I only saw my father cry twice.
He was crippled up with Progressive Supra-Nuclear Palsy both times. The worst kind of Parkinsonism you can get. That wasn’t why he was crying though. Muhammed Ali’s neurologist said my father’s PSP had two features worse than just regular PSP. Most people with that severe PSP don’t survive for more than a year. My Dad lasted eight.
He could take that.
The first time he really cried was when his best friend’s son died in a plane crash. He cried so hard. He was so upset it really startled me. It made me think of how much more he would cry if I had died. That is when I knew, really knew that my father loved me.
The second time I saw him really break down was about two months after September 11, 2001. He had read a story in a magazine about a little girl whose father died in the towers. She said she would never see his funny face again.
When I spoke about all this in his eulogy after he died in 2003, I told about how much my Dad loved to make Funny Faces with his kids. It was his favorite thing to do. The last thing I said was that he was the “The King of Funny Faces.”
Sometime around 2008, I realized this:
The King is Dead! Long live the King of Funny Faces!
