Today would have been my dad’s 99th birthday. It’s hard to believe that my father has now been gone for six years. But he and my mother have been gone and in their wake there has been a hole that never will be filled.
I marvel that my dad was able to live to 91. He had a faulty valve in his heart that became evident later in life. His identical twin brother, James, also had that valve problem and after a surgery to correct it, never recovered. My dad decided that valve would be his “out” card.
Things progressed quickly after my Uncle Jim’s passing. My mother died on August 3, 2016, just after her surgery to replace her hip. She was a driving force and her death pretty much gave my dad permission to grow old quickly.
He also had stomach surgery for an ulcer,back in the 1950’s. Half of his stomach was removed. The surgery worked great until it didn’t, which meant my dad, at 91 and with a faulty valve, had to go under the knife to fix his stomach again. It allowed him to be able to go to the funeral of my mom, out in their beloved Wyoming. Dad lingered for a while after, but eventually, the heart gave out and he died peacefully. My parents are buried out in Wyoming, next to my grandparents and my nephew. It is something that’s always there in the back of my mind as well, that perhaps someday I too may have my ashes there with my parents. If all my siblings and spouses do that, it will end up being quite a mound.
When I think about my dad, the son of an Irish policeman and a French-Canadian farmer’s daughter, living in Chicago with his other three siblings, I try to connect the dots of his life growing up. He was born on the kitchen table. His mother and her sisters were all gregarious, in fact the “Frenchies” were on the whole a happy, successful community of Quebecois farmers down near Bourbonnais, Illinois. More of an extended family than a community, in fact. He would head down to the farms and ride the draft horses. He talked about the prairies on the west side of Chicago, big open fields in which kids would play baseball. Kids were able to do a lot more back then than today. Along with his buddies they rode bikes all the way up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and back--a feat that even someone with the best bike today would find a challenge. But all done without a parent in sight. They explored the forest preserves around the city, one time finding a corpse of a man who had committed suicide by hanging from a tree. Gruesome yes, but for a young kid, what a story. He worked at the Brach candy company, and even the steel mills for a stint. And during World War Two, eventually volunteered to be a tail gunner in the Army Air Force, just narrowly avoiding active duty in the Pacific as the war came to an end. Then on the GI bill, went on to become a dentist. Why that choice of a career, I have no idea. But he was the first white collar worker in the family.
All of that before my time, a full life lived before I was even on the scene. And with us 10 kids on the scene, his life became one of constant work as a dentist. Looking back, I believe he also tried to instill some of the wonder he experienced in Bourbonnais by having us work our small farm out in Woodstock. Today, I wish I would have worked even harder to please my dad. At the time, I was not able to comprehend his vision, his idea of what he wanted for us kids and for himself, as well. It made no sense to me to be raising and shearing these sheep and fixing fences or hauling hogs to the market. But he did it and we followed suit from sunup to sundown.
When we did recreate, we recreated as hard as we worked. My dad was an excellent horseman, again, probably from his boyhood days. We both shared a passion for fishing and memories of catching trout on the Buffalo River in Wyoming will stay with me forever.
It’s funny how the father that passed at 91 is not the father I remember. It’s that younger father, in over his head with kids, a farm, a practice and a pretty formidable wife to boot. That guy, I wish I could sit down with and talk about things. But by connecting the dots, I see that he was able to achieve a lot of his dreams--a lot more than I can say I have at this point in my life. Both he and my mom had that drive to achieve a good life. A life of faith as well.
That guy, that middle-aged Joseph McCormack, had a great laugh, like the Frenchies. He also had the Irish somberness of his dad, too. At times a temper might flare, but that was usually under a great deal of stress, mainly from my mom. My dad was a man of few words naturally. My mom was a person who could talk, debate, sing, and tell stories. My dad was the quiet one who had to deal with my mom’s inherited anxiety. But at times, even with my mom’s anxiety about everything, the jolly Quebecois would rise to the surface and humor would rule the day.
That middle-aged dad is with me every day. In how I work, I perform my music. Why I chose to stay with the arts and not become a dentist or lawyer. The love and attention I have for my wife. My connection with my daughter. Some of that in response to his example and some of it because of his example. It’s funny that as I get older, his role becomes more prominent in my navigation forward. While my mom was “the force” my dad was the one that made it all work somehow. The thinnest margin of order out of a galaxy of chaos. And I find myself talking in my mind to my dad when I am outside fixing and painting the front yard fence for the millionth time, it seems. Or when driving out west on a road trip or observing Aine playing the piano. He’s there, walking along with me, I feel. And I am grateful that I had such a wonderfully imperfect parent. A father whose shoes I know I cannot fill.
READ MARTIN'S OTHER BLOG "THE SAVIOR OF THE PEOPLE" HERE.