Rant #2,489: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I am typing this Rant at about 3:30 a.m. in the morning.

I have a bit of insomnia today, I guess, but maybe it is a bit of a panic attack, something I am not prone to, but something that every once in a while, I encounter.

Yes, my father had his funeral yesterday, and whatever anxiety I might have had should have vanished, but I guess it didn't, and maybe that is why I am up now, unable to go back to sleep.

The ceremony went fine, my speech about my father went well--I did cut it down; if not, I could still be speaking about him right now--and while there was an intermittent drizzle outside when we said our final goodbyes to him at the cemetery, the weather could have been worse.

I first woke up at about midnight, tossed and turned for probably the next I don't know how many minutes, but I guess I did fall back asleep for at least a little while, but here I am now, restless and needing to get out some angst at 3:30 a.m. in the morning.

My sister said it right when she said in her tribute to our dad that this blasted coronavirus stole my father's funeral from him. If things were as the normally are, we would have had standing room only at the chapel; there simply would not have been enough seats to offer to all the people who would have shown up to celebrate my father's life.

And look at what it did to the shiva; it basically canceled it.

Yes, I am having a virtual shiva tonight, but alas, it just isn't the same.

My father deserved better, but we did the best that we could with the circumstances at hand.

Maybe that is why I am restless this morning; maybe that is playing on my mind.

My father gave his best to his family, but because of the circumstances, we could not reciprocate in kind.

I don't know; I guess I have to accept that we did the best that we could do.

Thoughts still wand through my head about my father, and what a great influence he had on me.

I mean, the stories I could tell .... like I said, I could still be talking to the family members who were assembled at the chapel yesterday.

My father loved life, he loved that his family always seemed to make him the center of attention, and he loved to laugh, whether he was laughing at Abbott and Costello or the Three Stooges or Jackie Mason.

My father knew Jackie Mason when the future comic was just another young kid on the Lower East Side. He was good friends with Mason's younger brother, but he knew Jackie too.

Years later, when Mason was a great success, I wrote a letter to Mason, stating that my father "knew him when," and that it might be nice if he heard back from him.

Mason never acknowledged the letter; perhaps he didn't get it, and I mean that figuratively and literally.

Some people are like that, I guess. They use their beginnings only for their own terms, and if it does not benefit them to look back, then they feel it isn't worth it.

I would like to think that as I said, Mason never received my correspondence to him, with his "handlers" not deeming it necessary for this exalted comic to lower himself by reading another "fan" letter.

That is what I would like to believe.

But with my father, whether you were famous or just an average "schlub" like most of us are, you were on the same level with him.

Sure, he might use some different language to address you than he normally would--"sir" or "m'am" perhaps--but to him, you got dressed the same way he did, you breathed the same air that he did, so why put you on an exalted pedestal?

Going back to something that I mentioned the other day, I think that that type of thinking that he had was why his encounter with Jackie Kennedy was so disheartening to him, really the only celebrity passenger he ever had who left an entirely negative impression on him.

This was the 1970s or early 1980s, and Kennedy--now with the Onassis tacked onto her name--was a world renowned jet setter, and a success in her own right as a successful person in the world of publishing.

Like all of us, when she was "just" a Kennedy, he was so impressed at how she had handled herself when her husband was murdered that fateful day in November 1963. Like the rest of the world, he fell in love with her right then and there, or at the very least admired her poise and her courage.

So all these many years later, just by happenstance, he picked her up, and not just her, but also her daughter Caroline, who had become something of "America's daughter" after her father's death.

And when my father simply wanted to give her the utmost respect in his own words, she simply shut him off at the get go, and did it in such a way that he felt like nothing more than a peon, one of her servants, someone to do what she told them to do and nothing more.

And when he abided by her wishes, she then amplified them by telling him, in no uncertain terms, to turn off the radio because it was hindering her conversation with her daughter.

He did as he was told to do, drove them to their location, accepted their payment and their tip and that was that.

But my father was hurt, took it personally, and it was one of the few times in his life that he was firmly put into his place by anyone other than perhaps his family.

And this woman who he had admired from far for so many years had become simply a mirage, just another clunky celebrity who thought she was more important to the world than perhaps she really was ... sure, she was important, but really, did her life at that point directly affect your life or my life in any way, shape or form?

Probably not.

My father could be a sensitive guy, and that is why he simply loved picking up people like Michael J. Fox and Tiny Tim and Brook Benton and Georgia Engel, people who had made their place in life but perhaps just for a few minutes that they were in his cab, treated him like they had known each other for ages.

He knew who they were, but their were no airs at all. They treated him with the utmost respect that he deserved as a hard working human being. They were not better than him just because they had earned some fame in their lives.

I guess that all of these thoughts are running through my head, still, and that is probably why my slumber has been interrupted.

My father was a good man, and I just wish the situation was possible that we could have given him a better sendoff, but the coronavirus disrespects everything.

I know that my father, now in heaven, understands all that, but I guess it just gnaws at me personally, and it might do so for a little while at least.

We are all human beings. We all deserve respect, I don't care who we are.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T ... what a concept.