My Old Man

It's that time of year again.

We’ve reached the month of January again.

For some, that means new beginnings, New Year’s resolutions, or simply trying to dig your way out of the holiday season.

It used to mean some of those things for me, too.

Then came January of 2022, and the whole world changed. Now, the month of January is nothing but a dark cloud that lasts for 31 full days.

It’s torture. It’s painful. It’s reminscient. It’s sad.

If you’re reading this because you know me, then you know the answer to this already. If it’s your first time here, welcome to what was the worst day of my life.

January 24, 2022.

I used to say all the time that the worst day of my life was a different day, relating to some sports-related loss or something to that effect.

I would later joke that I’m very fortunate that something as trivial as my favorite football team losing a playoff game, would be the worst day of my life.

Now I look back on those days and wish I could say it again. But I can’t.

I can’t because that date listed above changed absolutely everything.

I went to work on a normal Monday. I drove to the suburbs like it was any other morning.

Later that day, I would learn it was not any other morning, but the last morning that my life would ever be normal. The last time that I would ever be whole.

Around 3 PM that day my phone started buzzing and I saw it was my mother.

I’ll never forget my reaction.

I rolled my eyes.

What could she possibly need at 3 o’clock on a Monday that couldn’t wait until I got home?

As it turns out… Quite a bit.

Through blubbered speech, fear, and sadness, I could hear that this call was different almost immediately.

“They’re taking your dad,” she said.

Perhaps it was hope, perhaps it was me being naive. All I said was everything was going to be ok, and nothing bad was going to happen.

As it turns out, the bad thing had already happened. I just didn’t know it yet.

I sprinted out of the building, and I’m still not sure how I didn’t get pulled over for speeding. Maybe God had the cops look elsewhere that day.

Right as I turned onto State Street, I took another call that confirmed my deepest fears.

“I think he’s gone,” my brother said.

Broken immediately. Perhaps still somewhat in disbelief because when I got to the hospital, I begged them to tell me that it was not real.

But it was. He was gone. The indestructible force, or so I thought, was, in fact, destructible.

And I wasn’t there.

I’ll never forget the last thing my dad ever said to me. It was the day prior to this one. I took my daughter home after picking her up. It was simple through a wry smile.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It seemed odd at the time because we didn’t have any plans. Maybe he knew? I’ve thought about that a lot over the last four years.

But today is not about that. That’s a brief overview of the end, and everything that has happened since that fateful day.

Today, however, I don’t want to talk that much about how he died, but rather how he lived.

A lot of people got to be a lot of things in their lives to Ricky Lee Westendorf. Some were family. Some were friends. Some were co-workers. Some were adversaries.

Me?

I was his firstborn son. The family legacy. I think of all the things I think about now, I take the most pride in that fact.

I bear that name for him and all of those who came before him. But I didn’t know them. I knew him, and I think of all people, I was the one who knew him best.

So let’s get into it.

Childhood

Of all the things in my life, I think I understand this time period better now that I am older.

When I was younger, I felt like my dad was working all the time. If he was home, it was only for a short period, and he was off to his next shift as quickly as possible.

Back then, that was confusing. How do you tell a 5-year-old that daddy isn’t going to be home when you get there, and when he is home, he’ll probably need to sleep?

Thankfully, that’s not a situation I’m in with my children now that I have them, but I do understand it.

I need to put off play time or other things they want to do. Not because I want to, but because I need to.

That term of provider is something that he (and mom) were in every sense of the word.

I knew then, but maybe didn’t appreciate as much, that all of that work was so we could have whatever we wanted.

Christmas was always awesome. I got to go to the schools I wanted to go to. I got all the toys and games I could have ever wanted.

I got to go to Lambeau for the first time, which he helped make happen.

All of it.

I think of all the things I remember the most from my childhood, is that he created this monster you see today.

I love football. I’ve never made any bones about that. Anyone who knows me, picks that up pretty quickly.

When I was younger, I didn’t want to watch that with him. I wanted to watch cartoons.

Instead, he held firm, and I was hooked almost instantly. My first game I can remember was the Packers beating up the Eagles, his team, on Monday Night Football in 1996.

