Goodbye

Steven P. Doheny
April 26, 1949 - May 5, 2008





A month or so ago, my dad recited an old saying:
“My father was a farmer so that I could be a doctor so that my children can be artists.”

I can’t think of a more succinctly beautiful expression of my father’s story, his view on life. His story is one of hard work and self-sacrifice. He worked his way up from a humble background to a successful career in a prestigious profession. He was a dreamer. He dreamed the American Dream: if you work hard enough, you will succeed. But there was more to his dreams, because it wasn’t really his own success and fortune he was interested in. He believed in working hard to improve the lives of others. He was able to enjoy the fruits of his labors when he allowed himself the opportunity, but he always seemed to put the needs and desires of everyone else before his own – especially his family. He grew up watching his own father work incredibly long, hard hours building houses to provide for his family. So my dad’s dream was to provide his daughters all the resources we needed to be able to lead the lives we want. He gave us the gift of absolute freedom of choice. He gave us the opportunity to be artists, to be dreamers. He gave us the ability to be creative and intellectual, the luxury of not having to bog ourselves down with everyday concerns.

Dad always supported and encouraged us to follow our own dreams. He especially wanted us to have the chance of trying new things, of doing the unconventional, if that’s what we wanted. He himself was a lover of new experiences and always ready to try something new, be it eating sea urchin at the local sushi bar or trying out a whole new career as a professor at the medical school on Grand Cayman. I know I got my Wanderlust – my desire to travel and see the world – from him. It’s very much due to him that I’ve had the opportunity to see so much of the world, too. He always did whatever it took to make sure nothing stood in my way. When I had to get to Tampa for an interview for a scholarship program to go to Germany, he drove me there, driving long into the night after a full day of work, while I fell asleep in the passenger seat. Just a few weeks ago, when my taking a summer position at Assateague Island was contingent on having a car to get me there, he told me he would take care of everything and invested a small fortune in getting my old Mercedes fixed up. That’s what he always did: took care of everything so I wouldn’t miss out on life’s opportunities.

I’ve always had an innate understanding of what kind of person my dad was, but I’ve also come to really understand him and know him as a person as I entered adulthood. I went and visited him for about two weeks when he was teaching on Grand Cayman and we got to spend time together, just the two of us. That’s when I noticed for the first time something especially remarkable about my dad. He could strike up a conversation with anyone, and make that person feel special. I watched him do it time and again and a realization swept over me: every person on earth has a story to tell, and each story is valuable and interesting. My father knew this intrinsically. He knew exactly how to talk to people, to help them open up and tell their stories, and he knew how to listen and make them know that what they have to say is important. This revelation totally altered my perception not only of my father, but of the world.

See, I’ve always been a lover of a good story – which also comes from my Dad. I have vague memories of him reading The Iliad and The Odyssey to Shannon and I when we were quite young. (I imagine he used abridged children’s versions rather than the epic poems themselves.) I remember begging him for more tales of Ulysses when the book was finished, and in the end he had to make up some new ones for me because I couldn’t accept that the story was over. Thanks to Dad and his talent for talking to people, I now know there’s a limitless supply of good stories out there, and I know how to find them. And thanks to him I understand how valuable this knowledge is, and how precious every single person is.

I’ve come to realize how much alike my dad and I are – we’re both so curious about the world, wanting to explore and experience it, and excited about life and all of its wonders. I’ve also come to realize how much my dad sacrificed his own chances to really experience the world in order to give me those chances. I know with certainty that my dad was proud of me, that he loved me. I know that everyone who knew him knows how much my father cared about them, because he was always able to show it in a million different ways both large and small. I want to continue to make my dad proud, but I know that he was never worried about how I would turn out, because he always encouraged me to make my own decisions, and he was always happy to accept my choices in life and support me no matter what.

It’s still so hard, so impossible, to accept that all of our plans for a shared future will never come to be. And I know that the cliché that “he would want you to move on” holds true in this case, it’s not just a platitude for my family, we can know with certainty that he would want us to go on living our lives and fulfilling our dreams and his dreams. I’m sure he’d prefer to be here with us just as much as we wish he were still here. But it’s thanks to him that we have the great opportunities we do, the freedom to live and enjoy life so much. The way we go on, the way we live is our tribute to him. We need to continue making our stories, and sharing our stories, and sharing his story.

It’s the greatest story I know:
My grandfather was a farmer so that my father could be a doctor, so that I can be an artist.