Last Friday, my Daddy died. It looks so harsh to write that on this screen but that is what’s happening right now. I’m told this foggy, fugue state is normal but it feels weird. Strangely peaceful but not quite real. It’s as though I’m hovering just above my body, seeing and hearing everything but not really engaged. Those of you who have lost a loved one must know how I’m feeling.
My Dad’s health had been on the decline for a while, but I wasn’t prepared. I doubt anyone is ever really prepared. This is most definitely life on life’s terms. God or the Universe has been gently trying to put me on notice, by opening up some space in my life. Just last week it occurred to me that this space and time appeared to enable me to face losing my Father. I didn’t want that. I still don’t, but here it is. What I thought would be a slower downward progression, rapidly resembled those amusement park rides where you drop ten stories in ten seconds. Fast. Did I mention I hate amusement park rides?
But once I returned to Mississippi, the fog started to lift. My brother devised a plan for us watch the 50+ carousels of old family slides and my heart began to lift. Thailand, England, ski trips, Halloweens, tree houses, adventures and family, family, family. My nieces were impressed by the dashing and fashionable figures my parents cut winging through southeast Asia in 1970. My nephews amused themselves with making animal puppets in the light of the projector. And, of course, we laughed and laughed.
The miracle for me is that I can see there was much to be grateful for in Dad’s passing this way. I’m grateful we had some wonderful times together over Christmas and a special dinner celebrating his birthday just a month ago. I’m grateful that he didn’t suffer too much physically or mentally, that he didn’t linger, that he didn’t have more confusion or anxiety. He had good care and the final conversation my family had with his doctor left us all with a sense of acceptance, peace, and frankly, inevitability. I’m grateful that I was lucky enough to have the time and willingness to spend extra time with him over the last year and that there were no disputes left to resolve, no words of love or support left unsaid, no regrets at all. That is truly a blessing.
So I finally found my words, which I will share today at his funeral.
As Mark Twain once remarked, “I’m sorry to write such a long letter. I didn’t have time for a short one.” I feel that way as I struggle to adequately distill what I want to say about my Dad to a few paragraphs. Perhaps that’s the best testament of all – the fact that my head is buzzing with story after story that I want to share, each illustrating a unique facet of a man I loved so dearly. But time is limited and there are four of us kids, so I’ll share just a few quintessential Walter Boone isms.
It seems trite to say, but he was all about family. A man of few words toward the end, his were particularly loving about our family and as the family documentarian, I often got to hear them. As we sat at Lake Cavalier one sunny afternoon last summer, with a herd of splashing kids, a handful of (untrained) barking dogs, surrounded by boats and floats and warm, laughing faces, he remarked that “This is exactly what I hoped for, what I always wanted family to be like” — the vision he had for his family was one loud, chaotic, big fun and he built that.
I was sitting in his office yesterday, where he was known for sentimentally displaying arrays of photos from every phase of his life. He has what must be the worst collection of Cathy Boone photos ever amassed. But he saw us all with a father’s pride and I liked how I looked through his eyes.
He often shared with me his pride about my brothers Walter and Barber — what great men they were, what excellent fathers they had become, balancing work and family life “far better than I ever did” as he said. More than once, he told me of his deep admiration for the strength my sister, Allison demonstrated in the face of her young husband’s death and the daunting challenge of continuing to raise three incredible daughters with love and joy. Most importantly, he always counted himself immeasurably lucky to have found and married my incredible mother who was the Chief Operating Officer of his life, his partner in everything and a caregiver in the truest sense of the word.
He was a great doctor. He once told me that he wasn’t sure he’d always wanted to be a doctor, but he was very sure that’s what his mother Thelma wanted him to be one. He really never had a choice, which worried him some after a school field trip to the hospital where is learned that doctors actually had to deal with a lot of blood. He found way to navigate that and so many other hurdles to become a great doctor. Thoughtful, truthful, skilled and caring, he acted as the trusted counsel, informal diagnostician and the tireless medical touchstone for so many of our friends and family. I can’t tell you the number of random people who literally gushed with praise over the way he had helped them. For a physician, I can hardly imagine higher praise.
