Christopher Buckley a Year Later

Christopher Buckley writes today:

It’s tricky, trying to channel your father’s ghost. Hamlet tried it. I think I won’t. But I miss WFB’s takes on—everything that’s going on. Often, I’d find myself flailing aimlessly or circularly about some issue, trying to sort it out in my own head. Then I’d ring him and he’d nail it for me in two or three neat sentences that left me laughing and shaking my head, for the thousandth time, in amazement. Even if I suspected he might be wrong, he was always elegantly wrong.

He died at his desk in Stamford, Connecticut, while working on a book. He’d been ill for many months, worn down by emphysema. His wife of 57 years had died ten months earlier, and he missed her desperately. A DVD had been made of her memorial service, with a PowerPoint slide show I’d assembled of dozens of photos of her through the years. He watched it again and again, tears streaming down his face. I understand now, the business of long-time mates not outliving each other by long.

My father was a man of devout, unflinching, sometimes exasperating Catholic faith. He believed absolutely in heaven and hell. I lost (or misplaced) my faith, but I find myself on this anniversary hoping that I’m wrong, and that he’s there, correcting God’s grammar. I have on my desk an editorial cartoon showing him arriving at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter whispering to an angel, “I’m going to need a bigger dictionary.”

A touching bit of writing this, and unusually honest and open, I think. I say that because it rings true, to me….I understand this stage and Buckley’s words, even better perhaps, than Buckley himself, having lived all the way through this stage and past it, some years ago. It’s as I said, a few father’s days ago:

I’ve come to understand quite a bit about my father in the last 15 years, or so. Oddly, most of my understanding came after he’d died a few years ago, and most of the revelations have been as a result of my having lived life. He’s never far from my thoughts, and so as life events unfold, I always have his guidance nearby to lean on, and his guideposts to measure by. And, as I go though this process, I’m leaning more about both who I am, and who he was.

And, oh boy has a lot ever happened since his death. Think about the changes in the last five years, in your own life. I suppose it could be fairly said that nothing has happened to me, though, that he hadn’t prepared me for. The funny part is, I didn’t know I was being prepared for it, at the time. I think he didn’t know what the future would bring, either. All he could do is impart the basic values, and hope I was able to apply them correctly. Apparently I have, for the most part.

What amazes me is how well I can hear his voice now that he’s passed on; in many ways, better than I ever could while he was alive. Those of you who have lost a parent will understand what I’m saying, here, I think. It is yet another cruel irony, I guess, that his voice seems to ring louder in my ears, in my head, now that he’s gone…. This is particularly true when value judgments come up. I suspect this is as it should be… Those being his most important lessons… But I still marvel at it all.

I also, within the last several years, find myself dimly aware that I’ve managed to pick up some of the traits he had, without trying. These are not things I’d picked up consciously… In fact, when I was seventeen, I think I might have made the choice to avoid these traits. Now at nearly three times that age, I have begun to regard adopting these things as the natural progression… That all is as it should be.

It’s an awful bit of truth, that until that death occurrs, until that modicum of emotional shelter provided by his contiued existance in the world ceases, and has been gone for long enough for you to adjust to that sad fact, you never fully understand him. You never fully understand why he viewed the world as he did.

I suspect Chris Buckley has now come to that point, and is starting to explore, perhaps unintentionally,  the implications of that whole scene. He’s not ready to admit to himself all of those implications, though, eventually, I suspect he will. I suppose that the rebelion in him will continue to damp down as his understanding increases, since that increased understanding will without fail cause at least re-evaluation. I have greater hopes for him in this area than I ever did for, say, Ron Reagan, who to this day doesn’t have even the level of understanding that Buckely apparently has, even at this early stage.