Pappagallo

My dad died a few months ago and yet I still hear him. I can’t listen to bands like the Doobie Brother’s without hearing his voice in the mix—even if he did make up his own words half the time. I still hear his signature catchphrases that always made my sisters and me laugh.

“He was a prince and a horse, but mostly horse,” he’d say to describe someone.

He came up with funny ditties he’d been singing since I was little, and while most of them were probably inappropriate for my young ears, they’re etched in my mind like nursery rhymes.

“My father was a hunter, he shot a bear, shot him in the ******* never touched a hair.”

He was a joker, a singer, a storyteller, a “Pappagallo”—that’s the Italian word for parrot my parents used to describe someone who talked a lot. My dad’s essence came through his voice, and now that he's gone, my memories of him keep showing up in full sound.

In his last year of life, I drove to my childhood home in San Pedro, California, once a week to spend the day with Dad. I’d wheel him in the backyard where we sat in the sun, looking out at the view of the Los Angeles harbor. A lifelong commercial fisherman and longshoreman, the harbor held countless stories for him, and I always looked forward to hearing the ones he shared with me those afternoons. My eighty-six-year-old dad recalled the adventures of his younger life—guiding a fishing boat through twenty-foot swells, being in the water during a set without realizing a shark was in the net, escaping a sinking boat. He told me about his trip to the Galapagos Islands, and the time he rode a donkey up a hill on the small volcanic Socorro Island in Mexico. He also recalled the magnificence of a life lived on the water—the peace, the purity of the salted air, the green flash at sunset. While we sat in the backyard talking, music playing in the background, every now and then he paused his story to sing along. I can still hear him, his voice softer than his younger self, yet perfectly in tune with the Doobie Brothers.

“Without love, where would you be now?”

His sixty-six-year love story with my mom made that a question he never had to consider.

In fifth grade my dad picked up the nickname Mutt. It stuck. That one syllable seemed to have an exclamation point attached to it. No matter where we went in town, we heard, “Mutt!” Someone always happy to see him. When I was little, I thought everyone knew him. And with the way he made people smile and laugh, the way he entertained them, always life of the party, I thought he was a celebrity. And in his small town he sort of was with all the friends he collected over a lifetime. He had a charm about him, an authenticity and playfulness that drew people in. In his final years, he sat on his recliner with his cordless phone talking to friend after friend. Parkinson’s took away physical abilities, but not his mind. He stayed sharp and kept up being the Pappagallo he always was.

With my dad’s passing, I find comfort in recalling the best of him, but by no means was he a perfect man. He had a temper; the crews on his fishing boats would attest to that. They liked to joke that Mutt’s signature laughing and singing stopped once they passed the breakwater, and then his beard grew, his arms bulked up, and his eyes bulged. He transformed into Captain Mutt. He was fierce about protecting his crew, and those who fished with him knew his intense side. My sisters, my mom and I also knew that side when his temper flared at home. I was a clumsy kid. When I broke things, I got an earful from him, and the voice that usually made me smile made me roll my eyes. My dad didn’t know how to keep his feelings small—he loved big, he supersized his joy, and when he got pissed off, he wholeheartedly let you know.

With age his temper softened, and his ten grandkids got the best of him. They got funny, lovable Papa, who recycled all the songs and jokes and ditties from my sisters’ and my childhood to share with them. Yet he grew into more than just a fun grandpa—he got close to them all and took interest in their adult lives. When he sat on his recliner making phone calls to friends, his grandkids were included.

One night, in the final month of his life, I walked into his room to find him lying in his hospice bed with most of his adult grandkids sitting on the floor, along with some of their spouses and babies. It was a somber time knowing we would lose him soon, yet laughter filled the room. Given an audience, even a small one, he energized and told them a dirty joke—one they probably heard before.

In that same room, on his final two days of life, my dad’s peaceful sleep brought on an uncharacteristic sound for him. Silence. Without his voice to fill the room, my three sisters and I stood over his bed singing his favorite songs to him. One was especially meaningful. When we were little, “Daddy’s Home” was the theme song to our dad coming home from a fishing trip. My mom played it before loading us into the station wagon to go pick him up from the wharf. His final day of life, we sang it to him one last time.

Losing my dad has been more difficult than I imagined. When I most miss him, I play the songs he always sang, and I can still hear him. Somehow even as he’s gone, his voice remains, and through the magic of music, he speaks to me. One song by the Doobie Brothers has a special way of easing my heavy heart.

“Listen to the Music!” I hear my dad sing, as if reminding me where I can always find him.