When my Dad died, I didn't really cry.
That makes me sound like a monster, doesn't it? But hopefully you'll think better of me if you understand our history.
Me and Dad, around 1971 or so.
Dad's been on my mind lately, as this week he would have celebrated his 88th birthday. My Dad and I... we had a complicated relationship. I can't say we were every really close... I mean, as I slowly worked my way into adulthood, that is. Don't get me wrong: he wasn't a monster, or abusive, or anything like that. He was just sort of... there. He sat in his chair and read library books, and Mom tried to keep him from being caught up in what household drama we kids produced. It was obvious from very early on that we were very different people, and I think that our disparate personalities created an instant gulf between us that was never sufficiently bridged. He never really understood me, but for the most part he let me be the nerdy bookworm my wiring demanded I be.
It wasn't until years later, when I took the plunge into the realm of therapy, that I started to unpack my true thoughts and feelings about Dad and his place in my life. Back in the day, he made some boneheaded moves that affected the family in pretty drastic ways. This wonderful woman I was seeing made it clear to me that, despite being the man who gave me life, I was allowed to be angry at him.
By the way, this isn't going to be some furious whiny pent-up screed against my Dad. I loved him... he was my Dad. We just didn't connect. According to what the family has told me, he didn't have what you'd consider the ideal model for fatherhood, so he did what most men probably do: he winged it. Could he have done better as a father? Sure. But here's the bigger question: could I have done better as a son? Absolutely. Relationships are a two-way street. It took me a while to understand that there was nothing preventing me from reaching across from my side of the aisle to make the connection.
Armed with this new level of self-awareness, and the support of my wife, I was getting to the point where I felt like I could finally confront my Dad about... well, everything. My plan was that I'd take him out for a beer, and pull back the curtains, and get into a deep conversation with him. No confrontation, no judgment. Just a long overdue heart-to-heart between adult father to adult son. We could put all our cards on the table, and really get to know each other, warts and all. I was actually excited about this prospect.
Then he dropped dead of a heart attack.
One cold morning in January of 2007, as I walked in the door at 2 AM after being on the road for over five hours, Suzie told me that she'd received a call from my Mom. Earlier that day, my Dad had passed away.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. There was that initial shock, a jolt that brought forth tears. But I didn't CRY-cry. See, I've discovered that when I'm faced with a crisis of any sort, a switch flips inside me, and I slip into "get 'er done" mode. Emotion gets shunted aside in order to focus on the problem at hand. To paraphrase Jesse Ventura in Predator: I ain't got time to weep!
So that's what happened. I put the pain and sadness aside, and I got down to business. Just a few hours after that bombshell hit me, I was on a plane. And once I was back at our family home, I hit the ground running. There was an entire week of non-stop work. Calling family and friends to tell them the bad news. Writing and publishing Dad's obituary. Coordinating the funeral. Planning the reception afterwards. Cobbling together a memorial video on a my tiny laptop. Dealing with all the legal paperwork. Being a rock for my devastated Mom. When I think back on that time, those seven days are a blur. Had it not been for the help and love of Suzie, my brother Jon, and my friends, I probably would have cracked.
But when everything was over, and I had time to take a breath and really process this life-altering event... that's when it all happened. The dam burst. And as I crumbled, there was one person who was spiritually standing right beside me...
RICK SPRINGFIELD.
In the spring of 1985, I finally got my first real girlfriend. Not a deceitful harpy using me to make her ex-boyfriend jealous, like my prom date from the previous year. Nor was she a devious schemer using me to make her fiance jealous, like the flower girl at work from the summer before I left for college. (Apparently I wasn't hot enough to have sex with, but I was perfectly good material for hate-baiting other dudes.)
Nope, this girl actually seemed to like me. I had run into her during Christmas break, and her friend, who happened to be my co-worker, got us together. When my spring semester of college was over, and I was back home, we made it official: we were boyfriend and girlfriend! My long drought was finally over!
Dear reader, this may come as a complete shock to you, but back then, I wasn't the sophisticated man of the world you've come to know through my writing. No, as a blank slate of a teen, I knew nothing. And that meant I was weak enough to be a victim of Hallmark's assault on our society's preoccupation with romance and all that garbage. This was the first girl I'd ever really been involved with, so in my insipid childish mind, we were basking - soaking, even - in depths of a true love that would never end. (Spoiler alert: it ended.)
So I was a prime candidate for being suckered in by all the material trappings of modern romance. I bought her flowers. I gave her a stupid heart-shaped box of candy for Valentines Day. And I read way too much into sappy Top 40 pop ballads, ham-handedly stitching my personal romantic situation onto the saccharine lyrics of whatever love song happened to be on the charts. With young love firmly in control of my heart, I sunk my romantic hooks into the first song I heard that dripped with romance.
And that song was "State Of The Heart", the latest tune from Rick Springfield.
