Taking time to remember a good man for all seasons

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It was sudden. A small heart attack had been a warning, doctors said. Slow down. Take it easy. His wife was to pick him up and drive him home from the hospital late on a Saturday morning. He died before she arrived.

I knew him only a short time, for a few years as my boyfriend's father, for a few years as my father-in-law. I never called him by his first name. I was too young and he was too old for that informality.

When I referred to him, it was as 'Mr. Beckham.' It seemed right. He was 20 years older than my parents, British-born, proper, reserved. His first name wasn't comfortable on my tongue. Years later, it still isn't. When I talk about him, I still say 'my father-in-law.' That's who he was. That's all he had a chance to be.

When I married his son, we moved next door to my in-laws and he used to call us, sometimes, at night when we'd settled down to watch TV or when we had company, to tell us that we'd left the cellar light on or that we had forgotten to put away the rake, which was still on the front lawn. I thought it was a waste of his energy to be so concerned with such minuscule things. Who cares about a rake or a light? Why did these things bother him? Now I do the same. I walk all the way upstairs to tell someone she left the lights on downstairs. I call someone at work and say, 'Do you know you left the car wash, the bucket and a towel on the front lawn?' And in the silence that greets my words, I hear myself 25 years ago.

My father-in-law used to be constantly busy cutting the grass, sweeping the patio or driveway, weeding a garden, edging a walk, raking leaves, washing windows, washing the dog. He never relaxed. He was always in motion.

I didn't want any part of that motion. Weekends were for doing nothing, I thought back then. All I wanted to do was grab a book, slather myself with baby oil, stretch out on a lawn chair, swim in his pool, and vegetate. -- But you couldn't vegetate around my father-in-law. His energy was encompassing. You found yourself in the pool not swimming, but scrubbing the liner with Comet and a Tuffy pad. You found yourself picking up a broom or a rake and actually helping out.

I never saw him sit still except on days when he'd come home for lunch. While he ate, he'd watch Mike Douglas. For a half-hour that's all he did. Mike Douglas had some kind of hold on him.

When he wasn't working, he was playing hard. He was a member of men's groups. He sang with the Barbershoppers. He played a ukulele and a kazoo. He was the life of every party. But he was quiet sometimes, too, quietly kind. Once, when I was still new in the family and going on vacation, he slipped a $ 50 bill in my hand and whispered, 'Buy something for yourself.' Once when my mother-in-law was somewhere and he came for dinner, he actually raved about the fried bologna and beans I served. He'd never had fried bologna before and didn't realize it could taste so good.

All the rest I know of him is secondhand, stories passed down over the years.

How he and my mother-in-law met. How he played in a band. How he worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and quit smoking one day after he had to run for a train and had barely made it. How he opened a business when he was in his 50s.

How he literally worked himself to death.

I have a home movie of him bathing my son in the kitchen sink. In it, my father-in-law is smiling. Playing. His grandson slowed him down.

The scene lasts maybe 30 seconds. A few months after this film was shot, my father-in-law died. The grandson and two granddaughters, who were not yet born, grew up hearing stories about him.

But they never missed what they never had.

A kind, hard-working man died 23 years ago this day and life went on without him.

Life always goes on.

Only the people who knew him felt a void. Only the people who loved him still do.