Martin Fitzpatrick Sr., Carlo Babuder, Fanny Babuder, Martin Fitzpatrick Jr, Lena Fitzpatrick., David Lozupone, Dora Lozupone Dominick P. Starace, Iriving “Sonny” Abrams. Adelaide Abrams, Cathy Sloan.

This is the “roll call” of the names of the men and women in my life, all of whom are now in another plane. My two grandfathers, grandmother (I never knew my dad’s mom) my dad and mom, my first father-in-law and mother-in-law, and my two uncles, one of my aunts and my current mother-in-law. There are but two still remaining, David Sloan Sr., my father-in-law since 2002, and a friend prior to that and my aunt Irene Starace.

What spurred this series of thoughts you ask? Well, as everyone is aware, the current Covid debacle brings with it daily accounts of people passing, along with that, each day seems to bring another series of announcements of the passing of various personalities that I grew up watching, listening to, reading, reading about in one form or another who didn’t pass from Covid, but simply because their time had come to an end. [I’m going to resist the temptation to start quoting a Dawes song here]. That started me going down the “family tree” rabbit hole and coming to the solid realization that when Dave Sr. does transition, (no he is not in any immediate jeopardy) I would be left as the “Last Man Standing” ok I can’t resist these opening lyrics that bring all those men to mind in multiple ways, courtesy of Bruce…

“Faded pictures in an old scrapbook
Faded pictures that somebody took
When you were hard and young and proud
Backed against the wall, running raw and loud”

It’s a scary thought of being one step removed from becoming the Pater Familias, not only in terms of what it means to my own mortality, but also what it means from both a real and implied responsibility standpoint. Think about it, how lucky are most of us to have had a “back up resource” for most of our lives, someone, either by blood or by relationship to look to for advice (and sometimes to argue with about lots of things).

The realization that one day in the (hopefully not too near) future, the “last man standing” will only have his reflection to look at for such guidance. The “senior member” of the team in more ways than one.

I have been incredibly fortunate to have done something I’ve loved as a career (and am still at it), to have been blessed with two children who, themselves, now have wonderful, rambunctious, curious, healthy, children of their own, yet I’ve always been “middle management”…the idea of becoming the CEO is both interesting and scary.

I’ll leave this set of thoughts with one more set of lyrics…courtesy of Dan Fogelberg:

“And the sons become the fathers and their daughters will be wives
As the torch is passed from hand to hand
And we struggle through our lives
Though the generations wander, the lineage survives
And all of us, from dust to dust, we all become forefathers by and by”