December 10, 2021. The day my father died.
My father, Jack Beaver, lived with a terribly aggressive colon cancer for the majority of 2020-2021. The rapidity with which the disease progressed (along with some devastating chemo infusions) took dad down like explosives administered to a remote, beloved mountain. After weeks of watching him like a hawk- attempting to comprehend what was actually happening (HE. IS. DYING.)- trying to maneuver him around the house- in and out of chairs and a wheel-chair (no easy task- he was 6 foot 2 inches- weighed a barely diminished 200 pounds)- I finally watched them take the corpse (on a gurney) of the best man I've ever known out of his house. His body left the house. Whatever animated my father- made him who he was- was already somewhere inscrutable to me- with the obvious exceptions of guess-work, myth, legend, abstract belief and hear-say.
My father was (is) the most ridiculously important figure of my life. I say- ridiculous- because it’s truly ridiculous how much he influenced me. There was a psychic influence as well as an organic game afoot. My father loved with his actions. His words were of little consequence. He showed you what he thought of you. You would see it in his very movements while in his vicinity. His moral compass was relatively non-negotiable. His ethical grounds were tailored, windswept and locked-in. The domain was safe. The footing was solid. He was a man you could trust and believe in- just as much as he could trust and believe in you. He was bothered by the injustice he perceived in the world and he'd let you know if you had the moxy to discuss it with him. He was both kind and (unbeknownst to him) a little rough around the edges at times. My mother was as embarrassed by his bluster as she was loyal to his generosity. He took care of my mother for 43 years- right up to her last breath. He watched over his family and was readily at their side when troubles surfaced. And he handled his death with a matter-of-fact'ness that will haunt me to my own departure. It was as if he decided to stop suffering the way one may suddenly decide to not take the freeway home- it's a back-roads day. He said goodbye (“That's it, son. I can't do this anymore. Tell your brother and sister- everyone in the family- I LOVE THEM. I'm going to bed and not getting back out.”) in such a breezy, unpretentious way- that my only interpretation of his actions was that he was showing me how to die; “Here. Watch closely. This is one way you can do this.” He didn't surrender his life- he offered it to the unknown.
Patriarchy; 1. A system of society- government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male line.
2. A system of society- government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. A society or community organized on patriarchal lines.
The 1st definition rests easier on a contemporary consciousness. The second accentuates the exclusion of women. The first seems to be primarily concerned with the natural fact that there is very simply one penis at the genesis of a family tree. And we have- a system of society. A system of society- a piece of the puzzle- is very much the family unit. FAMILY; that abyss we spring from and frequently return to where all psychic tremors are sourced and weighed (sometimes brutally so)- where a bevy of actions and thoughts are packaged and exported for the world to distort or compliment. Families have patriarchs. A patriarch can be a very good thing. An invaluable asset. My father was proof. And depending on one's ever-shifting definition of a patriarchy or a patriarchal figure- it sometimes rubs me the wrong way when I see slogans and catch-phrases that espouse- DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY. Of what malice is this phrase allocated to the hordes? How can one aspect of something be the definition of the whole? You can't ask questions about father-figures in a culture without asking questions about what it means to be a man. And this debate around men and what men are in this century is forever being kicked about and re-calibrated. It is not an intrinsically ordered absolute. A government figure- one in power- who abuses his patriarchal standing- is to be condemned. But what of men who are evolving and trying to be good? Is the ultimate goal of this normalization of patriarchal decrying- is the end-game a scattering of testosterone to the wind? Do we desire a culture of unequivocal male shame and guilt? Was this not already the case? What man worth his salt is not aware of his own shortcomings? And who is anyone (man, woman, she, he, they, etc.) if not someone trying to fix what's wrong?
I've been an analyzer since childhood. It's been pesky to navigate. I see layers everywhere. It's hardly something that makes a person special. It makes a person an amusing kind of freak. It doesn't draw adoring crowds. It isolates. My Aunt Josephine was often amused by my analyses of cartoons (Me at age 8 or 9- “That dynamite-toting coyote cannot fall from a cliff and have large rocks crush him and survive for another episode. How absurd!”) I've always leaned toward non-fiction. Non-fiction feels louder and more immediate than fiction. Just look at the world and one quickly sees examples everywhere. Watch the news. Who could write that shit? Truth is stranger than fiction. The manufactured narrative can never hold a candle to what's really going on. The idea that a father figure is something that should be shunned or debased or re-configured into urgent perfection is lunacy. The idea that anything can be forced into perfection may be an apt description of the word- EVIL. A father figure is, by his very nature, flawed. Inherently so. If he wasn't- he wouldn't be properly clocked as a father figure. A matriarch is flawed. A patriarch is flawed. And my father would be the first to admit this much (he often said to me- “Show me a family with no dysfunction and I'll show you a family that never interacts with one another.”)
My first thought the morning he died; “Where is he? Where did he go?” I wasn't alone. Other family members were present. We zig-zagged around each other like pin-balls in a pin-ball machine- dumbstruck and lost in the galaxy. The patriarch of our family was gone. Real gone. And my father was a patriarch in the best sense of the word. Patriarchy is not something that requires demolition. It is something to be properly examined. But what isn't? There is a dangerous whiff rampant in the clumsy stench of knee-jerk response, befuddled modernity- a vast trend that has demanded attention for some time now- this generally accepted decree that there can be little or no debate about what something means. What words mean. What ideas mean. What concepts consist of. What I mean. What you mean. What we are trying to get at.
There are no quick solutions to conundrums that are problematic by design. And human beings are problematic by design. Solutions massage the mind when they are gradual. Evolution demands nuance. And, of course, Wily coyote cannot survive falling rocks in the real world. He wasn't “triggered” by the road runner. He was doing what he does by elemental design (a preoccupation with troublesome birds that may be lunch). The progression of that old cartoon was, in my young mind, that of a fictional narrative.
Non-fiction was something I had to cultivate and helm on my own.
The patriarchal figure I knew and loved considered the evil that men do every day of his life. He read the paper every day- kept current with the news- would have despised some of the Supreme Court's recent adjudications- loathed extremism- actively championed the idea of women in power positions- and spoke with me frequently about how changes need to be made in the USA. Big, hard changes that a lot of citizens are terrified of. Dad wasn't afraid of change in his country. From what I saw- he wasn't even afraid of not existing anymore. Or maybe he knew something we didn't. Maybe he made his peace with the fact that death is not a door that closes- it's one that opens. A door opens and you sail through it.
In a nation badly in need of strong spines and leadership- a person who faces their inevitable death with courage and humility (one time- completely naked- enduring the groping hands of some excellent Hospice nurse professionals- my dad turned to me and said, “The last time I was nude with this many people in the room- I was either showering at work or in the Navy.”)- a man with that kind of character- who wouldn't respect someone who stared down death with such seeming ease and force of will? And what is character if not the circumnavigation of fear without instilling a surplus of fear in others?
Father figures are important. Now, perhaps- more than ever. A society that doesn't recognize this fact is in perilous waters. A culture that shames patriarchal figures into darkness is hungering for its own steady demise- a culture that, unfortunately, looks too much like the one you and I wake up in every day of our tiny, fleeting, imperfect lives.
