Remembering My Father

Today I sit and look at the calendar and then at a picture of my father set in a little plastic card displaying the dates of his birth and death, and then I realize, tomorrow is his birthday. He would have been 72 - doesn't really seem that old to me. Cancer saw to it that my dad died just shy of his 70th birthday and just shy of his 40th wedding anniversary. To remember and honor him, I decided to post the Eulogy I wrote and read at his funeral. My father was a good man. I love and miss him.

Eulogy in Memory of my Father, Andrew Amendola.

It is said that one of the hardest things to do after a loved one passes is to clean out his possessions - clear the closets and drawers, donate clothing to the homeless. In all my sorrow, this will probably be the easiest thing for me to do, because there was not one worldly, earthly, possession that my dad owned that he prized. He never had a favorite shirt or chair or jacket. Possessions were not a desire, but a necessity.

Some men spend hours in their driveways, spit-shining their prized cars. Some men clean their shelved trophies every day. Some men scream like mad men if their children or grandchildren so much as put a smudge on their big screen T.V. Well, my father’s car was always a modest, good-in-the-snow vehicle. A car was not a source of pride or a status or any prestige for him. Any thought he had for any car was that it wasn’t a complete lemon - that it worked well enough to take him back and forth to work - his job - a place he went all his life to provide for his family. His car wasn’t a source of pride, but rather a necessity to provide for his family.

My father had not one trophy on his shelf. Nothing material to remind him of what a great soccer player he had once been, or what a number one soccer coach he had been for my brother’s team, or what a great employee he had been all his life, or what an honorable soldier he had been while serving in the United States Army. Instead, what adorned my father’s shelves were pictures - not fancy framed art work, but pictures - sometimes not even in frames. Sometimes they were just propped up against a vase or even haphazardly taped up to the wall. These consisted of hand-drawn pictures from the grandchildren and pictures of family and friends. Family and friends - those were his trophies. The quality of his family and friends was the measure of my father’s success and accomplishments in life.

If you go into my father's house, the first thing some people may notice are the numerous and, at times, very large stains on the carpet. Some people may notice the pen marks, crayon marks, scuff marks, and hand prints on the wall, or even the broken and battered furniture. THAT WAS MY FATHER’S TROPHY!!!!!! All the signs of a lived-in house, all the signs that his grandchildren were in that house with him, almost on a daily basis. Each stain - chocolate milk, ice tea, yogurt, even throw up, spit up, pee pee, poo poo and little snot balls freshly picked and wiped in some corner of the room, - each of those stains represents his grandchildren, HIS TROPHY.

One time I told my dad that he should really paint the walls and replace the carpet, because they were so stained. And he replied, "I don’t care about the condition of the house. The furniture could be ripped and the walls could be filthy, as long as the house is warm in the winter, as long as your mother can cook in the kitchen and as long as we can all sit together at the table. I don’t care what the house looks like."

I stupidly rolled my eyes at the time, but now I realize with the clarity and wisdom of a sage that those marks - those stains, rips, things that others may consider the sign of a sloppy person, - were my dad’s trophies. They are the fruit of his life-long labor. They say, "Look, I worked all my life and raised a beautiful family." They say, " Look, all my children are married and gave me beautiful grandchildren." They say, " Look, my grandchildren are always at their nonno’s house ... always with me."

Not a car, nor a trophy on a shelf, nor a medal, nor a fancy house, but a simple stain in the carpet. That was my father’s legacy.

- I love you, daddy! Your little Adee.