TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
On Saturday, June 30th, our family and friends gathered to remember the life of my father, Charles Theodore "Bud" Zahn, who passed away on January 23, 2007. Over a hundred folks showed up to share stories and remember a life well lived by a man who engaged everyone he met through the course of his life.
He was born in Boston and overcame a tumultuous childhood. He was one of three illegitimate children. His mother had had a long-running affair with a married man who ultimately never left his own wife and children. She ended up instituionalized and my father was tossed from family to family with nobody who really wanted to raise him. He settled with his mother's brother, Ted and his wife. Most of my life I knew Ted as my grandfather, and he was a talented musician in New York City. He played with the Meyer Davis Band and was an accomplished writer, even having written the innaugural ball for John F. Kennedy. Left in his belongings is a letter thanking him from President Kennedy. Sadly, Ted was also a raging alcoholic and was best as a father when he was absent. While my father served in Germany during World War II, he sent his GI money home only to find it spent on booze when he returned.
Ted eventually left the city and tried the farming life on a small place he bought in Mt. Vernon, NH, right next door to Milford. This is when my father met my mother, a Milford native whose parents had settled here from Sicily. They married and while working as a truck driver by day, my father worked in a machine shop on second shift. In the fall, he would work after second shift storing apples at local orchards. Typical of the greatest generation. A tireless work ethic, and striving to make up for time lost in the service, and to get a piece of the dream.
What makes my father's story so compelling is how self-made he was. His moral standard and honor of family, seemingly devised from his observations of others, outside his own upbringing. He began an import/export business in his yard, while also raising sheep and chickens. He grew this business from that to a multi-millioin dollar a year operation with national representation. He travelled regularly to Europe, to potteries in Austria and Scotland and the bone china companies in England. These business relationships turned quickly to deep friendships which endured for decades and outlasted the business relationship. When I was fourteen, he took our whole family on a month long tour of Europe. He so enjoyed it that later, he would organize ski and bike trips to Austria and Italy, taking groups of people at discounted rates on an eclectic tour of the region, skiiing and biking out-of-the-way places and staying with families. These tour relationships also lasted and many past participants came on Saturday to share memories.
My father was forward looking and eccentric. Bright, funny and articulate and loved people beyond reason. He was an independent thinker and in my childhood the North Country and White Mountains of New Hampshire was our get-away. Long before it was fashionable, he earned a deep appreciation for nature and the mountains. It is a part of my being as tangible as my legs or arms and I am grateful to him for the experiences. Probably because he was such a fitness-nut, biking, tennis, hiking, skiing and more skiing...it was an emormous shock when he was diagnosed, this past December, with bone cancer. Unsure at first of the magnitude, by early January his doctors at Lahey Clinic told him he had only weeks. This same facility where he had had three hip replacements over the years, as well as a heart-valve replacement. He was, as expected and true to his nature, pragmatic about his fate. Stoic and courageous he did not complain, assured us all individually that he had enjoyed a wonderful life with no regrets and that he was not afraid of death. Last week would have marked my parents 61st wedding anniversary and it was not until after his death that my mother confided in me that my father and her had indeed wept together in the wake of the tragic diagnosis.
A true child of clay, this man who had seen and accomplished so much, was home, surrounded by his children and grandchildren and in his own room. Bocelli played in the background as we held vigil at his side, trading stories, laughing, crying, quiet...and then all over again. We would try to convince my mother to take a break for just a minute or two. No, she said, this is the last thing I'll every be able to do for him. We should all be so lucky to have a wife like this. And of course, it's not the last thing she'll ever do for him. We will all do for him everyday by virtue of the very fact that he is a piece of all of us, but we will never stop missing him.
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