someone else.

I started this blog it looks like 6 years ago in 2012 and then added 2 or 3 entries in 2013 then it stops. For one reason then another I didn't push forward towards what I was looking for. It's 2018 now and time and loss have brought me back to this place. Mom is 91 my sister in her 70s and so many of the people I have know are either experiencing serious health issues and some have passed away. It gets very quiet and sad when I drown myself in these thoughts about how time has taken its toll. While I know how to lift some of the weight of these thoughts off my mind I'm finding it more and more difficult to engage the process. My mom would tell me the quickest way to feel better is to go out and make someone else's day. She is the smartest person I will ever know.

To chronical a journey for what may turn out to be one without any clear destination isn't accomplishing anything worth spending time on and yet it feels like the only thing i'm capable of doing at this moment. I'm deeply saddened to hear my friend and Santa to everyone Alan Lundgren has passed away from a hard fought battle with cancer. My mom battles her issues and doesn't feel very well most of the time. My uncle passed from Alzheimer's my cousin from cancer and a friend who shouldn't be facing heart issues at such an early age is. My sister has had cancer and is doing alright but the time I feel I can actually see flying by is, and it makes me very sad.

I don't like worrying or people who spend a lot of time doing it and yet I'm doing it a lot these days. From as far back as I can remember the death of others has had an extreme effect on me and when it's close to home or in my mind when I think about the future it affects the foundation of everything I knew to be or thought I knew about what it would be like to live with this crippling fear. I do not fear my own death even slightly but the weight of fear of those I feel close to passing away while I live is unbearable.

From a blog to document my search for the beginning to a post describing what it is like towards the end. These days for me feel challenging and compared to those who are experiencing life and death issues daily my own fears and issues seem selfish and trite. I'm used to coming up with answers to figure out how and where to go to get things sorted out but as time goes on I find those answers don't come as often and as easy as they once did. Now I'm faced with the real possibility of having a ton of questions that matter to me going unanswered forever.

My mom has it figured out, I really need to get up and go do something for someone else while I still can.           

Love Dad-

As this trek continues it takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Two days ago while talking about my discoveries so far I learn or re-learned as it turns out, that my father and I had corresponded through handwritten letters back in 1976 the last being January 1977. How could I have lost that time? I was married, had a 2-year-old son, living in East Point Georgia with a marriage, a job, and a life completely falling apart. Maybe why I blocked that time out of my head.. Got married when I was 17 and here I was just 20 with my entire world crashing down on me.

Why I reached out to my father who for all practical purposes was a stranger to me I couldn't say. He was in California and we hadn't seen each other since I was a little kid and I was in Georgia trying to keep my life together and failing. The letter writing between us I had forgotten about and considering what all I was going through in my life at the time blocking that part out was probably understandable. 

I have 4 hand written, 3 to 4 page letters from my father. Inside those four envelopes are some of the answers to questions I've had for decades and wouldn't have had to ask if I had been paying attention to the important things in life. Perhaps if I had been focusing on the right things I wouldn't have lost my marriage, my family, and the only life I knew. But for some reason, I wrote to my father, the man I never really knew, and he responded with care and concern both for me and my wife and son that he never met. It's all there, written in his hand, and unmistakable.

He started out each of the four letters I have telling me how happy he was to get mine and saying we should keep writing and asking about my health and that of my little family. My father had a massive heart attack and lived through it in 1973 and at the time of our writing back and forth I knew nothing about it. By asking about my health and that of my wife and son this man I only knew by name was sending his care and concern the only way he knew how. He was teaching me about what the important things in life were. (health and family) I'll likely not forgive myself for not acknowledging the love he was offering in his own way and I regret not saying something-

My father retired from the Navy after 30 years of service in 1972 and in 73 when he had his heart attack he spent 30 days in the hospital. He spent the next 3 years working with his brother in construction just to pay off his hospital bills that weren't covered by his service. This doesn't surprise me at all because my mom is that way too always paying her own way. 
He bowled on Tuesday and Thursday nights in a league and had a 152 point average. He golfed on those days in the mornings and said he wasn't very good but he enjoyed it. In most of those letters, he asked for pictures of myself and my family and voiced concern because I had apparently mentioned my troubled marriage. Ironically he told me "divorce can only hurt one person, your son.." How "unfair it would be to him," is how he put it. Oh was he ever right and wrong all at the same time as my divorce came extremely close to killing me as well- 

The father I never really knew was trying to get to know me the only way he knew how and encouraging me to keep my family together If I could something he wasn't able to do himself. 

