Santa Claus

One of my staple stories about my past involves talking to Santa Claus on my dad's HAM radio every winter. My parents would hover in the background as my brother and I told Santa what we wanted. It was a pretty good solution to the general Christmas problem of finding out what your kids want without worrying about a phony letter. And we felt that we did not have to rely on anything so mundane as a postman to deliver our wishes, or worse the Sears Santa who was clearly not Santa and could not be trusted with such sensitive information. Instead we got to talk to the man directly. We knew that Dad could talk to the North Pole, there were cards on his wall to prove it, so it stood to reason that he could talk get in touch with Old Claus on demand.

Eventually, we realized that Santa's voice changed a bit each year, and that these jolly voices had begun to resemble the voices of a couple of Dad's friends. Buck and Russ.

Russ is still iving in Port Huron so far as I know. Healthy and happy.

Last year, Buck was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had aggressive treatment and was given two months to live. This was probably in November. He died on Saturday. He survived for just over a year after the diagnosis. This isn't a surprise but it also isn't okay.

He was in a lot of pain and refused to touch his radios after one surgery until he could make it down to his HAM shack in the basement of his house without any assistance. He was famously derided for refusing to use the tallest and most powerful equipment and antennas. He was a DX man. The reason I call my dad Old Man is because that's how he and Buck referred to each other most of the time. Buck also used to call our house and leave messages that went like this "Duck, Buck, call." My dad's main nickname is Duck, this is related to his call, I am sure that he also called Buck's house and left messages that were the same except for the order of the first two words.

Buck had three daughters who he was intensely proud of. I remember when one of them moved to New York, even though she was older than me and i didn't know her well, she was an inspiration. It didn't matter that the best job she could get was waiting tables, she left. She has since moved back and has been staying with him for this last year, all three of them have been caring for him.

He was married to an amazing woman named Sheila who loved the opera. Sheila died a few years ago after a long fight with breast cancer. He aged quickly and visibly after she was gone.

He always had a chocolate lab, one named Hershey helped me overcome my fear of dogs as a kid.

In a lot of ways he was more a part of my life than much of my family. I still use the back pack he gave me when I was 18, the same brand his daughters got when they left home for college. He came to our wedding. He was at my confirmation lunch. The makeshift crown for his surprise 50.5 birthday party in our garage was the green chair that has travelled over the ocean with me. He was one of the few non-family members at my brother's first wedding.

I haven't seen him since the wedding, but still, there is a new hole in the weave of my life. Knowing that he isn't there is another rend, another loss. He didn't deserve this. He deserved the oldest and healthiest of ages.

After all, he was Santa Claus.