I’ll hug him and squeeze him and call him George

My friend John IM-ed me a week ago to ask if I had told his dad that I was coming to visit. I said no, but said I could. We made quick and tentative plans for a winter trip to Illinois, and I signed off on my way to meetings on campus. A few days later, John sent out an email to our circle of friends saying his father had died.

I don’t have a good track record when people in sickbeds start asking for me. My first thought when John typed the question to me was that George was in trouble. I was assured otherwise because doctors and friends had marveled at his progress, recovering from another health setback a month earlier. His breathing was as strong as it had been in a long time, and there was talk — even as John was typing — about how he would be released the following day. Almost from the moment I signed off, though, George began his final fight. His breathing grew irregular. He went back under the re-breather mask. He went back on the respirator. He struggled, and then he stopped. As Fletch said, “Yes, but the end. The end was very sudden.” Head-spinning sudden.

For the second time in three months, I headed north to Illinois, back to my hometown, to pay respects to the second families of my childhood. Unlike Tim’s dad (or the loss in the past year or so of other Woodstock fathers I knew), George was someone with whom I did stuff. He was a long-time owner in our fantasy leagues. He attended our drafts. He made (mostly rejected) trades. In what has become a cornerstone of Reality Fantasy League lore, George once tried to draft a player he already had, making Dave Meggett references obligatory in every gathering. Upon hearing the news, another hard-core owner wrote to John, saying that George was the first parent he ever felt comfortable calling by his first name. My own father, who had a fantasy franchise for about a decade, was always Mr. Isbister. George was always George.

Returning to Woodstock is an exercise in disconnection for me these days. I left the area for good in 1999 on the heels of a disappointing web site experience. Since my parents split and sold the home of my youth, there is little reason to go back. And each time I do, more landmarks are torn down, more farmland is consumed by cookie-cutter houses. It’s depressing. Throw in the heartache of a funeral service, and I find myself on the outside looking in.

From that vantage point, I got a good view of George’s life by watching the huddles of his friends ebb and flow. I imagined him standing next to me watching his life reflected in the people he knew. He was entrenched in the local community, both as an intelligent CPA and in service of the community. Many people came, only a few I recognized. Universal themes spoke of how cheap George would be with materials and how generous he was with people. George was a notorious talker. Few could come away from a conversation describing it as “short.” From my own experience, this was largely due to his tendency to repeat the same comments three times. George was knowledgeable on many subjects, right on many of them. John told of one family vacation that summed up that part of his personality.

The Fry family headed out west one year. Among the picturesque scenery was a barn. As they whizzed by on the highway, comments about the pretty barn evolved into a heated argument about its color. It was blue, says George. It was green, says everyone else. So emphatic was George, he grabbed at the steering wheel (he wasn’t driving) and forced the car to the side. Huffing and puffing, he switched to the driver’s side and promptly drove the family back 20 miles to the barn in question. Turns out, it was blue.

When people die, I like to think that the things that made them who they are get recycled back into their community of friends and family. I have spent the past few days wondering what George gave me when he died. I’d like to take his inspiration to not just live in a community but interact with it. I’d like to take his compassion and the priority he placed on the condition of others. But what stuck with me most was his willingness to be a part of John’s life. He participated. He argued. And John’s friends knew him as George. May those near and dear to my two boys come to call me Kevin.