Words I Did and Did Not Say
Words I DID Say at the Memorial for My Dad
The impressions you form in childhood often color your opinions for a lifetime.
At a very early age, I became convinced that my father was a super hero. There was plenty of evidence for this conclusion.
Here's an example. When we were little and living in Northern California, Ali was a little bit of a door slammer. One afternoon, she came in and slammed the front door and went down the stairs and slammed her bathroom door and then she slammed her bedroom door. My father, who was sitting right in front of me in the family room, turned bright red, clenched his teeth and said, "What the heck is that girl doing!" He stood up and for a moment he was SO angry that the entire house shook. The windows rattled in their frames and glasses tinkled in the cabinets. I thought, WOW, when he gets angry, he can make the house shake. In retrospect, I realize it was just a little trembler of an earthquake, but, I have to tell you I think he shook a building later, over a report card, when we were living in Ames, Iowa.
In that same house, we had our first automatic garage door. I was about six and Dad would pull up in front of the garage and hold out his right hand and squeeze his eyes shut and grunt and groan and the door would magically rise up and open for him. I could not believe it. Closing it, of course, was just a flick of the super human wrist.
So he could shake a building with his temper, and open doors – from a distance - with his super strength. He also had superhuman senses. He could be lying on the couch, sound asleep, snoring, drooling and dreaming and if you went over to the TV to turn off the football game he would say in a clear voice, "I'm watching that." How does that WORK?
Now, it was not as if he went around in a super suit showing off for just anybody. He certainly had a mild mannered alter ego. He would graciously throw a game of chess to anyone who challenged him, he drank scotch on the rocks – not neat – and he looked smokin' hot in a tuxedo. But I was not fooled; no this only confirmed what I already knew about him. He had to be a super hero.
After all, he could fly. He could fly a Cessna, he could fly a Citaborea and until I was about seven years old I honestly thought he was flying that big jet from New York to SFO every weekend. No one who had ever ridden though a rainy landing with him in Piper Cub could doubt that he could land a 747 just as easily. Because he was a super hero!
Now you may think that as I matured, I grew out of my delusion about my Dad. But here's where the really true super hero super stuff comes into play. He didn't get less super, he got super subtle. He no longer moved buildings, but if Faye asked him to jump, tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound were no sweat. Because, super heroes, when they are in our midst, they don't make us feel uncomfortable or wow us with their outrageous super human "superness." They come equipped with super humility, super graciousness and super humor. A super hero never fails to get out and open the car door for his wife. He writes letters to his daughter every single day she is away at boarding school. A super hero can prank call his own Dad when he's living on the farm in Missouri and say he is the FAA calling about the turbulence over the property because of excess "methane."
To the outside world he may just have been mild mannered Ray Craig. But in my mind, and to those of us assembled here, he was, is and always will be, a man of steel.
Words I Didn’t Say at My Dad’s Memorial
Happiness Is an Act of Courage
My dad said that.
It is one of the only pieces of advice he ever gave me. He was a big one for his own version of "I Care" language. You know, "I think you are saying this" or "It seems like you feel that." He rarely ventured into the personal territory of his own opinions or recommendations.
And yet this was, it seems to me, his credo: Happiness is an Act of Courage.
When he returned from Europe, he met my mother and in spite of a tidal wave of disapproval, he reached into the abyss and grabbed her. And held on for dear life. It made him, I can tell you, a happy man.
Then, despite the fact that my mother – his beloved wife - was over forty and considered an at risk pregnancy, he reached with her into the void again, against the odds, and brought me into the world. Now, again, he was a happy man.
And in the second half of his life when he could easily have rested with contentment on his laurels, he reached beyond – not settling for contentment but aiming for happiness – and took hold of Faye and her daughters. With Faye and Cynthia and Patty, with Jeremy and Scott and Carter and Ali he more than doubled the size of his family, the volume of his joy. And he was, indisputably, a happy man.
Growing up, when I feared to take a precarious step he taught me to jump.
When I struggled with my fear he showed how to be bold, to ask for much, to expect plenty.
He was, above all things, a brave man, a courageous man. And as a result for the entirety of his life among us, he was a very, very happy man.
Today, those of us gathered here – we don't feel happy. We are mourning and licking our wounds. And that is right and good. But tomorrow or next week or next year, we will pick ourselves up and inevitably have to ask ourselves: "are we happy?" "are we fulfilled?" And if the answer is no, I ask you, I urge you to remember my father, your uncle, you're brother, your friend and have the courage that he had to reach for happiness.
Because happiness is all he ever wanted for us.
