In Memoriam: My Father

My father died last Sat­ur­day at the age of 96. He had been cop­ing with a series of small strokes that affect­ed his hand move­ments, hear­ing, and speak­ing. He had been a mas­ter car­pen­ter most of his life, so his sens­es and eye/hand coor­di­na­tion were his most fun­da­men­tal tools. The loss­es had added up a lit­tle too quick­ly. He com­mu­ni­cat­ed frus­tra­tion and depres­sion. And so he did the most log­i­cal thing to cope any­one could do: he went to sleep. He stopped eat­ing; he spi­raled down; he start­ed receiv­ing mor­phine and a few days ago he sim­ply did­n’t wake up any­more. I saw him a few hours before he died and it was so clear his spir­it had already depart­ed a lin­ger­ing body.

What homage can a son pay? Per­haps only to tell the story.

My father, Kurt Karl Oestre­ich, was a strong man. He had to be. He grew up between the World Wars in Ger­many. In 1937, to save his fam­i­ly from harm by the Nazi Storm Troop­ers that were harass­ing his vil­lage, he escaped Ger­many to become one of the thou­sands of refugees on the road. The Storm Troop­ers rode into town spray­ing gun­fire. They tor­tured lead­ers of oppo­si­tion par­ties (which includ­ed my father) and their fam­i­lies. Every­one was watched. Over the next three years, after cross­ing the bor­der, he real­ly only had him­self to depend on. He knew hunger and fear and learned to keep his wits about him as he trav­eled from coun­try to coun­try. He accept­ed help from good peo­ple along the way; saw oth­ers aban­don their prin­ci­ples and some­times aban­don their lives. 

Even­tu­al­ly he was able to emi­grate to the Unit­ed States. But here he also had to defend him­self against those who thought he might be a com­mu­nist or a fas­cist. He learned the lan­guage, and did so with­out for­mal train­ing. He became a cit­i­zen and enlist­ed in the mil­i­tary, where he was giv­en the choice to go back to Ger­many as a trans­la­tor or go the front lines in the Philip­pines. He chose the lat­ter. He was soon sta­tioned at Fort Lewis in Wash­ing­ton State and through mutu­al friends met my moth­er. He went off to war with­out mar­ry­ing her in case some­thing hap­pened to him. He was lucky and they spent their hon­ey­moon at a lodge on Van­cou­ver Island, a place he could fish, his most impor­tant hobby.

They were both a lit­tle old for mar­ry­ing in those days, 34. They did­n’t have a lot of mon­ey. They bought an aging farm­house on a hill and twelve acres, half in pas­ture and orchard, half in woods. The farm­house had only one piece of indoor plumb­ing, a sin­gle cold-water tap that ran from a stor­age tank in the for­est behind the house. They fixed the place up, and they had gar­dens and ani­mals — ducks, rab­bits, and sheep. They had kids, my old­er broth­er and me. My dad rebuilt the house, put in the plumb­ing, built the garage, resh­in­gled the whole thing from scaf­folds he built him­self. After what my dad had been through, I’m guess­ing this was pret­ty close to heav­en. It was a dream — of sta­bil­i­ty, self-suf­fi­cien­cy, and a fam­i­ly that lived with­out fear. 

My father had the kind of intel­li­gence that is forged, not inher­it­ed or par­tic­u­lar­ly nur­tured. He was prac­ti­cal because he had to be. He was a per­fec­tion­ist because of the price of mis­takes in his world. As a result, he also sym­pa­thized with the under­dog, who­ev­er that under­dog might be. And as a con­se­quence, my broth­er and I learned empa­thy for those with­out mon­ey or pow­er, for those who had been tor­tured or dis­crim­i­nat­ed against for things they could­n’t help, like the col­or of one’s skin. He hat­ed guns and vio­lence. On the farm, he might take out his .22 cal­iber rifle to shoot at crows steal­ing cher­ries or the fer­al cats that stole the neigh­bor’s chick­ens. One night, hear­ing strange sounds out­side our house, I remem­ber he left it sit­ting next to the door. But weapons in gen­er­al and wars on any scale, fight­ing — they were all anath­e­ma. He had known the stench of dead bod­ies, though he nev­er talked of it, nev­er told boast­ful sto­ries over a beer. No, what my father was was the clas­sic immi­grant who worked his behind off every sin­gle day so that his chil­dren could have some­thing bet­ter than he’d had, so that his wife did­n’t wor­ry. How many nights did he come home from his work only to go out in the dark­ness to care for the ani­mals, get wood for the stove? How many week­ends were giv­en to shoring up the foun­da­tion of the house with new cedar posts or hay­ing the fields in prepa­ra­tion for the win­ter? There was one val­ue that was more impor­tant to him than all the oth­ers, easy to name: duty.

