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THE LAST WORDS OF A GREAT MAN
By Edward L. Daley
November 05, 2003
My father, Master Sergeant Lawrence B. Daley, died last week at the age of 85. The last thing he said to me only a few before he passed away, while he was still able to speak, was "you be good". He'd said it several times in recent days as I walked out the door of his hospital room. I'd say something like "will do, dad" or "sure thing". He must have said those words a million times over the course of my life. It never occurred to me that maybe he was saying them with a little more urgency over these past few weeks than he had in years past.
He was never one to say I love you, in fact, I can't remember the last time he did. It just wasn't his way. I knew he loved me though, and it wasn't as if I needed to hear it, but I think I did need to hear him tell me to be good. That was the most important thing to him, that I be a good person, and that I stay that way. It was important to me that he still felt compelled to remind me of that even after all these years.
I think about those words now and I'm hastened back to the days of my youth. Back when I was a kid they assumed a different meaning than they do now. They were more of a threat than a request. As a child those words represented potential punishment if I screwed up, and I took them very seriously. "You be good now, you hear?" he'd say as I would run out the front door, headlong into that wondrous, adolescent/pubescent world of near-certain mischief. I knew my dad wasn't just saying that to hear himself talk. As an adult, however, those words came to mean something less forbidding and immediate but, perhaps, even more important upon reflection.
You see, my dad was a veteran of three wars. He served in World War II in the Philippines back when the Air Force was called the Army Air Corps. He re-enlisted during the Korean War and stayed in the Service until 1966, when the Vietnam War was just getting into full swing. He'd seen some really bad things in his life; things he never talked about with anyone, but things other people talked about who were there with him when the shite hit the fan. I can only imagine the horrors he experienced, but I know for a fact that the things he could never bear to witness, especially among his own children, were pettiness, deceit or treachery of any kind. Seeming happiness didn't matter as much to my father as true honor did. It's not that he didn't wish for the people he cared about to live contented lives, it was just that living honestly and with integrity meant more, even if doing so made your life harder.
So when my dad said "you be good" the other day, it struck me that what he really meant to say was - don't disappoint me. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal and don't be childish; you're better than that. That's what other people do, not you, not me, not US. There was no threat in his voice, only a heartfelt plea, yet in that plea I sensed a warning too. That warning is to me and to all of you reading this, that living a selfish, hurtful life doesn't bring you the happiness you seek. It's too damned easy to let yourself do bad things, and nothing worth it's salt is easy. Being good requires work and you can't take a break from it, ever. Maybe that's why he was always drilling it into my head.
I know that my father didn't risk his life time and time again so that I would turn out to be some common jerk. He fought and nearly died in battle so that I might have the chance to be something better than that. He wanted me and everyone in my family to be decent human beings; not perfect, just decent, because he had seen first hand how uncommon that really is in so much of the world. Now that he's gone, I look around at my country and I see the tough times many of us are having right now. The economy isn't what it should be, and we've got yet another war to face. Lot's of us have fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, sisters and brothers fighting in lands thousands of miles away, and we're scared to bloody death we may never see them again.
There's a lot of bad things going on and we, as Americans, often feel like we're all alone in the world; like everyone everywhere hates us. On top of that, the rich seem to be getting richer and the poor, poorer. Politicians spin their rhetoric with tireless regularity and to no desirable ends most of the time. We see poverty, disease and brutality on the TV every day, and sometimes right outside our own doors. We've got personal problems and daily stresses that we tend to think no one else can identify with or appreciate. Most of us have given up on the idea of winning the lottery or hitting it big in the stock market. Our lives are what they are, and they'll likely stay that way. Woe is us we often think... poor us.
Well, maybe woe IS us, and maybe disease and poverty are hopeless problems we'll never be able to solve. Maybe killers and cancer and politicians will get us all, one by one, but ya know what, that's no excuse for bad behavior. None of those things mean that we don't have an obligation to the people who came before us to try and be just a little bit better than we are. I don't mean more fit, more educated or even more prosperous, although those are admirable qualities. No, I mean more honorable.
I'm no saint, believe me! I've done some pretty rotten things in my life that I'm ashamed of, and I don't expect anyone else to be Mother Theresa either. I guess I'm just trying to say that as terrible as we think we have it sometimes, we really don't have it so bad compared to most people most everywhere else, and we still have the ability to make our own choices. Although it's easier for us at times to do bad things, we still owe it to the people who made it possible for us to be here, in the greatest nation on earth, to do good things and, maybe, even to laugh in face of despair.
My dad made his choices, and although those choices never made him rich, he always earned an honest living. He was never what you would call well educated in any formal sense, but he did the most with the knowledge he had and he never stopped learning. He often had harsh words for people who angered him, but he was always willing to forgive anyone for the most egregious of offenses as long as they apologized for them. And although he was not a genius, he was as smart as any man I've ever met in the one way that counts the most. He knew the difference between right and wrong and he never chose wrong, no matter how difficult his life got.
So if you take nothing else from what I've written here today, take these few words and never forget them. I know I never will. "You be good".
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