One interesting thing that I will never in my life get to experience is calling someone Dad. How odd it is that for years that was insignificant to me and how sad it makes me today as old as I am. His fatal heart attack was many years ago and I remember being told but not who it was that told me. My memory is that I was angrier than sad and then sad beyond what I wanted anyone to know. I took great pains in making out like it was just the death of a stranger and not a huge thing. It was and is to this very second writing this, a huge thing. His letters to me as I read them today are filled with clues that I see that he cared about me and how I was. At the time it didn't seem to mean much and all these years later it means the world.

Even though I will never be able to call someone Dad, it was how my father signed each letter to me that I still have. He got to say it and I'm happy he felt that is who he was to me. I'll see you one day again and we will know each other and all will be alright. 

#6213015 - Harry N. Zukerman CPO E8, USS Coral Sea HC1

After three to four decades of on and off again searches and questions, an email from a complete stranger put a few missing pieces into the puzzle.

"zuke's gooks, USS Coral Sea. HC1 crew member. Flew with your dad." 

This was the simple message that popped up on the screen. In my mom's living room as she was talking to me I look down and this msg stared back at me. Fixated and in shock I began to write to this man who had just opened a space in my soul.  

Mr Owen I said, are you saying that you knew my father? I wrote back without saying a word to my mom. 

"yes I flew with him from July 1967 to April 1968 off the coast of Vietnam."

Flushed with all sorts of emotions I carefully constructed something to tell my mom who I have purposely kept from knowing throughout the years that I wanted to know about the other side of who I had become. Don't know why I kept that to myself but it's part of who I became, closed off.

I sent Mr Owen my phone number and waited.. My phone rang and I could see it was an area code in California but I wasn't ready. This was going to be an emotional thing for me and one of the secrets closed off people like me try to keep out of site is our deepest held feelings. 

I came home and wrote out a long thing with some questions and decided the next day I would call Mr Owen and get this started. 

A three and a half hour conversation ensued the next day with a man who helped me put together "the image of my father." Strange as it may seem the similarities between the father and the son who only met once or twice many decades ago was like looking in the mirror and seeing him instead of me.  

There are people now to contact and more information to be had, and then there will likely be the question at the end of, OK now what? This all will only matter to me and to what end I don't have a clue. 

Already I know I think I would have liked this guy my father, and this is how Mr Owen put it to me: 

"I can tell you that I would not be alive today if it was not for your dad. He made sure his men were taken care of. I know nothing about his family life. I search the Internet for guys that I deployed with to Vietnam. My search came up with your name and the picture of the Chief with his dog. I recognize his face. I read your blog and there were things in there that only a person that was deployed with your Dad in HC 1 would know. I can tell you he was a no-nonsense person and he called everyone a Son Of A Bitch.. You did not want to get on his bad side. He would get in your shit but he loved us. We use to say that the Chief was in the Navy so long he was a cabin boy on Noah's Ark."

"We saw the Chief as our father figure. He would do anything for us."

Thank you from the bottom of my heart and sanity Mr Owen, the journey for me will continue-

where

Like the shattered glass that can never become whole again. I can't get my mind away from searching for where you rest- I forgive you yet can't forgive myself... Wasted time. We could have laughed some. Maybe found common ground. Who knows you might have liked me. Maybe taught me how to like myself. My soul will never heal. My heart aches for what feels like will be an eternity. How can I find a way to forgive myself and be OK. Damaged. Where can I find peace- I need to know where you rest. 

When will it end.

More and more these days as I get older and have less to do, I think about the image of my father in many ways. Not just the photo I have here on my desk, but the time that is going by for any hope that I might find a shipmate of his or a family member who might tell me who he was, how he lived, and where he is buried- Before I die I feel I have to find someone, or his gravesite, and do some personal soul purging. Tonight I wrote to a memorial website for those who served on the USS Coral Sea in hopes that he by some miracle, could push me in the right direction. I'm not quite sure why this has become so important for me to do, but it has and I try not to question it much. Not sure I can add a link in this post to a very poor video that was put together by a sailor on board the ship in 1989. How weird for me during this terrible video to get as emotional as I do thinking that my father probably walked through this ship and saw the same things I'm seeing in this video. The flight deck that I know he walked on for years and when I see it I wonder like a little kid if my father walked over any spot I'm seeing. How bizarre for a man of my age to get emotional all these years after my father died not knowing anything about me, and yet I would give the rest of my time on earth to get one solid day with him-

VIDEO

Next Move. No Photo Available.

