Ten Years On

January 18th marks ten years since my father died. It was the unfortunate culmination of a nearly three-year battle with brain tumors and lymphoma, and I've spent most of the weekend trying to compose my thoughts on this unfortunate milestone. 

Ken had undiagnosed autism, I'm almost certain. He was a man of many quirks: he almost always wore black slacks; he had an obsession with the stock market and read the business section of the newspaper first; he had very few friends, and most of them lived out of state; he thought Tic-Tacs functioned like aspirin and vitamins and consumed them in large quantities. He was 46 when I was born; there were all apparently habitudes from before I was born. When he learned how to use a PC late in life, my sister and I realized his Yahoo search history was mostly three things: NASDAQ quotes, baseball scores, and Filipina porn.

Peccadillos aside, his second-greatest obsession was sports. Between him and my roommate passing 18 months ago, I miss having someone around the house that I can talk baseball and football with. That weighed heavily on me as I watched the Bears-Rams game last night. Both men would've been entertained, even if the outcome wasn't what we wanted.

On the flip side, Ken's passing meant avoiding nearly a decade of political arguments. My father was a third-generation center-right Republican, and one of his last lucid political thoughts was that was "leaning toward John Kasich" in the 2016 primaries. I have little doubt he would've come around to Donald Trump's "clown show" (his words) but not necessarily get dragged into the conservative misinformation outlets of the internet. I remember how annoyed he was that I had skepticism about the war in Iraq in early 2003, insinuating that I was brainwashed or imprudent in my own right. Beyond that, I was cautious about expressing my two cents about world affairs face to face.

For my original eulogy post, click here.

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