Today I lost my dad and I am sad, very sad, he is the one person that has the answers to the questions that were never asked and may never be answered, as he is the only one with the answers. In the past few days he has shown me that he can still answer the question in his own way, in away that he could not while he was a live, I just have to figure out the questions.

So here is your story.
First would be to give you a little picture of the man in his thirties.

I was 5 years old in the hospital with pneumonia, stuck under one of those oxygen tents as he would come to visit me, I don't know how long I was the hospital, but longer than you would be these days. I don't remember my mom coming with him, may be she did, but more than likely she was taking care of my brother Matt and sister Carol.

He came with a couple of neighborhood friends Bud Burke and I don't know who else but different guys each time.

What I do remember was that the day he sprung me, saying that because I remember feeling like I was in jail. He had bought me a little shaving kit. The kit had a razor, cardboard blade, one of those lather brushes and a little bowl. Before he took me home he gave me a shave. I mean really who would think of doing something that cool.

He was a Tambourine Man.
I never knew what that meant, a Tambourine Man. I sang the song for years I always

believed it was the best song ever written but I did not know why, I could never figure out what the song was about. I even have designated my niece, Ariel, to learn all of the words to the song to play at my funeral, always telling her to make sure they play all four verses don't screw me out of the fourth verse which is the most important. ( by the way the fourth verse was always censored either for length or because of some sort of drug meaning).

I thought if I ever sang a song at my dads funeral it would be (In My Life ) by the Beatles but conveniently the music was forgotten, and though it is a great song Mr Tambourine Man was so much more fitting for him, because he was a Tambourine Man. I will explain.

Think of a funeral or a celebration going down a street, maybe a New Orleans sort of thing. In the very front would be the Tambourine Man, may be nothing else, maybe a set of drums, then may be some horns but the leader was the Tambourine Man.

Here you go, here is the song.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following' you. Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Changing the Subject

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels To be wanderin'
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin' swingin' madly across the sun It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

My Dad was a Tambourine Man.

So my dad is gone his life was like a perfectly orchestrated song rough in the beginning as he learned how to be a husband and dad. My mom, Carol, Matt, and Myself helped him through that. You could say that I was the tenderizer I helped him beat the weeds down. I gave him a run for his money, so didn't mom sometimes. Then came Betty Jane Dan, and Tim, and Billy. With a little more practice he is now having his second family, with the same wife. By the way you can legally take all of your holy cards out of your wallets, cut out the faces and replace them with a nice picture of my mom. With Betty Jane, Dan, Billy, and Tim, life for the guy was starting to look pretty good, he was now going to ball games, and though he was never a member of a group, he now had his

own self made club. Then the grand finally was Frank, As myself now a teenager in the sixties of course my dad and I did not see eye to eye on any subject even if we agreed, there would be a war, since both of us liked a good argument. Those arguments were rough on my mom sometimes.

I had a boy cave down in the basement where I would stay. I come up stairs and have this massive argument with my mom, she is all upset, and my dad takes me aside and tells me that she is pregnant and that I have to lay off of her. ( not in such nice terms by the way). Probably everyone in town except me knew that my mom was pregnant, really, she was like nine months along, because it seemed that the next day I had a brand new baby brother, a brother that I was old enough to be the father of.

A new life sprang to my dad and a great new awakening came to my whole family. Frank made my dad young and me grow up, I looked at my dad's brand new life, he was again a young man with all of the members of his club, his third family with the same wife, in place.

My dad never liked to do the things that I liked to do, he never went on a camping trip, or came out on my boat, but he encouraged me to follow my own, ever winding path to discover who I was. He bought me a little guitar at Jan's Department store and I beat on it a bit for more than a few years, though it was never in tune. When my grandmother gave me an electric guitar he built me an amplifier. I wish I still had both the guitar as well as the amp as the guy was an electrical wizard. He loved me to play mostly because our dog Speedy would be outside howling while I did. I think that my dad and myself are probably the only people in the world that enjoyed a dogs howl.

