my dad died when i was 14, he was 54. shit tons of people showed up at the wake though. 2 books worth in 4 hours and there was still a line.
he was a heavy guy with a long black ponytail and an awesome sense of humor. he was a practical joker and he was a lot more patient with life than i am. he always wore a short sleeve button up shirt, even in the winter, never a coat. he made a point to go out of his way to be respectful of everyone except for this one time when we were at a sox game and the no smoking thing had just taken effect. he got into it with some guy because the guy bitched about my dad's smoke. my dad later apologized.
he was very eccentric. he had this box of wishbones that he saved from chickens and turkeys and shit and he SWORE that one day he was going to dip them in silver, put a chain on them, and sell them as native american charms for 50 bucks apeice. he was dead serious and he said it was ok because he was like .085% native american lol. his car had rot holes in the trunk which he patched up with bumper stickers, not because he couldn't afford to fix it, but because of the principle of paying to fix something that he could take care of himself. at the time it was embarrassing but now i admire it.
also he was a hoarder whose coffee table was piled 6 ft high with vhs tapes that he recorded. every baseball game, every movie, every concert was on that table. it was pretty awesome, actually. you had to part the pile to see the tv, though. he had an entire room (my old bedroom from when i was a baby) full of soda bottles that he NEVER turned in. i forget how much we got when we turned them in but it was well into the triple digits.
he was a baseball fanatic. he passed the obsession on to me and taught me to play. if he could have seen the sox win the world series he would have had to have been hospitalized. that's all he ever talked about, how "one day" it would happen. when they did win it was bittersweet. he would have gotten a kick out of the riots. he probably would have joined them if they weren't destroying property. it's a shame he couldn't know me as an adult.