I watched some guy named Brett Favre throw it all over the lot that night. I was in love, and it was something he helped foster.

I was signed up for a helmet and shoulder pads the instant they became available to me.

I was toughened up, even when I wanted to quit, which happened more times than I’m proud to admit.

“You finish what you started,” he’d always tell me. Lessons I give to my children now.

Of all the things I can think of from my childhood, I think that has proven to be the most important.

Adolescence

Turning into a teenager was… interesting.

It always is.

The process of changing from a boy to a man is just an odd time for anyone who has gone through that.

The stages here were different.

When I was a teenager, that was the first time my dad also got to be my coach. By this point in my life, I’d played football, basketball, and baseball through my younger years until I turned 14.

That summer, finally the stars aligned for dad to coach both me and my brother on the same team.

It was… not as fun as you’d think. At least not at the time.

There are two types of “dad” coaches. The one who favors their kids, and the one who makes things harder on them.

You can probably guess which category he fell under.

My dad was harder on me, but never to the point of making me hate the sport, or not wanting to show up.

In fact, I learned the most from him that year that I did of any year I played baseball.

I still remember after that season going through high school, and getting to start as a sophomore.

I was the catcher, and by virtue of that position, a leader of the team.

I was never the greatest player. We were never the greatest team, but I can tell you that we had a lot of fun over the years.

There was one time, however, that I was a superstar, and I’ll never forget it.

Much like the stuff I mentioned previously about work and sacrifice, one of the sacrifices my dad ultimately had to make a lot of the time, was the ability to watch me and Adam play when we were in high school.

One weekend, however, the stars aligned my senior year. We needed a field to play on, and Diamond 7 (now called 8), was available for a high school team on a Saturday.

We got to play there, a place that meant so much to the three of us over the years.

Perhaps it was only right that Adam and I showed out that day.

We won game 1 with Adam pitching seven strong innings.

Through the doubleheader, I homered twice, doubled twice off the wall, and played some of the best defense I had all season long.

I remember after on double looking at the backstop and seeing him point at me talking to someone else.

Almost as if he was saying “that’s my boy”.

Like I said. I wasn’t the greatest player, so I didn’t have a ton of chances to be “that” guy. But I did love on the one day that I could, he was standing there watching.

From Father, to Friend

“I’m not your friend, I’m your father,” is something my dad would always say to me when I was younger.

Maybe I was in trouble. Maybe I was upset because he was forcing me to drink milk, or do some type of manual labor that I didn’t want to.

That’s difficult for men sometimes, and I’ve learned as I’ve become a father, its difficult for a father too.

Sometimes I do just want to give my kids ice cream for breakfast because I know it would make them happy, and I’d do anything just to see them smile.

Part of the privilege of being a parent, however, is teaching your children the way.

One of the cool parts about growing up, however, is when you can transition, from father to friend.

I remember one time when I was 18, I had gotten a new tattoo, and some of my friends who liked to give me a hard time about… well everything really, mentioned it to my dad asking if he approved.

“He’s a grown man, he can do whatever he wants,” he said.

That was a bit of a turning point. I still needed my dad to help raise me. I still needed tough talks. But I also needed a friend.

And boy did we have a friendship unlike most others.

Coaching together with the three of us, Adam included, are some of the times I’ll look back on when it’s my time to go home as the best of my life.

I remember countless late nights talking about our players, what we needed to do strategically, among so many other things.

Of all those years, I think 2015 is the year I’ll remember the most.

The BAC/Salamones/LLL Outlaws program was incredibly special to all of us. 2015 was the first year I got to call the shots.

I was still young and immature, but let me tell you how hard it is to be 24 years old, and called several names by those twice my age and older.

Biting my tongue, eventually became something I couldn’t do. Of the many gifts I was given from my dad, his mouth was one of them.

“Fuck you.” “Fuck Off” “Go Fuck yourself” were phrases I wasn’t afraid to toss around at a moment’s notice if someone felt like they had something fun to say to me, and especially about our players.

One thing was certain. I was going to stand my ground, and he noticed.

