This is my father. The picture on the left is when he graduated Magna cum Laude …

This is my father. The picture on the left is when he graduated Magna cum Laude from Princeton. The picture on the right was him at my undergrad graduation party (true story: I actually felt badly and was embarrassed that I graduated Summa). I had no idea that would be the last time I would ever see him; out of the blue he died just a few weeks later. I guess it really wasn’t out of the blue. This picture on the right shows what decades of addiction (alcoholism in his case) can do to you. He was still the smartest person I have ever known, right up to the end.  And here is one of the morals of this story: while he was in town, staying with me for my graduation, one night we stayed up late talking and I got to tell him all the things that I had wanted him to know, about how he was a great father under incredible odds (because he thought he was a lousy father), how I got all of my best values from him including my love of classical music and learning and museums and other culture, and, certainly not least, looking at people as human beings, not as their label, skin color, or orientation. In case you haven’t figured it out, that moral is tell the people in your life the things you need to tell them now, because you never know when it might be too late. When I got that call in the middle of the night from my uncle saying that my dad had passed, my very first thought was “oh no now I’m an orphan”, but my very second thought was “I am so glad we had that talk and I got to tell him how much I loved him and all those other things.” Don’t pass up the opportunity to say those things that you need to say to someone. 



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