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Then I will live to a very old age. I was just with ALL of my brothers and sisters for the first time in ten years. That was Thanksgiving just before my mom passed away.
So, there we were in Erie, PA to be with my dad during a pretty scary time for all of us due to his health struggle at 85 years old. He’s always been indestructible and now he isn’t and it’s strange for my entire family.
My dad is a pretty wonderful guy. Everyone knows and loves Jack Monahan. If you don’t, you just haven’t met him. He’s always had a youthful twinkle in his eye that I recognized early on in my life. People gravitate to him and love to listen to his stories and his hilarious points of view about life. But yesterday the world slowed to a crawl as we held our breathe hoping for his friends of yesteryear to hold off on taking him so we could have more time soaking in the goodness that is Jack.
He has always loved this life. Not knowing what’s next was never really part of what he spent much time reflecting on. He loves the now, here, right here where the action is.
He has taught me so much about word use and what’s compelling. He’s very hard to impress by the arts and when he is impressed, his reasons are well thought out and passionate and filled with admiration.
His generation was astonishing. The wars they won. The inventions they came up with. The character that they had as a whole. They lived by a code. A code of class that could never stoop for any reason ever. What a generation! What a story. What a man.
He and my mother had seven kids. I was last. We told stories around my dad today and filled him full of the light that he had filled us with all these years.
His heart was pulling him down but his spirit was lifting him up.
He taught us to laugh and never take ourselves or life too seriously. That was for the unwise. We were to be beyond that. These lessons all came silently. We just watched a humble man make a living with great charisma and personality and were able to get the whole picture that he was painting.
I was wishing today that all that laughter could help him live forever but as we all well know who gets the last laugh.
I am grateful for the great friendship that I have been able to have with my dad. I hope that these past few days experiences will bring the seven of us closer and give all of our children reasons to get together in the future and remember this great man. I hope that he will be around for many more years but either way he will live inside of us as our mother does, reminding us what is truly of value that costs nothing and adds decades to your time here.

Love, Pat