Some time ago I set up a sort of newsletter for my family at Yahoo, in what they call "groups." One of the group features is a calendar, and any event on the calendar is automatically announced to group members by Yahoo.

A while back I got a "reminder" from Yahoo that my father's birthday was coming up. This is the reminder and my response:

On 19 Feb 2004 at 5:02, yahoogroups.com wrote:

> We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.
>
> Lewis Fred Thomas Birthday
>
> Date: Thursday, Feb 26
> Time: All Day
>
> Birthday of Lewis Fred Thomas born on February 26, 1904.
> Husband of Ollie Mae Blalock Thomas.
> Expired September 2, 1968

Wow. This one surprised me. I don't even remember putting this on the calendar (which
is the device that sends these out, in case you didn't know this), which made it doubly
confounding. Eerie. Happy Birthday, Daddy. You'll be an even hundred.

This is making my brain spin in a strange way, some kind of multiple axis twenty-
dimensional plane. That's saying a lot because my mind always spins in a strange way,
according to some observers.

Yeah.  And I have some vague recollection of him being in a dream last night. How did
THAT happen? And what was the dream? I can't bring it to the surface of this crazily
spinning head of mine. Fragments. I know he was there. What did he say? Was he
reminding me that his 100th birthday was coming up? Will he repeat the reminder next
week?

Images of him are flashing in my memory now like lightning hits on a stormy night. Of
going down into the basement on Oxford Avenue where he had his shop, digging into
some ancient television or radio to figure out what was keeping it from working. A view
of him from the back seat of the blue Dodge, driving us to Miss Georgia Dairies for a gallon
of ice cream. Imagine being of an age and living in an age when a trip to a dairy for ice
cream was an Event.

I remember the day that I realized that he was the smartest man I knew. He was a
Renaissance Man, you know.

Renaissance
Function: noun
: a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas

And so he was. He could solve a faulty circuit in an electronic device, divine the
weather, rebuild a damaged floor, lay a new roof on a house, and hit a curve ball.

Did the younger among you know that he lettered in three sports in college? He played
baseball with men who went on to the major league, at least one of whom, Rick Ferrell,
is enshrined in Cooperstown. I can remember Daddy trying to teach me the finer points
of batting, how to set my stance to be ready for a pitch. He batted left, threw right.

When he was forced to sell the house on Oxford Avenue to the airport, and bought the
house on Cambridge, he had already been diagnosed with Leukemia and had been told
it was time to put his "affairs" in order. The house on Cambridge was in sorry shape, in
need of a good carpenter, roofer, electrician. I was away then, in Greenland with the Air
Force. Over a period of months, he rebuilt floors, added rooms, re-worked damaged
wiring, patched leaky areas of the roof. There was a lot to be done, and as sick as he
was, he did it himself, with the help of Wray, who said that while he (Wray)
wasn't necessarily "ready, willing, and able," that he was at least "willing, willing,
and willing."

And only when that work was finished, only when he was satisfied that his family had a
livable house, he quietly passed away. His spirit was stronger than the disease that was
determined to thwart his efforts.

I was home on leave when he died. The day that we took him to the hospital for the last
time, I looked in on him sitting in the bathroom, trying to shave, barely able to hold the
razor. I actually went in and finished that job for him, the last thing I ever did for him.
One of the few things I ever did for him. Shame on me, what a thoughtless, thankless
son.

He wasn't an affectionate, cuddly kind of a father. His love was implied,
implicit, and rarely vocalized. I never had a doubt that he loved me.

When I was in Greenland he bought a pair of portable tape recorders. These were the
days before cassette tapes, if you can imaging such a time. The tapes were on small
reels, maybe 3" in diameter, and we used to exchange these in the mail as a sort of
precursor to voice mail. Somewhere there is a box of these, the ones he sent me, that I
was never able to find the courage to listen to after he was gone. I don't know if I could
listen to them today. What's worse, I don't know if I could find them today.

Well, Happy Birthday, Daddy (pronounced "Deddie", for some reason). I don't think of
you every day, but I'm thinking of you now, and I know you're with me somehow, a part
of you making up what is a part of me. I haven't done much to make you proud, but I
think you would sort through my small successes and many failures and find the parts
that would please you. I hope so. I don't like the idea of letting you down entirely.

JFT