When my father died, a wonderful Irish tenor whose career he’d helped sang “Danny Boy” at his funeral, and I made a vow to myself then and there that every time I heard this song, I would burst into tears. I have done so at a junior high concert (my son sang), at Hartford First Night (the song was performed by a trombone quartet, if you can imagine that, and I was on crutches and had to hobble out of there in tears), and at Celtic music festivals I’ve wandered through.
My father was an Airborne Ranger, a man of granite for whom the world was black and white. My mother divorced him when I was 7, and because he was away in the Army for much of the time previous to that, my early memories of him are few. For his part, my father would come home once a year and try to whip his three children into shape. We called him “Master Sgt. Campbell” behind his back. To his face, we all kind of trembled. He was an agnostic, and a guy you did not want as your enemy. Right was right and when fists were raised, he’d be on the side of the right, thanks.
He was hard on my brothers, but he was the soul of tenderness to me. He called me ”Daddy’s Goil.” The first time I picked up a pencil, I wrote him a letter.
But the anger of the divorce corroded our relationship for years, and I though I admired my father, I wouldn’t have said we were close. We were polite with one another, certainly, but I wouldn’t have called him up for advice. (I wouldn’t have had to ask for advice, as he gave is so freely.)
And then I divorced my first husband, and I worked up my nerve to call and tell my father. He of all people knew the horrible effect divorce can have on a family, and I had a small son who would be right in the thick of it, and I felt guilty as hell.
Yet the first thing out of his mouth was “You’re doing the right thing, honey.” And he proceeded to tell me how important was my happiness, and that if I needed anything — money, a place to stay, you name it — I need only ask.
I nearly fainted. This was not the response I’d expected, and from there, we proceeded to build a relationship. For four years, I had a father, and my son had a grandfather who absolutely doted on him. I have a photo of the two of them on one of his many visits from Indiana. My son is climbing into his lap, and the look on my father’s face is one of peace. And love. It is a beautiful face on a man of grainte. My son got to know a grandfather who believed his grandson hung the sun and the moon.
And then he got cancer. He called me one night and told me of the diagnosis, and then began to apologize because he didn’t want to upset me or make me sad. I drove all night to be at the hospital during a seven-hour operation that was meant to remove the softball-sized tumor that had lodged in his body, and we all told ourselves he’d beat it, but he didn’t. His death hit me like a train. He was a force of nature, and forces of nature don’t die.
At his funeral, I was as stoic as I could be until the tenor sang “Danny Boy” (a favorite of his) and the trumpeter played “Taps.” I remember at that last one, my knees buckled. My boyfriend (now husband) had his arm around me for support, but someone reached from behind and held me up. Swear to God, when I turned to thank whoever’d done that, no one was there.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do embrace the spirits — no, not the alcoholic ones, but the shades of people we’ve loved. I don’t think they stay locked in their coffins. I think they wander around and get into mischief, or hold our hands, or reach out to hold us up when our knees start to buckle.
And I still hate this song. So I’m posting it here as irreverently as possible, with the hope that it will make the spirit smile a little. You, too.
