One year ago today, my father passed away. The subsequent months have been filled with all kinds of emotion, from stunned numbness to grief to a hollow emptiness.
In the interim, I’ve been writing, almost daily. There’s just nothing I wanted to post for the world to see, not yet. I’ve been like a squirrel, collecting my thoughts, curating them, hiding them away for later.
I’ve written about my dad before, HERE and HERE. I was not able to speak at his service at the time. This is what I had wanted to say:
My father, George Harold Costandine, was born in Belden, Minnesota November 15, 1932. He passed from this life peacefully at his home in Fountain, Colorado on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025.
This is what I know:
In the last days of his life, he was surrounded by loved ones and friends. Up until the last few days, he was aware and alert, and he maintained his dignity and his biting humor and wit.
There are obvious things I could say. He liked fishing. He liked hunting. He liked road trips. (These were the only vacations I can remember, packing up in the camper, because we couldn’t afford more than that.) He instilled in me (and my son) a love for cruising the road, for seeing the country at ground level. He liked his cheap ass beer. He liked puttering in his garden, especially tending his grapes, until doing so got to be too much. He loved Johnny Cash, heck, all country music. His favorite movies were old Westerns. Gunsmoke. He liked meat, and he was a decent cook. He frequented piano bars when that was a thing. He liked his quiet life; even though he enjoyed company, he was glad when the hubbub was over with and we all went home. He loved dachshunds, and always had at least one. He was always busy. He was a fair carpenter and redid a lot of his house on his own. Much to the chagrin of some of us, he liked FoxNews.
Ninety-two-plus years is a long time to live. Although he may not have been the smartest man in the world, or the most famous, or the most outwardly successful, he lived a good life. How do I know this?
My dad knew enough to survive rural northern Minnesota, until he left to join the Army. Belden is now in the Nemadji State Forest. People get lost in there and are never found. The area where he grew up during the Depression era remains rural and primitive. I know, I was there in 2019. It’s colder than cold in the winter, and hot, humid, and buggy in the summer. You are miles from the nearest paved road. There were no busses. His family was dirt poor. They didn’t own a car, so they walked everywhere, unless someone was kind enough to offer a ride, or if they were planning to go to the big city of Duluth. Then you could hop a train (my grandfather, who died young, worked for the Soo Line). There was no running water, no inside toilets, little refrigeration, no grocery stores. My grandmother (his mother) provided most of the food by gardening and raising chickens and other livestock. There was a creek nearby, and wild berries. She depended mightily on the kindness of friends and strangers. My grandmother eventually got a party line (telephone) and electricity. There was no TV, little radio that might have scratched over from Duluth. Definitely no internet, and even now, cell service is alarmingly spotty.
You may want to think the way you grew up could lead to negative outcomes, especially the way he grew up, lacking the most basic of necessities. To me, it’s all a matter of perspective. You can use your less than perfect experience to make your life better. I think my dad did.
My father joined the army as soon as he could (17? 18?), immediately sent to the Korean War. One thing that was apparent about him, my father had a great love of this country. He retired from the Army. He was proudest of his time there, and even though his retirement was more than fifty years ago, he was Red, White, and Blue all the way. My dad could have been an officer. He passed the test. He declined. He was a regular guy in the regular Army, and couldn’t see himself as anything else.
Yes, it was a struggle. Life is a struggle. He had six children in 18 years, and none of us were angels. I think back to some of the punishments to some of my behaviors, and I have to admit that, while at the time they felt severe to me, I know his intentions were good. He could have run off and lived a monetarily richer life without us, like I’ve seen so many other men do.
My dad, though, was rich, both morally and ethically. He worked to get both my mother and me to the United States, when he could have easily left us in Japan. Forgotten us, like a lot of GIs did in the 1950s. Later on, when my mother left him, he took care of the remaining minor children in the house. This included a five year old. Sticking around for the long haul couldn’t have been easy.
He raised all of us to be strong individuals, and I think we are. Especially us girls. I never heard either of my parents once say we couldn’t do this or that because our sex. This is a tremendous win! to raise strong and fearless children, ones that have become successful in their own rights.
I think because of his personality, of his morality, he’s had lots of friends. Starting from his time in the military, his friends stayed with him until their ends. Life long. My husband worshiped and adored the ground my dad walked on! He considered my father his friend. He just loved the stories, even though I would warn my husband to take anything the old man said with a grain (or pound) of salt. They spent time together even when I was out of town, mostly talking about the good old days.
I’m not going to say the man didn’t have flaws. We all have flaws. But I do know his intentions were fair. He left six children, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren. Some of us think like him, some of us look like him, some of us walk and talk like him. Some of us embrace his hobbies, or the things he liked to do, the things he liked to listen to. There is no greater legacy to leave the world.
And now, the man is gone, and we mourn his passing and our loss. We celebrate a life that was so richly lived. And we remember with fondness through our grief.
