BY Jack Criss
Executive Editor
It was four years ago this month that my father, the man I’m named
after, died. Ralph Jackson Criss, Sr. was 80 years old and in very poor health.
So, while it was not totally unexpected, death is always a shock, no matter
how you think you’re prepared for it. Especially the death of a parent.
I wish I could say that my father and I were extremely close. The truth is
that we really weren’t. I’m sure he loved me—even though
I don’t recall him actually saying those words very often, if at all—but,
thinking about it now, maybe we just simply didn’t know how to relate
to each other.
Pop (as I called him from 10 years of age on) was a salesman. He was on the
road a lot as I was coming up, so we never really bonded early on. Moreover,
he had a pretty strong fondness for the bottle which also precluded a great
amount of father-son camaraderie.
He had a sense of humor that could be absolutely hilarious at one moment and
cutting the next. He was great to be around during times of the former, not
so much in times of the latter.
We truly missed out on doing things together that fathers and sons are supposed
to do. While he hunted occasionally, I’ve never been on a hunt in my
life. I loved sports, but he and I never passed the football or shot hoops
together. He was busy, I know, making a living and perhaps battling his own
demons like many family men do. Still, to this day, I feel a slight pang when
I see a happy dad and son out playing ball together, or riding their bikes.
I wish Pop and I could have been pals like that. The fact is we just never
were.
Of course, I was born very late in his life, and that enters into the equation.
Pop was 47 years old when I came into the world and was never in the best
shape, so he had excuses! But kids don’t take those kinds of factors
into consideration; only adults do.
The closest Pop and I ever got was when we lived together for a few months
in Memphis, not long after I graduated high school. My mother and father were
in the middle of a separation when I decided to stay and work with him. It
was not a good time in my life and I was truly aimless, caught in an adolescent
never-never land, mainly of my own making.
Well, we became quite an odd couple that winter of 1983. Instead of father
and son, Pop and I hit it off in more of a roommate type of relationship.
We’d sip a beer together, grocery shop together, watch the late show
on TV—he even bummed a cigarette from me one night! It wasn’t
“Father Knows Best” by any stretch, but we were finally beginning
to relate to each other.
For me, all of this—as unorthodox as it may sound—was absolutely
great. I finally felt truly visible in the eyes of my father, if not as a
son then as a fellow “guy.” My fondest memories of Pop took place
in these four months I lived with him in Memphis.
The day I packed my car to move back to Jackson and start college I also remember
as a milestone in the relationship with my father. It was an absolutely freezing
Christmas Day with snow covering the landscape as far as the eye could see.
I was following Pop down I-55 at a clipped pace. Just outside of Vaiden, at
a roadside rest area, my father flashed his indicator and we both pulled over.
He got out of his car, a brown paper bag in his hand, and walked back toward
me.
“Cold as hell, isn’t it, Jack?” he asked me. “Yeah,
Pop, it sure as hell is,” I responded. He then offered me the bag and
said, “Have a swig.” As I sipped that warm bourbon I really, for
the first time, felt complete in my father’s eyes. It was one of those
odd, touching moments that can flash in a life like lightning. Standing out
at that rest area, snow all around, cold as hell, with my dad, on Christmas
Day, 1983...I felt like a man.
I’ve dreamed a lot of Pop since he died. Usually we’re talking,
or I’m just aware of his presence in the state of reverie I’m
in. It’s a nice feeling though a bit unnerving, like a ghost hovering
over my body. I don’t believe in such things but the feeling always
puts a shiver down my spine.
I never really got to say goodbye to Pop. He was very sick for a long time,
as the abuse he put his body through over the years wreaked havoc on his health
toward the end. My whole family had grown accustomed to numerous doctor and
hospital visits.
The last hospital visit came right after I had returned from Minneapolis,
Minnesota having seen and met several members of my beloved Vikings football
team. In one of the few brief moments of lucidity during what would be his
final illness, Pop told me he thought it was great that the team had won and
that the Vikes were having such an outstanding season. It was the last thing
he would ever say to me.
Whatever faults or whatever shortcomings Ralph Jackson Criss had—and
he had a great number, as we all do—he was still my father. Every November
since 1998 I reflect on him and his memory. I get a little sad and I feel
a little sorry for myself sometimes when I think of what I missed. But I also
remember that hearty laugh, that crazy sense of humor... and that sip of bourbon.
Rest easy, Pop. DBJ