The One About 1988

The year is 1988. Ronald Reagan was President, and you were most likely sporting a brand new pair of parachute pants and sporting a mullet if you were male and using a case o AquaNet a week if you were a gal. You were listening to the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Motley Crue and Guns 'N Roses over the airwaves. Rain Man was a huge movie hit that year starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. You could purchase a gallon of gas that year for about 90 cents a gallon. Life was good.

My Dad (California Dad) was diagnosed with cancer that year. It was a crazy, crazy year. I was no longer living in LA, I had moved back to BFE because I missed my friends. I was flying back and forth trying to visit as much as possible and as much as my job allowed me to be off. I had just returned from my most current visit in which it was reported that my Dad had a clear bill of health and that the cancer treatments were successful. He decided to visit Hawaii to celebrate and soak up some sunshine to feel better. He was gone about a week when something felt terribly wrong. He quickly came back home and visited his doctor right away. Within a few hours, he was hospitalized and I got "the" phone call from Mommy. Come now or it might be too late. My older brother and I headed out the very next morning. We flew into LAX and drove straight to Cedars Sinai. Later that day, he passed away.

Shock is probably not the word for it. I just left California two weeks ago and he had a "cancer free" bill of health. Now, he was gone. How could that be? I bring up this marker in my life, because later down the road, it caused me a great deal of grief. I was pretty pissed off that my Dad was gone and I only got 6 short years with him, which in turn made me very mad at my mother, for keeping us apart all those years. I was even more mad at the man I was mourning over because he didn't put forth any real effort into closing the gap when I was growing up. I was just an angry, angry 23 yr old. And I felt cheated out of a father/daughter relationship with him. I was fortunate however, to still have my Dad back in BFE. At least I was not completely devoid of a father/daughter relationship. He had stopped drinking at this point and got sober, so we were actually getting along quite well back then.

I think this is the year that I pretty much went nuts for the first time. After my Dad died in April, I later broke off a long term relationship, quit my job and packed up and moved back to Cali once again. This time the trip would bring much delight. Stay tuned for details of the cross country trip I was blessed to have had with my dear friend Curt.