As the years came and went though we always loved each other we knew we had nothing in common and I was always looking for his approval.

The last time that I had any sort of conversation with my dad was this past Thanksgiving not much though, the time to ask those questions that only he knew the answers to had long past years ago, and my chance for his approval was gone, and I was lost. I would think of something but know there was no answer.

He fell just a couple of days after the Thanksgiving holiday and broke his hip. As he lay in his hospital bed I did not think he would last long so I would hold his hand a tell him to let go, but you know he would never listen to me, and he knew that it was not just quite the right time. He was in a nursing home for a few weeks and again I would hold his hand and tell him to let go if he wanted, but again, he was not ready. My mom did not like the nursing home he was in so we moved him to an assisted living facility, and when I visited him there he was again sitting on a couch with some dignity instead of in a wheel chair. He was sitting there along side other people as one of them. Unfortunately the nurse came over and told me that his temperature was only 91 degrees and that he had not urinated all day and it was quite past noon. I ended up following the ambulance to the hospital and as he laid there he looked at me the whole time and tried to get points across as he would say, I gave him some italian ice and they set him up in a room though I was gone by then since it was late and he was sleeping.

I went to visit him the next day and since he was doing a little better I thought that I would go to a meeting in Rode Island that I had planned to talk at. ( Southern Cross Boat Owners Association.) I ran back early on Sunday morning his body temp improving

but not by much, and again held his hand and let him know that if he wanted that he could let go that every thing was ok.

He was a good man and just as a well ochestrated song, that was not his, or gods plan. He improved enough so that he was sent back to the assisted living facility. ( Emeritus in Tewksbury). I visited on a Tuesday, since I was going to hook his head up to his head phones and play my guitar for the group and maybe he would hear. Unfortunately he was beyond that, and the following day I ran back down the highway, and in his room were my Brothers, Matt, Tim, Bill, and sister Betty Jane. I don't know if Frank was there but he and Dan did eventually get there in a short period of time. Missing was Carol and the grandchildren that would be old enough to say good bye.

You never know, I, let's say, anyway know what drives you, or again say me, but it was important to me that Carol saw her dad alive, as must have been for him as he some how lit up when she did get there a couple of days later, and mauled him in his bed as only she could do. He knew we were all there, as he was able to open his eyes and look once in a while. He squeezed our hands in response when we asked him to. On his third day that is when his grand kids showed up and were able to say their good byes, again so fitting that the last to see him would be young Matt, being the oldest grandchild, his brother Ben and myself. Of course over my dying dads body they had to put up with one of my world famous lectures, which I am betting that he enjoyed if he heard it.

I guess the big problem if you could call it that is that some how I knew there was a job for me to do, a job that could not be done until him and I came to our terms as a father and son. I stayed with him for those three nights, nothing was to change that, I shaved him each morning, I held his hand and told him that he would not be alone. I took cat naps when other people were there, and left for a short period of time for the understanding only Mika the Wonder Dog can give.

On his last night I again held his hand, and let him know that he would not be alone, but now I am not ready for him to leave I needed him to spend one more night with me, so I held his hand and sang to him all night, I shut the door to his room so I would not bother everyone else, when the girls, and guys, came in to check on him and to change his position they also sang to him, and this went on through the night. At day break I was singing to him and a little tear came out of his eye to let me know his time had come and we would work this through together. I did not know if I should but I gave him his last shave as I sang to him, I held his hand, wiped one more tear from his eye, rubbed his shoulder and head and sang to him as he let go. I told him he did a great job , we got through this together he could run to the light and be with his brothers and sisters and his babies that he never got to see. I looked to the sky and waved, I waved and said hi dad. I said hi dad because he will never ever really be gone.

He is a Tambourine Man.

By the way Betty Jane and my brothers had my dad live the rest of his life like a rock star and that is a thing that I will always be grateful for.

Not the end 

Captain Ed