In Memoriam
Charles Edward Rantz, Jr.
March 28, 1919 – August 12, 2001

Written August 22, 2001. A private eulogy for a man who had no wake, no funeral, no graveside service. A eulogy for my cremated father.

On March 2, 1999, my dad called me in the afternoon to extort $6,000. He was almost 80 years old and had been drinking. Mom was with him. He may or may not have been physically preventing her from leaving. He certainly spoke sentences of “or else” with the threat of hurting Mom if I didn’t get the money to him within a couple of days. He was unremittingly ugly. He believed that I had cheated him out of money by not honoring a debt. Twice, my parents had given me several thousand dollars: once for a down payment on the house Bob and I bought in Calgary and then, later, after my skiing accident, to buy a car with automatic transmission. I thought we had agreed I would pay them back as they needed the money in their retirement. I thought a lot of things. And I didn’t think a lot of things. Mainly I tried to hold my dad, my mom, my entire “family of origin” at arms length – if you have an arm that is thousands of miles long.

Charlottesville is the closest I’ve lived to my family since I was 18, and Charlottesville is 1,000 miles away. It sounds so dramatic. So much of the family story is dramatic – stupidly dramatic. We don’t seem to be able simply to enjoy life as a family; we seem to require dramatic scenes periodically. Dad’s drinking provided such scenes, with increasing regularity as he aged. Mom’s dry-eyed hysterics filled in the gaps.

Now it is the late summer of 2001 and my dad is dead. Matthew graduated from high school in June 1998. Mom and Dad came up for the graduation. Dad brought wine and gin with him. I did not let him bring them in the house, but I believe he drank late at night after Gordon and I went to bed. Gordon said that my parents’ evenings seemed to begin when we went to bed, that he heard them for hours afterwards, walking around, talking, playing music. Finally, while Matthew was at beach week after graduation, I told Dad he had to leave, after he got ugly one night when we were playing bridge. I asked Mom to stay, not to get in the car with him, but she said she would be all right. I didn’t know, when they pulled away that morning, that it was the last time I would see my dad free and healthy. When Matthew returned from beach week, he found the liquor in his small frig for college, in the family room downstairs.

In March 1999, we had Dad arrested. He was tried and convicted; the sentence included a permanent injunction barring him from contact with any family. He spent nine months in jail. He was in jail on his 80th birthday. He was in jail when mom divorced him, ending 51 years of marriage. We saw him at the trial – a prisoner in a prisoner’s jumpsuit and shackles, an old white man in a prison filled with young black men. I wonder how he spent those nine months. I wonder if he befriended any of those young black men, helped them write letters to family and lawyers, became more than tolerated as “Mr. Charlie”, the touchy but nice old white man. I wonder.

The next time I saw Dad was August 11, 2001 and he was dying. I flew down to New Orleans with Mom; we flew from Arwen’s wedding reception in Toronto to New Orleans. We went from the airport straight to Dad’s bedside, in a nursing home. We saw a gaunt, bearded, dry-skinned, suffering old man, filled with cancer and drying out from alcohol. I looked at him and I thought of famine victims, I thought of concentration camp pictures, I thought of the more gruesome portrayals of Christ on the cross. I looked at him and I cried. We saw a dying old man and we said good-bye and we spoke our grief for his life and his death and we said words of forgiveness and love. And he died the next morning.

Old man, why did you mess up so badly? I think you just didn’t have enough love stored up in you to last your lifetime. To last our lifetimes. You had enough for the beginning. You were funny and full of energy when I was young. You carried me on your shoulders to the park. I learned to read before I went to school, learned to read at your side, by your reading the newspaper out loud. I went with you to deliver nuts to dispensing machines around New Orleans, the car filled with the wonderful smell of warm, roasted nuts. My favorite stop was the New Orleans airport – not the big airport that Mom and I flew into to say good-bye to you, but the small lakefront airport for private planes. I never felt deprived or poor; I never compared our lives to those of the people flying their planes into and out of the airport. I felt special and privileged because I was with the man responsible for delivering the warm, fresh nuts each week. Peanuts and cashews, those were my favorites. Saturday morning nut deliveries.

I remember you whistling as you walked up the street from work. Didn’t you take the car to work? I don’t know. My memory has big gaps. But I remember you whistling as you walked up the street and I associate it with your coming home from Coca-Cola, with my sitting on the front steps waiting, eagerly, happily, for you to come home from work. I remember the lift in my heart when I saw your long, tall form, your easy stride, heard your tuneful whistling.

I remember waiting up, on New Year’s Eve, past midnight, into the new year and into the early hours of the morning. Waiting up for you to come home from your other job – bartending and waiting tables. I remember my young uncles giving in to my tearful pleas, ignoring mom’s exasperation, and keeping me entertained through the changing of the years and into the new year. I remember sitting on the front steps, with my uncles, waiting for my dad. I remember my sleepy triumph when you came home.