Dear God, I was gaga for this song. In my romance-addled state of mind, it spoke to the depths of what I was feeling. The plaintive tone of the lyrics especially touched a nerve, as the singer is concerned that the obstacles he and his partner face could bring an end to their relationship. That resonated big time, because I was terrified my newfound love could evaporate at a moment's notice. "State Of The Heart" was my first "love song", and I threw my arms around it willingly.
This is the face of a young man who’d finally had relations. With a real-live girl, no less.
I was so into this song, I was compelled to head to Peaches, the big record store one town over, to buy the cassette of Tao, the album it came from. I was looking forward to hearing even more heartstring-pulling songs, to discovering additional tracks I could add to the soundtrack I was composing to accompany the love I knew would never ever die. (Spoiler alert: it died.)
Rick Springfield wasn't exactly considered a rock god, but he was definitely popular. He was a good-looking soap opera actor who'd scored a monster number one hit with "Jessie's Girl". He followed that up with a string of fun, energetic singles, culminating in the title song from the movie Hard To Hold, his bid for big-screen stardom. So I went into Tao expecting more of the same: some enjoyable pop tunes, alongside some touching ballads.
Boy, was I surprised.
Tao wasn't your usual collection of teen idol songs. It was adult. Definitely the most adult thing I'd heard up to that point. Rick explored all sorts of deep concepts. He tackled the generation gap, and the abandonment of childhood, in "Celebrate Youth". With "Written In Rock", he gave voice to the pain of a dying relationship. He examined the fear of the world falling apart in "Walking On The Edge". And not only were the lyrics deeper, the music itself was not his usual guitar-oriented pop. The drums were heavy. The synthesizers were darker. The vocal delivery was laced with more urgency. With Tao, Rick was examining where he was in his life, and where he fit in the world.
But it was the final track, "My Father's Chair", that really threw me for a loop. Apparently Rick's dad had died prior to the recording of Tao, and he memorialized his father's passing with a song that stopped me dead in my tracks the first time I heard it. Accompanied by nothing but a piano (that he played!), Rick sang about the intense pain and the immense sense of loss he experienced. He painted this bleak, crippling picture of how his father's death affected his life, and the life of his family. And yet... there was this slight sense of hope, of happiness, as he allowed himself to relive the good parts of his relationship with his dad. It was touching. It was powerful. It was... baffling.
Yes, baffling. Here's the thing... I couldn't really connect with his sentiments. I mean, I could tell that it was a heavy thing he'd gone through. But I couldn't empathize with him, because I had no life experience that could even come close to comparing. My dog Duchess died when I was in seventh grade, and that devastated me. My mom's father died when I was in fifth grade, but I wasn't that close to him so it didn't really hit me. After that... my "losses" weren't all that bad. I'd had a crappy, soul-crushing prom, but so what? I'd been close to tears when Yoda died in Return Of The Jedi, but that's just pathetic.
Aaaand... that was about it. Not exactly a life of adversity. I was a nineteen year old stringbean punk who'd been raised like a veal. I had nothing in common with a global superstar like Rick Springfield. But that song... man, it definitely floored me. Now that I'm older, and I can evaluate things better, I think it was the intensity of Rick's emotions, coupled with what was then, to me, an alien experience, that captivated me so intensely. I hadn't experienced a death in my family, but I was certainly experiencing the death in his family. You can say what you want about Rick's body of work, but with "My Father's Chair", he nailed his mandate as an artist: he got a reaction out of his audience.
The years marched on. That girl I was dating coerced me into marrying her. But the marriage didn't last. (Thank God. It took a while to undo, but my life's just about perfect now.) And once that relationship ended, my love affair with Tao waned. Not that it was so painful that I couldn't revisit it. I just moved on. New experiences. New people. New music. Tao was still there, but on the fringes of my life. Every once and a while something would remind me of my ex-wife, and the ensuing toppling dominoes of thoughts would lead to "State Of The Heart". I'd hum a few bars, see that twisty fountain from the video in mind's eye, remember the good times... and that would be that.
Then my Dad died.
This is probably the last picture we took together. At the Paragon in Oakland, in 2003.
So now we've come full circle. Back to January 2007. To the end of that stressful, crazy week. Dad's memorial was over. The reception had ended. My Mom, brother, and wife were all in bed. But I couldn't sleep. I was too wound up. I found myself alone, in the dark, in the living room. With all my tasks completed, it was time. I could finally let go.
And as all that emotion surged upwards... I finally got it. Time had brought me to a point where I had experienced the loss of a parent. At that moment, I really, fully, completely understood the place from where Rick Springfield wrote his song. Rick and I had shared - we were sharing - that long night.
So I settled into my father's chair. And I cried for hours.
(There was no official video filmed for this track, so I thought I'd include two this time. The first is the audio of the actual song. The second is a live performance from 2015, with Rick on guitar.)
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and struggling amateur screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.