Post by Crow on Oct 24, 2007 12:40:39 GMT -5
This is a personal dedication to my dearly departed dad...just wanted to share a part of me since a lot of you don't know me particularly well...
It's deep though!
Don't feel the need to respond if you don't want to, by the way.
16 years ago a boy would punch a grown ass man in his stomach, saying "You're not my mother, you're not my father."
2 years ago to this day that same boy cried his eyes out that morning, and a few a week or so later would weep when reading the obituary of the man that changed his life.
Picture two 4 year old boys and their mother, a woman who had been through hell and back trying to struggle and take care of her children. She was practically alone now: the boys father was an addict to everything but his responsibilities. Worse yet was the fact that the oldest of her twin boys was autistic in a time when half the world, including their mother, didn't know what autistic was. All she knew was that he was slow and they needed more than a single working mom to be taken care of.
And then like a scene out of a movie, he was there. They had met riding home from work with their friends. While their friends slept the rides away they talked and talked, and eventually he would ride her home. They would talk sitting on the train station platform's seats, watching the sunset come up while laughing and smiling.
Then he met the boys. The second boy didn't like him.
At all.
The second boy missed his father dearly, wanted to eb a part of his life, wanted him to be a part of his life: but was always left wanting. And here this no-good, wife-stealing homewrecker comes making it worse.
But the boy was wrong.
He began to notice that as much as much as he loved his father, his father did nothing but make promise after promise, keeping none of them. Yet, here was a man who didn't try to pry: he actually tried to encourage the boy to know his father and encouraged the boy's father to know his son. He tried her hardest to make the boys comfortable and even left when the father was around, trying not to steal the opportunity for the boys to know their father.
And then things changed.
Soon the boy began to see the man as a friend. This man who picked him up after school; this man who bought him snickers bars, milky ways and peanut chews; this man who joked and played with him and encouraged his burgeoning imagination with his own long winded-stories. This man who taught him how to read better, do math, do everything that made him a bright six year old boy. It was because of this man that people called the boy "The Professor". This man who took care of him as if he was his own.
And it wasn't only for him that benefits were reaped. His father couldn't handle the responsibility of having a slow son, a boy who was growing and growing physically, but in his mind had only aged a year. A boy who, by his sixth year, was still in pampers. A boy who doctors were giving up hope on, and encouraging the mother to do the same. This man took to the slow child like he was his own child and dealt with him as if there was nothing in the world wrong with him. And for that child, nothing was after this man arrived.
He potty-trained him, taught him how to repeat words and numbers and recognize things, to follow commands, and more. This man who helped this child become more sociable when later they'd find autistic children are not sociable; this man who was the first person this boy ever tried to talk to on the phone. This man who made this boy light up when he entered the room.
This man who these children bore an uncanny resemblance to in their youth, to the point that his family members cursed him for hiding them for so long; but though accepted into his family, he still took them to see their own family on their father's side.
This man who bought the boy his first Gameboy when Gameboy was new; bought him the comics the boy loved so much; bought him his first little pinball machine and Nintendo; this man who helped give and shape the gift of love.
This man who almost died one night due to the revelation that he had diabetes, scaring a little boy of a possibility that was beyond fair. And then a happy ending when the man made it out alright, merely missing death by a day.
And years later, even through some bad times, the good stuck out. Despite having a string of conflicts when the boys reached tough times, and despite the brooding conflicts that arose between he and the second child, things got better. Better to the point that anyone who remembered one had to think of the other. They'd take whole days to travel and explore random parts of the city, making stops to a myriad of stores to haggle and shop on Fordham Road, 149th street, 125th street and the rest of Harlem, 54th st, 33rd st, West 4th st, Chambers st and more. Days where they'd walk from the east side of 70th street and venture all the way done to 33rd, sometimes to the west side, just for the sake of it. Playing bingo across the street from their apartment, going to arcades, checking out music stores, everything.
And then there was the decline. The time that the family found out that this man's previously assumed itching skin condition, later thought of as eczema by some doctors, was really a rare form of cancer called T-Cell Lymphoma...
They tried UVA and UVB light treatments and dialysis machines to clean the blood and chemo-therapy medicine and ointments and everything: and while it worked well for a long time, his body began to give in a little at a time...
The family could tell he was hiding something...but he hid it well, trying and trying to keep smiling, keep laughing, all the while his body got smaller, skinnier and frailer. After a string of months where he was in and out of the hospital for treatments more than he was in the house, they finally figured it out: he was dying. They didn't know how soon, but the thought remained in the back of their heads.
And then one week, things got bad. Everything inside of him was beginning to fail. His faculties were falling, to the point where he was imagining things...but still, his mind remained stronger than ever, the last thing to fail him, and to his final hours he still tried to remained happy and pure and joking...
And then a morning soon after, they got the call.
First the son, the boy who had punched him in his stomach fourteen years before. The son who who rushed him out of his house, and argued with him. But also the son who grew fond of him, who was his best friend and buddy. The doctors wouldn't let him know, preferring to speak to his mother, but he knew. No one got calls at 6 in the morning just for the sake of it.
