My Dad Lived the American Dream

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My father passed away on April 5, one week after I got home from Savannah.  Hospice nurses told me before I left to go ahead and take my trip to Savannah, and they were right.  I had a chance to be with my Dad one more time before he died.  As I kissed him goodbye for what turned out to be the last time, he sat in his wheelchair and said, “Take care of yourself.”  It’s become a holy mission that I don’t always fulfill perfectly.

I gasped when I got the news of his death.  I listened to the message from my brother on my cell phone as I walked on East 66^th Street, just west of York Avenue, after I left a job search interview.  My life is interwoven with New York City.

Everything happened in the next four days:  viewing, funeral, burial at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.  I was amazed at how strong I was – no tears.

But looking back, I see that I have felt a constant tug at my heart, an undertow of grief that destabilizes me.  The death of a parent is very big.

My Dad lived the American dream, as it was defined in the 30s and 40s, when he grew up.  He started his first job just one week after high school graduation – people were in a hurry back then to get started on the American dream.  His first position was lower than the secretaries – he added columns of numbers, turning a crank on a mechanical computer.  After many struggles, difficulties, and bitter disappointments when he was passed over for promotion, he retired at age 62 from a corner office in a skyscraper in New York City’s financial district, near Wall Street. 

He said the secret of his success was hard work and perseverance.  He told me to keep my shoulder to the wheel, my eye to the future, my nose to the grindstone and my ear to the ground.

I’ve maxed out on his principles of hard work and perseverance and have been laid off three times in the past eight years, twice due to a merger and once due to a corporate bully having her way.

Will my generation (boomers) and our successors do better than our parents?  Probably not, for the first time in American history.