On the lighter side, family meals were often sprinkled with medical questions which he’d answer his usually flare. One dinner, “Dad, what’s a hemorrhoid?” to which he calmly responded, “A hemorrhoid is an inflammation of the blood vessels causing a sensation not unlike a lit cigar being placed… I’ll spare you the conclusion.
He taught us life was an adventure. Dad was always up for an adventure. Starting as a small town boy from Clarksdale, he gained an outstanding education, built a thriving medical practice, contributed to his community and church, traveled the world, raised a family and had a hell of a good time doing it. Dad was a great maker of big plan for the next big adventure. And Dad taught us to go “all in” by that I mean, he was game for life. He loved a good costume, so Halloween and black tie events were a favorite. For a Mexican themed birthday party for my 40th birthday, he sported the biggest, brightest turquoise sombrero imaginable. For a more recent Mardi Gras themed dinner, he showed up in a purple wig and eyebrows in addition to the more expected beads we all had. Though he rarely played games, he absolutely relished a Cards Against Humanity evening when he stunned his grown children and their spouses with carefully curated, outlandish and risque narratives delivered with his unique flair. Priceless. When he was in, he was all the way in.
He was fiercely independent and loyal. We always used to joke that his independence resulted from Daddy being an only child who was more than capable of fully entertaining himself without any of us at all. In practice, this meant that he’d often wander off from the group at, say, the Atlanta Olympics where we had to page him — not once, but twice. His loyalty to family was absolute. He was always on your side. Period. Period. That extended, of course, to his canine children as one unlucky dog washer found. When she remarked that his dog was “kinda fat,” Dad responded with, “You’re fired.”
He was a great storyteller. He had an amazing gift of sifting through life’s experiences, curating the most tantalizing tidbits and stringing them together to amaze and entertain. One example is the time he fell while skiing in Vail. He shook off the fall and continued on, until we reached a first aid station where he casually said,”I’m just going to stop in here for a band-aid.” (He had fallen on his ski tip and cut a deep, bleeding V for Vail into his leg — by the way.) Anyway, he would later regale us all with the story of how the ski patrol heard he was a doctor, put him on the back of a ski mobile and took him on a death-defying race across the mountain to perform CPR on some other fallen skier who suffered a heart attack. Never a dull moment with Dad. He always had a story and we all have stories about him. I love that.
He had a distinctive personal style. That’s what we call it anyway. Pink pants, white clogs, and a coyote coat were just a few of his more eclectic choices. He was one of the few men still sporting the three-piece suit these days, even in the Mississippi heat, and he made it look good. He had two dozen pairs of white shoes, hundreds of dazzling ties, and an array of eye glasses and watches which would change daily, depending on his moods. He designated white his signature color, long before Steve Jobs thought of it. Dad’s personal style embarrassed me as a teenager, amused me as a young adult and absolutely fills my heart with joy today. Be who you are. He always was.
He was a Renaissance man and a life-long learner. He always had multiple books underway, long before the kindle made that easy. Sitting in his office today is a stack of books ranging from Dunkirk, a collection of Great Poems, 500 Words You Should Know, Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, and a thesaurus. He periodically took classes ranging from French to classical guitar to Greek tragedies and bought, though possibly never listened to, a dozen Great Courses DVDs. He’d routinely pull out random tidbits of information and toss them into a conversation, sometimes with more accuracy than others. He’d perfected the art of delivering facts, irrespective of their veracity, with a boatload of confidence and conviction, which 90% of the time works like a charm. It took many of us years to master a rebuttal. Just ask me the about the conflict diamond story from Sri Linke.
I’ll close by saying that Dad was introduced to Facebook a few years ago. While it started as good idea, I’m not convinced Dad ever truly got the hang of it. We’d routinely see him commenting on pictures from years before or changing his profile picture to some questionable shots. And he would always sign his posts, L&K WTBMD. L&K was his regular closing on notes, which meant Love and Kisses and apparently took too much effort to spell out. I guess he included the WTBMD in case his post was confused with some other Walter Thomas Boone who was not an MD. You never know.
Love and kisses, Daddy. You lived a big life. You’ve left a big hole. Your story lives on. You are beloved.
Boonedoggler 