Dear Dad, June 2020

I haven’t formally checked in since I wrote to you last in January.   I know I told you about our celebration of your life that we held at our home last July on what would have been your 105^th birthday.  Several years before that you told me, “If I had felt this way when I was 80, I would have thought I was sick.  Now I feel this way all of the time.”

I didn’t ask you for specifics then, but what you said has particular resonance with me now because I turned 80 in March.

My first news flash is that I cancelled my birthday party, which was scheduled for mid-March.  As you know, I seldom cancel plans, but beginning earlier this year a new coronavirus began to infect people throughout the world.  Only a few at first, but many more exponentially over time.  Lots of those infected were asymptomatic but spread the disease to others by talking, coughing, or sneezing.  So I decided to postpone my party because it was no longer safe to gather with friends and family.  The next day the NBA reported that one player had tested positive, and immediately suspended the balance of their season.

I know that your first memory, at age four or five, was of adults being happy that World War I had ended.  You were alive when the Spanish flu killed between fifty and one hundred million people worldwide over one hundred years ago

During the past three months more than 110,000 people in the United States have died from the coronavirus. Over half of them were 65 or older.  I don’t think that you would have enjoyed “sheltering in place,” staying at home and wearing a mask when you were out in public.  Also, all theaters have been closed for the past three months and I know how much you loved going to the theater.

My second news flash is that the family is doing well.  Your eight grandchildren thank you for their bequests.  Your house has been sold, so we don’t have to be concerned about the neighbor in back anymore. I hope you don’t mind your home belonging to someone else now, but a house is like a body – it only contains us for a while.

Whenever I think about you I am thankful for what you taught me about life, business, and family. These are lessons I use every day.

I also think about my favorite poem by e .e. cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town.  This is one of the final stanzas from that poem…

one day anyone died I guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

I guess that’s the fate we all share, to be remembered by those who knew us, and forgotten “little by little and was by was”.

Much love,

Alan