Three Men and a Little Old Lady - Part One

I had two fears going into the day of my dad's funeral.

The first was that nobody would show.

The second was that nobody would speak about my father during the service.

Turns out that I didn't need to worry about either.

After I concluded delivering the eulogy for my dad, I returned to the front row of the chapel as "God Only Knows" played softly in the background.

Mr. Stream returned to the podium and invited anybody that wanted to say a few words about my dad to come up and do so.

Keester was the first person to come up. He had been a peer of my dad's for the last few years.

He had also saved my dad's life three years ago.

I found out about this situation in the middle of the work day. My grandma didn't have my work phone number but she did have my work email address. I received a panicked email from her telling me that my dad was in ICU in Long Beach.

I called her up and she was crying and asking me to go check on him.

I left work immediately and drove straight to the hospital. It took me a little bit to track down where my father was and when I found him the situation didn't look good.

I could only focus on the blood transfusion that he was receiving. It made me want to puke.

All he could say was "What are you doing here?"

Keep in mind, this was three years ago. The Chicken is still a twinkle in my eye. The relationship with my father at this time is strained at best. So I'm only thinking one thing after hearing that question.

"Jackass."

Instead of talking like father and son, I interview him like cop and suspect. I found out that he had internal bleeding and that he had ignored the symptoms thinking he could "tough it out."

Once again, "Jackass."

I'm willing to stay with him but he doesn't want company. "Get outta here. I'm fine!"

Yeah, buddy. You look fine right now.

I leave to go track down Number 2. He tells me what really happened.

Our dad hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days and everyone he worked with was telling him to get to a doctor or an emergency room. Finally, he decided that he did, in fact, required medical attention.

He called Keester to take him to the hospital.

While Keester was on his way, my dad collapsed in the shower and had cut his head open pretty bad (sound familiar?).

Keester found him unconscious and called 911. Keester saved his life and gave my dad three more years.

It's appropriate that he speaks first.

Unfortunately, Keester is a little boring up there. He speaks in a slow and deliberate manner. He is reading definitions out of Webster's dictionary to set the stage for what he is going to talk about.

It's kind of killing me right now. But once again, he saved my dad's life. So I listen to what he has to say.

I perk up when I hear him talk about how generous my dad was. How if a union member was behind in his or her dues that my dad would pay the dues for the union member so that they could work. Or if a union member hadn't had much work and it was getting close to Christmas, my dad would go out and buy presents for the union member's children, wrap them up, and say they were from Santa so these kids wouldn't go without opening something up on Christmas day.

This is the first time I've ever heard about this. I never knew this side of my dad. It didn't surprise me that he did this but it did surprise me that I was hearing about it now.

Keester read one more definition and it gave me an answer to one of the questions that had just recently popped up for me.

It was the word that my dad used to name the account where all of his charitable contributions came from.

The Eleemosynary Fund.

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