D Dies

When I examined marriages, B & D were one of my favorites. B was my mother's only sister. She had breast cancer in 1987 and beat it after aggressive radiation therapy. She lived for another twenty years. She died in June of 2007, leaving behind a grieving D.

When I was eleven, my mother, sister, baby brother and I lived with B & D in a little farming town in central California. My somewhat new stepfather was going through bankruptcy in Los Angeles but we had moved to the northern part of the state. Parking ourselves in the farming town put us on the road between LA and northern CA. My mother was pregnant, she and her sister adored each other, and we figured we'd see as much of my stepfather there as we would if we stayed in our home.

The months at B & D's were mostly delightful, primarily because of D. He was a kid magnet. He did things neither my father nor my stepfather would do. He built stilts for my cousin, my sister and me. He let us dig a 'swimming pool' in their side yard. He was playful and a good companion for us. They were a big game playing family. Most evenings we would play Tripoly, a combination game of hearts, poker and gin rummy. He never let us win, and we worked to hone our card-playing skills. We all got to be very good card players. Every night he, my aunt and my mom would tuck in the three of us, and it became a wonderfully fun routine with the three of us girls trying to be silly with D.

One day B took me to the local junior high to a have a 'look'. That ended up with me being enrolled in a sixth grade classroom. The school was having a spelling bee and our class emerged as a dark horse. In a large sixth, seventh and eighth grade school, it's highly unusual for one of the sixth-grade classes to be leading in the schoolwide spelling bee. We were on a roll for a while there. D was the president of the chamber of commerce that year. He was a very successful realtor in town. He had built a good business, was a good man, and was respected by all. He arranged for my class to have a 'spelling bee' against the chamber of commerce board. It was so sweet, and we beat them----that time he might have let us win....

Our time there eventually ended. The school year let out and we went back up to northern CA. My mom went into premature labor and a little sister was born. We moved over and over again, but the months with B & D remained as one of my favorite times and places.

D walked his stepdaughter down the aisle in 1960. She didn't want her own father to do it. D had been her father. D walked that new little sister of mine down the aisle when she got married in 1992. Her father had agreed to do it if she would have flown out his four older children from Texas for a 'family reunion'. What a jerk. D was the man for the job.

When I got married 23 years ago, I wanted to have it at B & D's. We all went to Tahoe, where they were living at the time, so that all my people could gather at B & D's, a place where two solid people could support us.

Yesterday my cousin called. D had gone for his morning walk, came back to where he was living, sat down in his favorite chair, had a massive stroke and died. He was 86. He will live on in my mind as one of the best father figures I have ever known, one who embodied so many of the qualities I wished my father or stepfather had had.