A few hours later they were told by the doctors that if they kept him alive on life support, it wouldn't do much of anything to help, and his body would be in pain. Ten minutes after that they were giving the okay to pull the plug.
They cried as they held his hands, his final breaths leaving his body, the final movements that caused them to have a tiny glimmer of hope that he'd wake up and say "Just kidding!"...but in the end it was just the normal process of death.
The next day they waited for him to wake them up. Or to hear his keys opening the door. Or to get a call from the hospital saying he was on his way.
But it never came.
Soon they were looking for a funeral home.
Then how to bury him...in the end they had only enough to cremate him...
A week or so later they were at his wake surrounded by friends...
A day later they were morning him in the boy's church.
And two years later, that boy is writing on his computer fighting back the tears to finish his letter. Trying to fight back tears as he thinks of all the boring conversations about the Bible this man put him through; about the hours they shared playing Gameboy, Nintendo, Playstaytion, and more. About the way this man taught the boy to cook and iron and build and repair. About the memories of times when they'd spend entire days listening to music: oldies from the Motown era all the way to modern hip hop and r & B...even rock. About the times this man would pretend to use the toilet so he could play his street-bought tetris-knockoff "Brick game" in solitude. About the way the man tried his hardest to make sure everyone was happy and content. And laughing...always laughing.
And one thing that this boy has learned throughout all of this is that it doesn't take blood to raise a child. It doesn't take a last name to take on responsibility. It doesn't take resemblance to teach and to hold and to help and to just be there when people need you the most.
It takes love.
Unconditional love from one person to another.
And while this man shared nothing biological with the two boys, not DNA or genetics or anything of the sort, there was nothing in the world that could stop him from telling anyone and everyone that he had two twin boys at home and that he love them so dearly. Nobody could tell him that Malik and Masoud House weren't his own blood. And although he wasn't their father, neither could the boys tell anyone that Albert Henry Johnson wasn't their Daddy.
This is dedicated to my Daddy, Albert Henry Johnson, born February 23rd of 1946, and died October 24th, 2005, in time to see me graduate high school and start college. In time to see me start to become a man. Here's to his memory and his spirit, which inspired me to be who I am today.
Here's also to any man who has a child and becomes more than a father, even if the child isn't your own by blood. There are far too many fathers and far too little daddies, so let's change the world a little and show women that they aren't alone. Everyone, male and female, deserves a father.
This is also to everyone who's lost a good father and Dad.
Thank anyone who reads this, and take care.
--Masoud House
It's deep though!
Don't feel the need to respond if you don't want to, by the way.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
16 years ago a boy would punch a grown ass man in his stomach, saying "You're not my mother, you're not my father."
2 years ago to this day that same boy cried his eyes out that morning, and a few a week or so later would weep when reading the obituary of the man that changed his life.
Picture two 4 year old boys and their mother, a woman who had been through hell and back trying to struggle and take care of her children. She was practically alone now: the boys father was an addict to everything but his responsibilities. Worse yet was the fact that the oldest of her twin boys was autistic in a time when half the world, including their mother, didn't know what autistic was. All she knew was that he was slow and they needed more than a single working mom to be taken care of.
And then like a scene out of a movie, he was there. They had met riding home from work with their friends. While their friends slept the rides away they talked and talked, and eventually he would ride her home. They would talk sitting on the train station platform's seats, watching the sunset come up while laughing and smiling.
Then he met the boys. The second boy didn't like him.
At all.
The second boy missed his father dearly, wanted to eb a part of his life, wanted him to be a part of his life: but was always left wanting. And here this no-good, wife-stealing homewrecker comes making it worse.
But the boy was wrong.
He began to notice that as much as much as he loved his father, his father did nothing but make promise after promise, keeping none of them. Yet, here was a man who didn't try to pry: he actually tried to encourage the boy to know his father and encouraged the boy's father to know his son. He tried her hardest to make the boys comfortable and even left when the father was around, trying not to steal the opportunity for the boys to know their father.
And then things changed.
Soon the boy began to see the man as a friend. This man who picked him up after school; this man who bought him snickers bars, milky ways and peanut chews; this man who joked and played with him and encouraged his burgeoning imagination with his own long winded-stories. This man who taught him how to read better, do math, do everything that made him a bright six year old boy. It was because of this man that people called the boy "The Professor". This man who took care of him as if he was his own.
And it wasn't only for him that benefits were reaped. His father couldn't handle the responsibility of having a slow son, a boy who was growing and growing physically, but in his mind had only aged a year. A boy who, by his sixth year, was still in pampers. A boy who doctors were giving up hope on, and encouraging the mother to do the same. This man took to the slow child like he was his own child and dealt with him as if there was nothing in the world wrong with him. And for that child, nothing was after this man arrived.
