There’s probably a genetic component to hope in my DNA. For all his many faults and failings as a father, the one thing I am fairly certain I got from Pops was an indomitable sense of optimism. I call it Poptimism. Sure, he had his moments wrestling with the demons of depression. Those grey blue eyes affixed on some distant horizon were more often than not haunted by sadness. His remorse for a life not lived was palpable, yet somehow, he never lost the childlike optimism that he could turn things around “this time”. This remained true right up until his death, almost literally. He had been in hospice, at his own request, for longer than anyone should be in hospice. Then one day he decided that despite his failing kidneys and amputated leg that he was ready to give the living thing “the old college try”. That is, until we explained to him that living required dialysis and eating right and doing all of the things that to this point in his 70 years on the planet he had not been able to do for himself. He decided maybe hospice was the way to go. 

That was always the disconnect with Pops. The maddening ability to dream the big dreams without any of the moxie to actually chase them. I was never able to figure out why, exactly. The man was not opposed to working hard, as evidenced by the multiple jobs he had at any one time to support the family. Or maybe Pops was never so much a hard worker as he was someone who always showed up. He’d do the time and be there to punch the clock, no matter how awful the work or home environment in which to do so. The Police song Synchronicity II might as well have been written for my father. 

Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance 

He knows that something somewhere has to break 

He sees the family home now looming in his headlights 

The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache

Many miles away 

Something crawls to the surface 

Maybe in his mind all he had were the big dreams, because he had painted himself into such a corner with his career and my mother, and heck, maybe even us kids.

His Poptimism was perhaps more delusion than actual hope. A means of convincing himself things could be different, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Somewhere in his utopian world, my mother was really a sweet, misunderstood woman who just needed more love. The new car and fun vacation were just around the corner. Dropping a few pounds, writing that memoir — everything was just a twist of a lens away from coming into focus. The delusions of both grandeur and the mundane are what kept him spinning along, for without them his world would careen off center and he’d become acutely aware of just how precariously the top was spinning at the edge of the abyss.