Topic: Family

Topic: Family

I learned how to be a human being and how I fit in the world from my family. This week I am grappling with how to do life now that the two most influential people in it are gone. When my mom died two years ago somehow it seemed like she was still here in a lot of ways.  But since we buried my dad last week, I have been grappling with the reality that strangers will soon live in my parents’ house. I find myself taking stock of what remains.  I watched both of my parents die too young of cancer. When our family vacation home, our retreat in Tennessee burned down in 2016, the same year we lost mom, the same year dad got diagnosed w metastatic cancer, it felt like the Dunn family was being cast in some sort of Shakespearean tragedy. But much remains. 

What remains is me and my two younger brothers—and all of the family we have acquired over the years-the spouses, the kids, the grandkids, the friends that have become like family, the blood relatives that weren’t part of that family of origin but have become part of the modern day Dunn family.  And overarching all of it are the Dunn family values, the lessons that Chris, Marty, and I learned growing up. These are what I consider to be the top three rules for life as lived out by mom and dad. 

ONE. Follow your bliss.  My dad actually had a faded t-shirt with this saying emblazoned on the front.  My brother Marty told me that when he was a confused young man and he went to dad for advice on what to do with his life, dad gave him a handwritten list with bullet points.  I remember that one of the bullet points Dad shared was, “Say ‘fuck it’ often”, but the one that also stuck out in Marty’s memory, was to “follow your bliss.”  My parents spent their time and energy on pursuits that brought them joy.  Mom poured herself into community theater, bird watching, gourmet cooking, and making handcrafted items to sell in her Etsy shop.  She went to her grandkids soccer games and theatrical and musical performances. Dad taught himself other languages, collected stamps and coins, and met with a group of retired academics that called themselves “The Dead Philosophers” to discuss life and literature.  They traveled together.  They individually loved reading but at any given time they had a book that they were reading “together.”  Dad would read aloud to mom while she cooked dinner, and she would return the favor when he’d drive on one of their adventures.  They took disco lessons.  They hosted an annual Christmas party for over forty years with a guest list of well over a hundred people in its heyday.  Even as I watched them both fade away from their respective cancers and surrender to hospice care, they each pressed on.  The day mom signed up for hospice she made us promise that the cast of the show she had signed up to direct would be properly notified.  Dad was part of one of my brother Chris’s role playing game groups that gamed every Monday night.  When dad could not make the trip down to Chris’s house, they brought the game to him.  They followed their bliss till the very end. 

TWO. I’m okay, you’re okay.  In the late sixties my parents got this self help book called “I’m okay, you’re okay.” I remember them reading it out loud to each other.  I was raised in a fairly permissive and accepting environment.  I don’t remember having a strict curfew.  I was never grounded, mainly because my mom said she didn’t want being at home with your family to be considered a punishment.  A memorable punishment I did have was after a fight with my brother Chris. I had to write an essay about what I loved about him. They were big fans of letting us endure the natural consequences of our actions.  If, for example, I waited till 9pm the night before a poster was due at school, I would have to take my lumps at school.  Dee Dunn was not going to bail me out—that would have been doing me a disservice in her opinion. They treated us like adults.  It wasn’t a true democracy, but I felt free to express my opinion without fear of reprisal at a very young age.  We had regular family meetings, and we followed Robert’s Rules of Order.  We took turns being the chair person or being the taker of the minutes.  Chris and I usually schooled our baby brother Marty before the meeting to make a motion that we go to Frisch’s after the meeting.  When I was teenager I was allowed to say cuss words if the situation warranted and especially if it enhanced a joke or story I was telling.  What was absolutely unacceptable in our house was any form or ridicule or racism or sexism or any “ism”, anything that involved mistreating another human being or showing disrespect-now that could land you in trouble with my parents.  But saying “fuck it” often-that was cool in the Dunn house. 

THREE. Don’t take life too seriously.  An example of the kind of irreverent humor that we embrace in our family came up the week that my dad was dying.  He was non-responsive, had been so for days, but the hospice people encouraged us to talk to him anyway and to play some music that he liked.  We played spiritual hymns like “Be Not Afraid” and “On Eagle’s Wings”.  We played a lot of Mozart and Beethoven, but we also played Dire Straits and the Doobie Brothers.  At one point my brother asked Alexa to play “The Final Coundown” and he didn’t specify which version so she proclaimed, “The Final Countdown by the Duke University marching band from Spotify” We laughed and let it play on, knowing dad would have laughed if he could.  We got slap happy and played “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult and “I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones. I told the funeral director about this, fearing he might think it was in poor taste to play those songs for a dying man, but he smiled and said, “This is a pretty remarkable family.”  Now maybe he said that to all the families he worked with, but I like to think he was sincere.  At dad’s memorial the final song played at his visitation before starting the non-traditional service was “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge.  

I was raised by two remarkable people.  The messages they imprinted on us are so ingrained that I take them for granted. I grew up being told that I could do whatever I wanted to do with my life, that I could love whoever I wanted to love, and that I could worship however and wherever I wanted.  I was taught that I had value and that I had something important to say just by virtue of my being human. I never doubted that I was loved, never doubted that I mattered.  And that knowledge is the most important thing that remains.  

Thomas Dunn October 18, 1940-November 30, 2018

Dee Dunn April 11, 1941-February 14, 2016