He potty-trained him, taught him how to repeat words and numbers and recognize things, to follow commands, and more. This man who helped this child become more sociable when later they'd find autistic children are not sociable; this man who was the first person this boy ever tried to talk to on the phone. This man who made this boy light up when he entered the room.
This man who these children bore an uncanny resemblance to in their youth, to the point that his family members cursed him for hiding them for so long; but though accepted into his family, he still took them to see their own family on their father's side.
This man who bought the boy his first Gameboy when Gameboy was new; bought him the comics the boy loved so much; bought him his first little pinball machine and Nintendo; this man who helped give and shape the gift of love.
This man who almost died one night due to the revelation that he had diabetes, scaring a little boy of a possibility that was beyond fair. And then a happy ending when the man made it out alright, merely missing death by a day.
And years later, even through some bad times, the good stuck out. Despite having a string of conflicts when the boys reached tough times, and despite the brooding conflicts that arose between he and the second child, things got better. Better to the point that anyone who remembered one had to think of the other. They'd take whole days to travel and explore random parts of the city, making stops to a myriad of stores to haggle and shop on Fordham Road, 149th street, 125th street and the rest of Harlem, 54th st, 33rd st, West 4th st, Chambers st and more. Days where they'd walk from the east side of 70th street and venture all the way done to 33rd, sometimes to the west side, just for the sake of it. Playing bingo across the street from their apartment, going to arcades, checking out music stores, everything.
And then there was the decline. The time that the family found out that this man's previously assumed itching skin condition, later thought of as eczema by some doctors, was really a rare form of cancer called T-Cell Lymphoma...
They tried UVA and UVB light treatments and dialysis machines to clean the blood and chemo-therapy medicine and ointments and everything: and while it worked well for a long time, his body began to give in a little at a time...
The family could tell he was hiding something...but he hid it well, trying and trying to keep smiling, keep laughing, all the while his body got smaller, skinnier and frailer. After a string of months where he was in and out of the hospital for treatments more than he was in the house, they finally figured it out: he was dying. They didn't know how soon, but the thought remained in the back of their heads.
And then one week, things got bad. Everything inside of him was beginning to fail. His faculties were falling, to the point where he was imagining things...but still, his mind remained stronger than ever, the last thing to fail him, and to his final hours he still tried to remained happy and pure and joking...
And then a morning soon after, they got the call.
First the son, the boy who had punched him in his stomach fourteen years before. The son who who rushed him out of his house, and argued with him. But also the son who grew fond of him, who was his best friend and buddy. The doctors wouldn't let him know, preferring to speak to his mother, but he knew. No one got calls at 6 in the morning just for the sake of it.
A few hours later they were told by the doctors that if they kept him alive on life support, it wouldn't do much of anything to help, and his body would be in pain. Ten minutes after that they were giving the okay to pull the plug.
They cried as they held his hands, his final breaths leaving his body, the final movements that caused them to have a tiny glimmer of hope that he'd wake up and say "Just kidding!"...but in the end it was just the normal process of death.
The next day they waited for him to wake them up. Or to hear his keys opening the door. Or to get a call from the hospital saying he was on his way.
But it never came.
Soon they were looking for a funeral home.
Then how to bury him...in the end they had only enough to cremate him...
A week or so later they were at his wake surrounded by friends...
A day later they were morning him in the boy's church.
And two years later, that boy is writing on his computer fighting back the tears to finish his letter. Trying to fight back tears as he thinks of all the boring conversations about the Bible this man put him through; about the hours they shared playing Gameboy, Nintendo, Playstaytion, and more. About the way this man taught the boy to cook and iron and build and repair. About the memories of times when they'd spend entire days listening to music: oldies from the Motown era all the way to modern hip hop and r & B...even rock. About the times this man would pretend to use the toilet so he could play his street-bought tetris-knockoff "Brick game" in solitude. About the way the man tried his hardest to make sure everyone was happy and content. And laughing...always laughing.
And one thing that this boy has learned throughout all of this is that it doesn't take blood to raise a child. It doesn't take a last name to take on responsibility. It doesn't take resemblance to teach and to hold and to help and to just be there when people need you the most.
It takes love.
Unconditional love from one person to another.
And while this man shared nothing biological with the two boys, not DNA or genetics or anything of the sort, there was nothing in the world that could stop him from telling anyone and everyone that he had two twin boys at home and that he love them so dearly. Nobody could tell him that Malik and Masoud House weren't his own blood. And although he wasn't their father, neither could the boys tell anyone that Albert Henry Johnson wasn't their Daddy.
This is dedicated to my Daddy, Albert Henry Johnson, born February 23rd of 1946, and died October 24th, 2005, in time to see me graduate high school and start college. In time to see me start to become a man. Here's to his memory and his spirit, which inspired me to be who I am today.
Here's also to any man who has a child and becomes more than a father, even if the child isn't your own by blood. There are far too many fathers and far too little daddies, so let's change the world a little and show women that they aren't alone. Everyone, male and female, deserves a father.
This is also to everyone who's lost a good father and Dad.
Thank anyone who reads this, and take care.
--Masoud House
