Philip Anthony Seeger — scientist, showman, musician, astronomer, and traveler — took his last breath this morning. That’s the way with Parkinson’s. But he retained his dignity, his humor, and his heart to the very end. He went down singing.
Dad was clever, kind, and eternally curious. He could cock his eyebrow when he was telling a joke in a way I did not inherit, and that eyebrow was cocked as he was telling jokes long past the time he could form a sentence. Immobile, in bed, he still had sauce.
Dad loved music, loved song. When there was nothing left, no way out, no way even to move his unresponding limbs, there was still song. I don’t know what he was singing, and I have no proof that the songs I sang to him were any comfort, but I like to imagine they were.
Parkinson’s had stolen everything else. As a kid he was the Texas state champion of mental arithmetic. He could make the digits dance. When Parkinson’s took the numbers away, it broke my heart. It was, for him, like hearing someone speak in a language you have always known, but somehow now the words are cryptic.
The stories are cluttered now, from how our house was built so he could put an observatory on the roof of the garage, to the observatory he built in the back yard (a much better choice), to how he cut a patient in half playing Walter Mitty at Don Juan Playhouse. “We’re going through!”
There are too many stories, so I will stop trying now. It was humbling and a little scary measuring myself against an intellect like his, and a level of craft like his, and a wit like his, but he never measured me that way. He gave me science fiction and hope for the world. He gave me the questions, but not the answers.
I owe him everything.
Goodbye ,Dad.
