the typical grandparent who spoils his grandchildren with gifts and treats (though there were no shortage of those).  He was a grandfather who spent much time having meaningful conversations with his grandchildren.  Each year he scheduled a special day out with them. These trips included visits to The Museum of Natural History, The Nutcracker Ballet, the Liberty Science Center, Bowcraft Amusement Park and The Treetops Adventure Course at the Turtle Back Zoo.  He invested his time and love in supporting their hobbies and interests by eagerly and proudly attending their piano recitals, baseball and basketball and soccer games, and attending all of their school concerts and graduations.  He cooked for them and with them.  He visited them when they were sick.  He joked with them.  He loved them with every ounce of his being.  In fact, it was his pure love for them that helped him muster the energy while he lay in the ICU with stage IV cancer, a broken hip, pneumonia, blood clots in both lungs and tubes in his nose and all over his body to lift his head up, open his eyes wide and put a smile on his face to have one last and personal conversation with each of his grandchildren.  He asked Allie how many more times she planned on reading the Harry Potter books.  He asked Emma to write a song about the two of them with the lyrics “I love my Poppy and my Poppy loves me.” He congratulated Alex on sinking a basket at his game the day before and discussed his play practice and busy schedule.  He comforted Will and told him not to remember him like this.  To remember him cooking and driving him around and being fun poppy.  Watching these conversations happen was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.  Because it was watching sheer love between a man and his grandchildren.

Like The Little Prince cared for and treasured his rose, my father cared for and treasured his family.  And not a day went by that he didn’t tell my mother how much he loved her.  Although most of us in this room, myself included, saw him as a near flawless man, the truth is that he grew a lot because of my mother.  My father was NOT perfect.  And from what I hear he made a lot of bad decisions in his younger years.  My mother shared a letter with Sarah and me after he died that my father had written to her after they had had what seemed to be a pretty serious fight.  In the letter my father thanks my mother for having faith in him, for having faith in his dreams and for having faith in his potential.  He told her that he needs her in his life.  He needs her to be with him to achieve their shared vision in life.  The letter was probably about ten pages long.  The final line of the letter read, “I love you.  My life is dedicated to you.”  And though there were certainly bumps along the way, and undoubtedly times when that dedication was tested, he lived up to his promise.  My father’s dedication to my mother and to his family became the very essence of who he is.

One of the most famous lines from The Little Prince is “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  When we were growing up on the second floor of a two family house in North Bergen, we didn’t have a washing machine or dryer.  So on Saturday mornings, my dad would bring us to the laundromat with him.  While he would do the laundry we would go to the arcade next door and have lunch at Burger King.  But we would always help him fold the laundry.  Sometimes, for lunch we would get deli sandwiches and eat together as a family in the living room while watching American Gladiator on TV. On Friday nights, we would rent movies from Blockbuster and order pizza.  We didn’t do a lot of extravagant things.  To many they probably seemed ordinary.  But my dad loved that family time.  It was his most cherished possession. 

One of MY favorite lines from The Little Prince is when the rose says to The Little Prince, “I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”  This reminds me so much of what my dad told Allie and Alex in each of their last conversations. He told them, “In life, good things and bad things will happen.  But it’s important to always focus on the good things.”  My father was an optimist.  He loved life.  He loved his family.  And he loved that we loved him.  There is no doubt that every single person who loves him is going to miss him – his corny jokes, his delicious cooking, his reliability, and his honest love.  But as The Little Prince said to the aviator before he left, “when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrow) you will be content that you have known me.  You will always be my friend.”