He was not, for as sen­si­tive a child as I was, the eas­i­est per­son for me to grow up with as a father. He could be cool and dis­tant and frankly a lit­tle scary. I iden­ti­fied and con­nect­ed with my moth­er (who sur­vives him, by the way, also 96). He saw me as that younger son, “Dan­ny-el Karl” he would say, who “always had his nose in a book.” My broth­er, the incip­i­ent engi­neer, was more com­pre­hen­si­ble. My father did­n’t seem to enjoy the con­ver­sa­tions about rela­tion­ships and psy­chol­o­gy that were nat­ur­al to my moth­er and me. Chances were, as those con­ver­sa­tions hap­pened at the kitchen table he was on the couch in the liv­ing room read­ing and nap­ping beneath his beloved news­pa­per. There were years when the truth was that I was angry with him because I felt so mis­un­der­stood and dis­tant. And yet…and yet…he was also the man who paid the bill when I went to the fan­cy Ivy League col­lege. He was the man who told me to pur­sue my tal­ents. “These are fan­tas­tic ideas,” he said to me one day when I was thir­ty or so. “You must do some­thing with them.” He was the man who whis­pered, “You can do more than you think you can.” His per­fec­tion­ism, over the years, drove me crazy and demand­ed that I use my tal­ents, make a “con­tri­bu­tion to the world,” his def­i­n­i­tion of man­hood. When I wrote my first book his only com­ment was to point out a mis­print­ed word on page 37. No praise. No recog­ni­tion. It brought back all the hor­ren­dous mem­o­ries of those nights we brought home our report cards. “Why is this sub­ject an A-? Why not an A?” An inter­ro­ga­tion. Although he had only achieved an 8th grade school edu­ca­tion, there was no ques­tion that every grade he’d ever received in school was an A — oh, for­give me, not just an an A, an A+.

And yet, and yet. There are so many fine mem­o­ries — him dig­ging in his gar­den after he had retired, find­ing the hid­den pota­toes. Fish­ing on the ocean or in a stream or lake. My father knew how to sit in silence for hours, wait­ing, know­ing the fish were there. He had nev­er brooked silli­ness or tan­gled lines from bored sons. Fish­ing was seri­ous busi­ness. We did our best to wait for the pole to tip, learn­ing to set the hook just so. The dark waters of the lake could last all day, all night if nec­es­sary for him. He could be there, watch­ing the tip of the rod the same way I now find myself wait­ing for under­stand­ing of what is beneath the sur­face in the orga­ni­za­tions I work with. My father would have said his down­fall was his impa­tience, his lack of “tem­per.” But he was, of course, a man who had been tem­pered more than most. I find myself aspir­ing to the same.

I’m the kid in the back tossing his hay

Of the many gifts he gave me I want to men­tion one of the most valu­able. When I was eleven, he gave me my first cam­era. I learned to take black and whites by his hand, under­stand f‑stops, shut­ter speed, and focus­ing, things that mat­ter but are eas­i­ly lost to automa­tion. By then, he had per­son­al­ly pro­gressed to the sat­u­rat­ed beau­ty of Kodachrome, a slide film pop­u­lar many years ago. Kodachrome made the col­ors of any life rich. The reds were glo­ri­ous, incom­pa­ra­ble. They had pas­sion writ­ten all over them. My broth­er and I lay on the floor of our liv­ing room, our mom bare­ly in the chair hav­ing just fin­ished wash­ing the dish­es, as he care­ful­ly insert­ed, one by one, the slides into his pro­jec­tor. A vaca­tion, per­haps, or Christ­mas. There was always a cri­tique, some of it fun­ny — what cap­tions could we come up with? — and some of it a dis­ap­point­ment in expo­sure or com­po­si­tion. I learned some­thing there of my father’s true soul. 

It would be easy to dis­miss this car­pen­ter. He kept a low pro­file. His humor was in puns, not rib­ald jokes. His beau­ty was in the for­mal wood carv­ings of flow­ers he did by hand with his knives and his lathe turn­ings of vas­es and plates done in the base­ment. He could be good at a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing where you need­ed the voice of rea­son spo­ken in a tact­ful and unas­sum­ing way. He did­n’t want to stand out. He worked for 30 years for one com­pa­ny and then he retired, hav­ing sur­vived it all, the eco­nom­ic ups and downs, the years of ris­ing at 5:15 AM, the moun­tains of his favorite break­fast, Raisin Bran. In his heart, he accept­ed life as a con­test between good and evil and he knew exact­ly what it was that the good looked like. It did­n’t make waves. It was qui­et­ly coura­geous. It was an exam­ple. It fought for the under­dog. It was smart. It survived. 

He was a gra­cious, hard, imper­fect, demand­ing and sweet man who knew how to adhere to rules of faith and duty that are all but for­got­ten. I have no long­ing for that old­er world. His life was born from things we have lit­tle under­stand­ing of today, but should nev­er forget. 

I wish your spir­it well, Dad. 

You earned your keep, my father. And now I hope to do the same. 

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