I remember the ladder seat you made for us for the Mardi Gras parades. We were special. Because you worked at Coca-Cola, at the foot of Canal St., we could park behind the Coke plant, right downtown. We didn’t have as far to walk as other less fortunate people. And we had you and your ladder. The youngest of us would sit in the seat on the top. First that was Marianne, then Patty. I would stand on a rung of the ladder when Marianne was in the seat. You would stand behind me, steadying the ladder and protecting us. Then Patty was in the seat, Marianne was on the rung and I was at your side, helping you protect my sisters. Until I forgot, as the floats went by and the beads flew. Then I was oblivious to you and the ladder and my sisters, then I was shouting, “Throw me something, Mister” and jumping and scrambling for beads. Patty always got the most because she was cute and up high, on the seat you had made for the ladder you carried.

I remember driving with you – across the lake, across the river, up to north Louisiana to see Uncle Donald, the priest. I remember your long short-cuts and your exasperated, “Ah, me.” The bridge wasn’t built yet, in the days of my memory, so a trip across the river meant a ferry boat ride. I was always anxious waiting for the ferry; I was anxious as you drove onto the ferry. Then we would get out of the car and you would stand with us at the ferry railing and point out the sights on the river – the freighters and the warehouses, the tugboats and the grain elevators, the white banana ships. Then the opposite shore would be close and I would be anxious again, dancing with anxiety to get back in the car, never learning that it took a long time after docking before the cars started moving. You always gave in to me and returned to the car much earlier than we had to. Always in the days of my memory, which is to say, on your good days.

I remember the long summer picnic days across the lake. I have an actual picture, taken with a camera and given to me in 1999 by one of mom’s friends who went on those outings too. A picture of you and me, on the shore of the bayou. You’re lying on your side, propped up on your elbow. I’m sitting next to you, a little behind your head, sprinkling sand on your almost completely bald head. How old am I? Ten, eleven, maybe even twelve, but no older. You have on your “Oh, gracious me” face. My favorite face. The face when you laughed at the indignities of the world.

Oh Dad, you failed us and I will always feel that we failed you. Why wasn’t there enough love to last? I am so sorry. I have missed you for years and now I will miss you always. There are no more chances.

Your neighbor told Patty that you would leave your apartment early each morning and return mid-morning and sit outside, on the balcony in front of the apartment, the very New Orleans balcony overlooking the courtyard that the apartments were built around. The balcony with wrought iron railings. The balcony of the apartment in Metairie, strangely close to Patty’s house. Patty who has long been terrified of you. Patty whom I envied for years because you were so involved with her and her friends when they were in high school. You were Mr. Charlie, their hero, their clown, thor chauffeur, and their biggest fan. Then it all started to go wrong.

I can just picture you, sitting on that balcony, reading, always reading. How much did you drink, Dad? I never went beyond the living room in your apartment, but I’m told there was only a bottle of gin and a bottle of coke in your frig. Could be true, could be false – truth never played a very big role in our family stories; drama was always more important than truth. Did you drink in the mornings? Did you preserve the niceties and drink only in the afternoons and evenings? Did you write us letters? Did you tear them up? Did you ever want to say you were sorry? Did you think, until the end, that we had cheated you and robbed you and falsely accused you and ruined you? Did you want the good times back? Did you want our love back?

This is my day of mourning for you, Dad. This is my eulogy for you. I know that you are forgiven, through Christ. That, like all of us, you died in Christ and with Christ and so you will be raised to life with him in glory. But, in addition to my sins, God will have to forgive me this too – that this does not seem enough. Eternity is not enough. Eternal peace and eternal happiness and eternal glory seem insufficient recompense for the sadness of here and now. The sadness of your life.

I am so sorry, Dad, mainly for your childhood. I am so sorry that you did not have the opportunity to build a larger reservoir for love, that you did not have the chance to fill a huge reservoir to overflowing with so much love that it could last your whole life and then some. I am sorry for your beginning and for your ending. I remember the love and the laughter of the middle. Not an idealized memory. I hated your temper; I hated my temper; I hated your hand across my face and your belt across my legs and backside. Then I hated your bigotry; I feared your ugliness. All of that, through those middle years. But those now seem the ordinary problems of a flawed but loving parent.

Not like the last years. Somewhere, somehow, for some reason, began the descent into madness and alcohol. How much was illness and how much was drink? How much was genetics and how much was bad choices?

Tears and questions, Dad. That’s what I am mainly left with. Tears and questions and love for a father who disappeared long before he died. I grieve for me, for my once loved, long lost father. I grieve for my children, who had too little from a grandfather who could have had much to give. I wish you had loved Aaron and Arwen more. I am glad you loved Matthew and he, you. Aaron is a climber and skier now; I remember how interested you were in our adventures in the mountains, when Bob and I were young.

Matthew is a senior at William and Mary, a history major like me and a lover of history like you. Arwen lit a candle for you at her wedding. One for you, one for Dad Sheldon, one for each of Scott’s grandfathers. Three candles for dead grandfathers and one candle for a dying grandfather, though we did not know that at the time; we thought only that it was a candle for a dead-to-us grandfather. Arwen said she wanted to honor her good memories of you. So do I, Dad, so do I.

Rest in peace, Dad, rise in glory.