The Last Samurai

I never thought of my father as being an exceptionally courageous man, except for that one time of course, when he took his own life.

I did think of my father as exceptionally intelligent and talented.

When he graduated from high school his teachers wanted him to go to college. He declined, choosing instead to work with both his mind and his hands as a tool and die maker. Shaping complex things out of metal. One of his greatest accomplishments occurred during World War II. He was employed at the Lewis Research Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of today's NASA. The lab's charter was to explore aeronautic propulsion. With his own hands he helped to build one of the US government's first research jet engines. He took a solid block of metal and, working 12 hours shifts at night for a whole year, cut out a unit of turbine blades from that block.

Think about that.

We are not talking about many separate blades. We are talking about a unit of multiple blades from one block of metal; all the curves, all the angles; all the perfection necessary to literally grind out these blades as one single unit. I wonder what type of grinders were employed in 1943. Incredible. The next time you board a jet airliner, take a look at the blades and think about the skill it would take to carve them out of a single block of metal. By hand. My father worked for NACA/NASA from World War II until after men landed on the moon. Pretty good career.

After the war he also built our home with the help of his life partner, our mother. A brick home with radiant heat rising from hot water pipes running throughout the concrete pad upon which the house stood. Radiant heat constructed in 1950, a time when furnaces were welcome. Then he built the large two car garage out of concrete block. Then added the large family room when the family grew larger. He wanted a boat so he acquired the two halves of a mold for a fiberglass boat and then built a boat out of the mold itself. He then went to a tool and die shop in the evenings and hand build a complex, hinged trailer that tilted to ease the launching of the hand built boat.

In the 1960's he prepared for retirement by buying run down apartments and renovating them, teaching me the fundamentals of plumbing, wiring, painting and more. His last few years of his career included 80 hour work weeks. Forty at the lab and forty at the apartment buildings. He was like a locomotive.

Up until recently he and my mother would travel in a motorhome for at least six months out of the year. Most people sell their motorhomes after putting 12,000 to 18,000 miles on them over a period of years. My parents traded in their motorhomes for a new one when the old one hit 100,000 miles. They were rock-hounders. I'm talking about traveling out to the Wild West and attacking hills and mountains with pick and shovel. Then, take the rocks they found, clean them up in a cold mountain stream to then polish and facet the rocks. My father took the motorhome so far back in the rugged hills one time that he broke a rear leaf spring. They just sat there in their sagging motorhome until friends eventually wondered what happened to them and came looking.

And his intellect just kept going.

He once read an encyclopedia for fun. Later, we hooked him up with the mother of all encyclopedias, the Internet, and he was off and running. Have you ever seen the commercial where the guy reaches the end of the Internet? We were a little worried about that. Every once in a while I would throw a topic his way just to see him research it and tell me what he learned. "Hey Dad, did you hear about this guy who has walked 25,000 miles in the wilderness? Wonder if he wrote a book, could be pretty fun reading". Bang, here comes the results of my Dad's research AND a book from Amazon. He was 86 years old and could have taught a youngster how to surf the net.

Every year when Sue and I would visit my Mom and Dad in Florida, I would challenge my father to a nightly game of Jeopardy. And every year he would kick my ass. He just sat there and quietly gave the answers to old Alex. I kept waiting for my father to develop dementia so I would have a fighting chance. Never happened.

He was an eternal source of wisdom, quietly dispensing praise and hope.

But of course, humans are not eternal and his body started to fail him. This is a guy who studied body building when the pundits were warning against becoming "muscle bound". He skied, he canoed, he boated, he camped and hunted. He was an active outdoorsman. And his body began to fail twenty years ago. First the heart, then the hips and knees. He had so many manmade parts in his body that we started to think of him as the Bionic Man. But, the locomotive kept losing steam and was coming to the end of the line. He took sick a while back. We thought we were going to lose him then. He ended up in the hospital for a few days and then physical rehab after that. He had always shunned the thought of living out his days trapped in a failed body while remaining intellectually strong, cared for by strangers in a nursing home. The hospital stay and following rehab cemented in his mind that he could no longer let the chance of a debilitating illness define his destiny. For his whole life he planned things to the nth degree, and so it was that over a period of weeks he carefully planned his own death. That's my Dad. I'm not surprised. When we went to Florida to help my mother, all we did was follow my father's written instructions.

However, even knowing the depth of my father's talent I just can't comprehend the courage it took to end his life. Stone cold sober. Of sound mind and failed body. How did he take that final step? I just don't know.

I will miss his praise. His advice. His wisdom. Who will look over the family now? It will now be more of a committee than a patriarch. I guess that's not bad, but I could have used more time with the patriarch. I would like to know from where did he find such courage? Was it always there? Am I that blind?

I have so many questions.

........

Come with me now to the movies.

I present to you one of the final scenes from the movie "The Last Samurai". Our hero Katsumoto lies mortally wounded on the field of battle. His former antagonist, and now good friend, Captain Algren is next to him. Katsumoto fought the good fight his whole life. He was a patriot, skilled at his job and a natural leader utilizing intellect and good sense. However, times change and now Katsumoto has lost not only his life, but has also lost the battle and ultimately the war.

It is his time to go, but he is not willing to die by the hand of his enemy.

Why give the enemy such satisfaction?

Where is the honor in that?

Rather, it is his desire to die by his own hand, on his own terms, thereby frustrating his enemy. Captain Algren urgently wants to stop his friend from taking his own life, but realizes that death is a very personal thing, and therefore a personal choice. Captain Algren comes to this realization in the face of unfathomable conviction. He does not try to stop his friend from suicide, but rather allows him the peace of his decision. Upon this final realization, Captain Algren looks to his friend and says:

"I will miss our conversations."