Today I sit beside my father as he lies in hospice, and I think about baseball. 

In the spring of 1964, we lived in Phoenix where my dad was trying to earn a living on a real estate boom that didn’t really boom until after we had returned to California a year later. At school, my teacher passed out application forms to all the boys for summer Little League. The prospect terrified me. It was just the thing my dad would love to do with his son, and this son was having none of it. I had accepted our co-membership into Indian Guides, where we became Big Bear and Little Bear. I had even enjoyed our time together there, building drums and making bead necklaces – until our tribe went horseback riding and I slipped off the oldest, slowest nag and landed on the trail like a sad sack of maize. 

And now my dad would expect me to manifest some enthusiasm over playing a sport. I was eight. I hated sports. Surely he knew this by now and would understand. But I was taking no chances. I had decided to hide the form in my closet until the registration deadline passed. (I tried not to think of my attempt two years previously to hide a vaccination letter from my parents in the same way. It was the only time in my life I became an anti-vaxxer. It did not end well.)

Unfortunately, the day was about to get much, much worse. As I stepped off the bus and trudged up the block toward our house, I saw a figure standing stiffly at the foot of our drive. It was my dad, dressed in his white short-sleeved shirt, dark slacks and tie, and he was watching me come up the street, his expression unreadable. I wondered if he had somehow uncovered my plot to evade baseball. I wanted to slow down my walking but suddenly there I was, standing before him. 

What my dad had waited in the driveway to tell me was that our beloved basset hound, Colonel, had dashed out the front door of our house and been run over in the street. It was my first death in the family, and my dad, who loved that dog as much as anyone could love any living thing, knew it was his duty as a father to break the news to me. I stared at him for a long minute. And then I drew the folded Little League application out of my pocket and handed it to him. If I renounced the evil act I was about to do, then maybe God would bring my dog back. And then I walked into the house and cried for days.

I ended up playing right field for the “Minor Dodgers” that summer – and the summer after that. My dad was a coach the first year and managed the team the second. He saw me in all my un-glory. In fact, he had to bench me once. I did nothing to make him proud of his son, the ball player – until the final game when I was up at bat. Somehow, after two dozen instances of being walked or struck out, I managed to connect solidly with the ball and score a single. Then the first baseman fumbled the ball, and I heeded the coach’s scream to “RUN!” Maybe the opposing team was too shocked that this “easy out” had done something right, but they kept overthrowing and dropping the ball, and I ended up sliding into home. Literally – I stepped off third base and slid all the way to the home plate. I couldn’t walk for the rest of the day. But it was enough for the crowd to cheer, for my team to look at me with newfound respect – and for my dad to grasp me in his arms and tell me how proud he was of me. He never made me play baseball again. 

Today my dad lies in his bed, his breathing wet but not labored because of the morphine my brother has slipped under his tongue. The hospice nurse has left, assuring us that my dad is comfortable, that his body is doing what it needs to do. Nurses know this then when they see a person’s brow isn’t furrowed. My dad’s brow is smooth. These assurances help my mother not a bit. We’ve got the game on, and the 49ers are tanking. At least it’s not baseball season.

My father turned 94 earlier this month. This weekend, we will celebrate my parents’ 68^th wedding anniversary. The story of my mother’s love for my dad is legendary. When she was thirteen, her family was dining at San Francisco’s Clift Hotel. She looked up and saw another family enter the restaurant: a dad, a mom, and three sons. She gazed at one of the boys who, at nineteen, was the oldest, and asked, “Who is that?” My Aunt Rosalie, married to mom’s brother Gene, turned to see and said, “Oh, that’s Johnny Friedman. We went to Sunday school together.” My mom looked him over and said, “I’m going to go out with him someday.” 

Five years later, they were introduced by a mutual friend. For their first date, my dad took mom to the opera. They saw Carmen. My grandmother bought mom a beautiful dress, which my dad never forgot. After their first date, my mom told her mother that he was the most polite gentleman she had ever dated. They dated for two years and then were married. Ten months later, they achieved true bliss: they had me. 

For my dad, family was everything. He worked so hard that we only saw him at dinner and on weekends, but even though money was tight and our mom had to return to work soon after my baby brother was born, they always made sure that we had food on the table and a good Christmas. Every year, my dad would stay up all night, assembling bikes or tanks or forts, putting notes in our stockings that read, “Santa couldn’t fit this in your sock! Please go to the back yard! Ho ho ho!!” All his life, my dad wanted to be a better dad than his father had been to him and his brothers. He succeeded at that, even though mistakes were made along the way. He hadn’t been raised to talk about his feelings. That sort of thing made him uncomfortable, and it was exacerbated by having a son who was all about feelings, who studied drama and spent years in therapy and was used to sharing everything with his friends. 

The two exceptions were his wife – his Barbara – and his animals. All his life he had dogs. Growing up, they were his solace when he was having trouble with his own dad, and then he shared that love with his own kids. I don’t remember not having a dog. We started with basset hounds and ended with poodles. And when the last of the dogs had passed away, and my mom said no more dogs, let’s travel . . . my dad went out and bought a cat. He named her Sasha, but he always called her “Sasha Sue.” That cat loved my dad and hated my mother, so much so that she lived eighteen years just to spite her. 

When I was a boy, I used to say, “I am nothing like my father.” As a man, I came to realize how much alike we are. He complained about my deep anxiety because he saw something of himself in it. We both hid our insecurities behind a caustic wit that sometimes got us in trouble. (My two brothers share this trait: if you ever find yourself sitting with the three of us and listen to us talk, you may come to wonder at some point what the heck is going on!) Dad and I have always had a sneaking suspicion that animals are better than people. Maybe much better. The biggest difference is that dad had a life partner, the love of his life, and raised a family. I did neither. He is my family. 

Life is a crap shoot, and I wish my dad had rolled better dice these last ten years. I have seen people in their 90’s still driving, still going to the theatre, still playing cards, still engaging. Over the last few years especially, as the Parkinson’s took its toll, my dad became a true invalid, bored with his limitations. Sometimes he was peevish and sad. Sometimes, he was dryly funny. He hated being helpless, dependent on my mom and his caregivers. He hated the hallucinations and the confusion of his disease, although sometimes the things he saw fascinated him. He always wished he could be more a part of the conversation. 

Mostly, my dad handled his diminished life with courage and humor. My mom didn’t always understand his jokes, but he and I would exchange a look and I knew my dad was still there. Hanging out with my father over the past few years has caused a shift in my lifelong anxiety over death. He showed me that sometimes you have to stop thinking too hard about all of that: you just have to live in the best way you can. For him, it became about the visits from his sons and grandchildren, the games on TV, the occasional bowl of fresh whipped cream. (Never mind the pie, just give me the bowl.) Most of all, it was about “Grammy,” the name he gave to my mother. Sometimes he vented his frustrations and said mean things; mostly, though, he just wanted to have her near him. The last thing he said to her before he passed into this new silent stage was when he woke her up in the middle of the night last week and said, “I love you.” 

When he’s gone, life won’t be the same for any of us. But . . . he’s my dad. I love him. That will never change.