That season ended with what still is in my estimation, the greatest baseball game ever played.

Matt Montana’s walk-off home run is a story that I will tell until the day they toss dirt on top of me.

I’ve recently been shown a video of my postgame speech from that night, and it was almost jarring.

I was uncut. Emotional. Genuine. Joyful. Appreciative. Raw.

The type of emotion that I think we as men rarely ever experience because we hold ourselves back in fear of what others may think.

That was before my dad gave me some of that emotion back. Of all the things he said, it was what he didn’t say that stuck with me.

There was a sense of pride in his eyes, and his words. He was proud of me.

What more does a son want than to make his father proud?

I have a bunch of other stories like that as I progressed through adulthood.

I mentioned earlier that Dad took me to my first game at Lambeau Field, so one day I got to take him behind the scenes.

It was November of 2014. Packers/Eagles. A rivalry in our house. My team versus his.

The Packers were awesome that year, and felt like they had a real chance to go all the way.

Philly was supposed to be a good NFC team that could knock off the Packers at Lambeau, a place Green Bay felt invincible that year.

They… did not. Green Bay scored 53 points and blew the Birds off the field.

I heard the joy and giddiness in my dad’s voice with the stuff he was able to do that day, but there is one thing I remember above all from that day.

My friend and I are walking down the tunnel, and my dad is walking from the opposite end. We’re going to cross paths because that’s our ride home.

Eye contact is made. Two Packer fans. One Eagle fan. Two smiles. One wry smile back in the other direction.

Finally, we drew within speaking distance.

“You fucking assholes,” he said.

The three of us laughed, and the ride home commenced from there.

Rarely can someone call you an asshole and have it feel like an endearing term, but that was certainly one of those days.

From Father, to Papa

Far and away the most rewarding experience I ever got to witness was watching my dad get promoted to Papa.

I thought my dad cared about me and Adam. That was nothing compared to the look on his face when he met Blake Elizabeth for the first time.

Love at first sight. Smitten. A love that he never knew could truly exist. He didn’t say those things, you just knew.

Blake’s favorite person in the world was her papa. She still remembers him, which is special, considering how little she was when he passed away.

There is no feeling quite like watching your parents become grandparents.

That feeling with my dad felt like it was even more exaggerated because this big, rough burly man was reduced to just a puddle when Blake snapped her fingers.

Final Thoughts

My dad was a lot of things.

He was larger than life. Almost a legend. I can hear the sense of pride for those who knew him when they talk about him.

When he passed away, I heard several strangers reach out to me telling me old stories. I heard from his old football coach. I heard from teachers, friends from high school, co-workers.

People that met him because they knew me. My friends. My friends’ parents. My old coaches.

One common theme existed in anything they said to me.

He was a good man.

I think above everything else, that’s what I care about. The legacy he left behind was one of someone that was, and should have been, admired.

That’s why this month hurts as much as it does.

When you’re larger than life, the void that you leave is also larger than life itself.

I think one of the biggest lies that any of us in this fraternity of people who have lost their parents ourselves is that things will get easier.

I’m sorry, but I’ve gone through this for what will be 1,460 days next weekend.

Sure, it’s not like the day it happened, or the day after where I literally couldn’t function.

But the days are all the same. I’m here. He’s not. You’re there. Your loved one is not.

I know anyone who has gone through this can feel that feeling.

What I will say though, is I do appreciate how much this hurts.

What the hell are you talking about? you’re probably thinking.

Yes, that’s right. I appreciate that it hurts as bad as it does this month.

If it didn’t hurt, then I didn’t have the best dad ever. I didn’t have someone who taught me all the things he did. I didn’t have someone fix my car. I didn’t have someone send me to college. I didn’t have someone support me at every single turn that I made, even if he didn’t always agree with them.

I wouldn’t know what this awful feels like, if it were not for all the good thing that came before them.

So yes. this stings.

But I do everything, knowing I have a legacy to help carry on, and knowing he’s watching somewhere.

And Dad, I’d like to think you’d be the proudest guy around, if I could see you see me now.

Until next time.