The uneven road I've been on has taken me back where I began yet again. My dog had to be put to sleep when I was a little kid and the look of the deepest heartbreak and horror on my mom's face as she crumbled into the back seat of my sister's car holding the life of our friend who had taken ill and now had to be put down, still haunts me to this very day. It's was that same look I had on my face after a failed marriage where my life had come full circle from a kid with a lost soul to an adult with a broken heart. I drove with a few belongings from Georgia back to Texas and knocked on my mom's door and fell apart. I would never fully recover..

Every turn I've taken in my life has felt and looked like a different journey. The people had different names, the scenery along the way I had never seen before and there were laughs and sadness and different outcomes where I would land in places I didn't recognize. Or so it seemed. Now with reflection as my guide, no matter the success or failure, no matter the people who have crossed my path or the turns I made, all roads have taken me right back to where I began and it doesn't feel right.

In the company of the famous and the infamous, on stages and in arenas with thousands and sometimes millions looking on, what in the hell was I doing there, is all I come away with. Presidents, music and movie legends, sports superstars, and me? Having tricked people into thinking I knew what I was doing 20 years ago in television and photography until I actually learned, I carry a certain level of guilt knowing the work and sacrifice others made and are making to get here while I just kicked the doors down and went in..    

I never felt much like I've ever known where I was going and here I am now after all the miles I've racked up feeling like I haven't accomplished what I feel is important. Like a carnival bumper car ride where you go here and there and get turned around a lot but eventually you just end up back where you started. The ride has a time limit and needs to be worth the price you pay because the memories might be all you get to take with you and you can never rewind the tape- Now what.

Dinner for one.

Work has slowed to a crawl again (normal I hope, ups and downs) and no matter all I've done prior to times like this, when work is slow I begin to fall into my "thinking trap".. This blog was born from that.. Not meant to be a collection of sad-sack stories even though some of it may leave a reader feeling that way but frame of mind is a matter of what you get used to and I've come to fairly decent terms with the life I'm here to live.  

A look around the house tonight I found 4 cans of Dinty Moore stew up in the cabinet that I remember putting there when I bought this place. Not the cans with the pull top thing, these are the ones you have to open the old fashioned way. Buying those cans of stew oddly enough was my way of tricking myself into thinking there would be dinners and plates and knives and glasses and stuff in my future and not the bags from fast food joints that have become my reality. 

Having just come out of a torrid soulful relationship when I got this place I was sure there would be another one down the road at some point and now I had plenty of room for someone else to be here. Room for another smile when I got home, laughs at dumb tv shows watched together, and another hand to hold. This was not to be and mostly by personal choice. It didn't stop me from filling the house with nice things just in case but these things I would never in a million years have bought for myself because fancy things don't do much for me. Which room would be my office and what room would be all hers, am I going to have to re-do the master bath to make it more acceptable to another, stuff like that actually went through my head.

Fifteen years later and the plates are unmoved, silverware all arranged in the drawer, and the expensive dining room table I knew someone else would love, sits having only once had a dinner on it, is now my catch-all for my still cameras and gear ready to grab and go to a shoot I may or may not have. Looking at the "best if used by" date on the cans of that stew, it reads, July 1999 (it's now 2012...)  

Dinner for one is an ironic title referencing memories I have from when my girl and I would go to Lubys and the old Colonial cafeteria style places and for whatever the reason I would zero in on someone usually an elderly person sitting at a table eating alone. As often as I could without making it obvious, I would send an employee over to their table and take their ticket and say there was an overcharge or something and they would fix it and bring it back. I don't know what they actually said, but I would have them add their lunch or dinner to my ticket and not tell them who paid. Not a huge gesture money wise but to me it was leaving them walking out the door knowing someone in that place cared about them and that they weren't in this world all alone. To this day when it's me going in a restaurant alone, it still bothers the hell out of me to see someone else especially an elderly person sitting at a table eating alone. I often wonder now if what seems like a nice gesture isn't in some way just a selfish act on my part by looking at them and seeing myself in the coming years and hoping someone will notice and care about me. 

In the image of my father that I have in my head, I hope Harry never had to eat alone..