(For my Father)

“What do you want us to do with the thing in the next room?” was the question that the white police officer asked me about my father’s dead body lying cold on the floor. I remember the shock on the face of his Puerto Rican partner at this. That was the day that I had to go to my father’s Harlem apartment and identify his body after he suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep. I was at home in the Bronx when I received the call from the police (I lived upstairs from my grandparents with my wife and children) when my grandfather called me downstairs with the words, “Craig…Reginald is gone!” That was the first significant death in my family that impacted me. But let me back up a bit; you need context.

My father was an artist. He would draw to develop his ideas. Engraved in all his ceramic pieces and sculptures were the words “pro-Christi,” that is to say, “for Christ.” He encouraged me to do the same with any artwork that I created. He spoke four languages, played a little classical piano, sculpted, and worked in clay as a ceramicist. Unfortunately, I have none of the works that he created, nor do I have a picture of him. The story as to why that is will have to wait for another day. My mother did not have a relationship with him. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing the two of them together. My mother helped me prepare for his funeral; however, her preparatory language as she drove me to the funeral home was peppered with phrases about how unprepared he was for his death and not to be swayed by the funeral director to try and buy an expensive coffin for him all he needed was a box. She paused when she noticed a car next to hers had South Carolina plates long enough to ask me to roll down the window and ask them what part of SC they were from…I didn’t do it. She did not come to his funeral because, as she told my sister, she and Reginald didn’t get along, and she saw no reason to go. My sister and I have two different fathers. My sister’s father’s name is Robert. For those of you who saw the movie Boyz in the Hood, think of the mother of Dough Boy and Ricky and her attitude towards her two sons. That same mentality and treatment was prevalent in my mother towards myself and my sister.

Sometime later, I asked my mother’s father (my grandfather) why my mother responded to me with the indifference that she at times displayed while she bent over backward to accommodate my sister’s every wish in the way that she often did. His response was more confirmation than anything else…“Well, I tell you, it's like this, your mother didn’t like your father, and she don’t care too much bout you; she’d near bout eat Robert’s shit, and that’s why she is the way she is about your sister.” Well, that rang true to my ears. It wasn’t really too much of a shock. I reasoned that my grandfather felt his time on this earthly plane was short, and he might wake up one morning standing in front of Jesus, hence, the blunt truth.

It took more than a day to move his body after I identified it, which makes a significant difference in its appearance since he passed in the month of July. To add insult to injury, someone at the city’s coroner’s office lost the paperwork that confirmed my identification, and so I had to go and do it all over again about two days later before they could cooperate with the funeral home. That was very difficult, mainly because of decomposition…it took weeks before I could eat hamburger meat. My father received quite a bit of disrespect in his life, and after he died…it‘s for this reason that I show him respect with that phrase stamped on all my artwork.

Life is complicated; we make our heroes and our villains. My mother was kind at times and indifferent towards me at other times. The truth is that most of us exist somewhere in between what we most fear becoming and what we long to be; in the final analysis, my signate is an attempt to remember my father and give him the respect that, often, he felt he didn’t get in life.