My dad died last week. He’d been sort of sick for a few months, but only really sick the week before, so it was pretty unexpected. He was 71: his birthday was the day before he died. Father’s day was three days later. He’d had a heart condition and heart problems all his life. He had his first heart attack when he was in his twenties, so I guess that forty-some years or so we got after that was bonus. But it wasn’t his heart that killed him. It was blood cancer and the ensuing anemia and pulmonary distress. But his life is way more interesting than his death. He was a jack of all trades. It seemed he could do anything. He could fix cars, and fix things around the house, he could paint and make picture frames and carve wood. If he wanted something or wanted to do something, he figured out how. He had to drop out of college when he ran out of money, but he made sure I made it through (and then some). Academically, he was my biggest taskmaster and cheerleader. He worked as a private investigator on the side, so he had cool surveillance equipment. He used it to help me cut my first record. And we had the most popular slumber parties around, because when we had a séance, we always got a real ghost. It made it hard, however, for me to sneak out to meet a boy or sneak in after curfew.

My folks welcomed our friends and the neighbor kids and any kid who needed some love. All they wanted from life was to be parents and they were great parents, to us, and to our friends and to my sister’s kids, and to their friends.

He could sell anything, but that also made him a very savvy purchaser. He knew all the sales tricks and demanded the actual best price for anything. And he usually got it.

He was personality plus. He had a huge collections of jokes and would come up with a joke (or two or three) appropriate for any situation. When things seemed too serious at his funeral, I knew the perfect joke from his repertoire, appropriate for the situation: There was a man, a dying man. He was weak, on his death bed, when with nearly his last breath he smelled something wonderful: his wife’s famous chocolate chip cookies. His favorite! He got out of bed with his last bit of energy and crawled to the kitchen, ready for a bite of delicious warm cookie. He gathered all his energy and reached for a cookie, when his wife slapped his hand and said, “They’re for the funeral.”