To say that all of my Christmases are blue is not an exaggeration, far to the contrary. You see, in 56 years of a tumultuous life, the worst thing that ever happened to me by far happened the day after Christmas, 1975. 29 years ago today a train struck my father's automobile on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, killing him instantly. I was a full-grown man of 27-years, a husband and a father, but it devastated me, truly laying me low for months that too soon became years.
I did come out of the black hole that was my life eventually and have added many chapters to the collective books of my life. But still I miss him every hour of every day of every week of my life--and at Christmas time every year it overwhelms me; for various personal reasons, this year was the worst in a decade. In a life unusually full of meeting or reporting on impressive people, famous and not so famous, I can still say that the most impressive man I ever knew was Frank A. Bosco, my father. By no measure was he a perfect man; but by all of the important ones he was a great man.
There are many detractors of my life, the public one and the private one, who would sharply argue with the notion that much of anything good has come of it. But for those who would disagree with that blanket condemnation of my life, particularly the publishing or broadcasting efforts of my life, I offer that any and all degrees of quality found in any of it is directly attributable to his mind and his seemingly effortless teaching of what was or wasn't yet in that marvelous mind.
Having been given so much from that great man, why was I so pathologically afraid of living in a world without him in it? Why even now do I quietly weep for him more often than people even close to me know? Because I am selfish; because there was so much more he had to teach me.
Instantly upon hearing the soul-killing words, "Your father is dead," on the phone in the middle of the night, I knew that in one very big part of my life I was irrevocably alone, and I absolutely knew that the very best I could ever be was suddenly only half of what it could have been. I know it still: If only that goddamned negligent train had allowed him to become the 85-year-old man of gentle wisdom, instruction and foresight in my life that he would have been...today.
However, I still have that half to work with; I am not done yet. This weekend it will be New Years; my father especially liked New Years. For some reason my Christmas blues mostly fade to a poignant tint by New Years and hope comes again in my life. That is what happens to me every December. For days on end I feel or sense no hope, irrationally, to be sure; but I feel completely without hope all the same. Without hope, there can be no art; because, there can be no life.
I believe this New Year will be white. Therefore, I am now posting the Holiday greeting card my lovely wife Ellen created for us and has been displaying for quite some time on The Crackpot Chronicles.
If you would, please drop by WOW, there are a number of new posts up.
Also check back here; I have some ideas about a somewhat different direction, or perhaps more accurately, a different format The LongBow Papers might undertake in the near future.
