The curmudgeon
I referred to my father as a curmudgeon in my eulogy to him on Monday. I delivered these words from a tall marble dais on the alter of an old Roman Catholic church. This was the church of my youth. I spent many a Sunday morning here looking up at that dais. Never in my life, though, did I imagine that I would be standing there myself looking down on the wooden pews, occupied by family and friends, eulogizing my father, calling him a curmudgeon. Of course, I meant what I said in a light-hearted way, and judging from the looks I got back from those in attendance (nods and smiles) everyone else knew that my dad was a curmudgeon, too.
There was no denying that my father had his churlish side. But there are curmudgeons and then there are curmudgeons. The latter would be the guy who goes to bed cranky and then starts up again the next morning right where he left off. The mean guy in the neighborhood who keeps your ball when you accidentally kick it over the fence into his yard. The guy who would call you a son of a bitch on the phone and then drive over to your house to tell you in person.
Thankfully, my father wasn’t like that. My dad was the other kind of curmudgeon, the more likeable kind. Certainly, he never missed an opportunity to give you a hard time, but he meant no harm and usually he would make you laugh in the process. My father was the kind of guy who would toast a bride and groom by pointing out that 50 percent of all marriages end up in divorce. "Hey, but not you guys." He would tell you he never liked you and then talk you into buying him a beer. And after you did, his opinion of you instantly improved: "You're a gentleman and a scholar." He called every president since Kennedy "a bum." After his triple bypass surgery some years back, my father accused his intensive care nurses of making passes at him. "I'm just a poor defenseless old man with clogged arteries," he told them.
If sugar helps the medicine go down, then humor makes the opinions of an outspoken crotchety old man easier to swallow. The likeable curmudgeon. It's an ill-fitting suit, but my father wore it well.
The big question on my mind now is how things went with St. Peter at the gates of heaven. My father was not a patient man. No curmudgeon is. I certainly hope he wasn't kept waiting too long. Imagine, if you will, the following scene:
Dad: Can we get the show on the road, Pete?
St. Peter: Did you just call me Pete?
Dad: Hey, how come this guy gets to go ahead of me? Who does he think he is? The pope? Back of the line, mister!
St. Peter: That is the pope.
Dad: Get out of here! Really? Still, what gives him the right to cut in line?"
My father is not the first curmudgeon to come knocking on heaven's door. Surely by now they've figured out how to deal with these disagreeable stick-in-the-muds. After all, curmudgeons are by and large good-hearted people. Irascible, yes, but there’s nothing to say you can’t be a pain in the ass while living your life honorably and responsibly. I'm guessing that God has a special wing in heaven just for people like my father (well out of earshot from everyone else.) Oh, the complaining that must go on there: The food is no good! The television reception stinks! It's freezing in here, could somebody turn up the heat? Do we have to listen to that story again; it wasn't funny the first hundred times. The beer’s too warm. You gonna play cards or are you gonna run your mouth all night?
They say misery loves company. Well, so does a curmudgeon. What’s the use of complaining if there’s no one listening? I have no doubt that in the usual curmudgeon gatherings up in heaven my father is right in the thick of things - giving as good as he gets. That is, assuming St. Peter didn't sit him down at the back of the line, like a school child, for that "Pete" comment.
Way to go, Dad. Give them hell up there. Oops. Did I just say that? Like father, like son.
8:39:56 AM  Stories
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