Charles J. Birmingham 1937-2012

I am very sad to say that my father passed away this week. It’s hard to put into words the variety of emotion that comes with his loss. He lived in Florida since I was a senior in high school, but fortunately, I was able to see him regularly throughout my adult life. My business career involved a lot of travel and I always managed to add a few days of personal time whenever I headed south so that I could drop in to see him. Those visits, in addition to other times when he came north to see us (especially his grandchildren) made the distance seem so much smaller.

I think the thing I liked best about our relationship was our conversation. He was a lawyer, specializing in real estate, and for the last 15 years of his career, he was Florida State Counsel for a title insurance company. As a result, he was mostly involved in cases of land fraud, which often proved to be quite interesting. Some were classic “swampland in Florida” deals and others were family squabbles or complex attempts at thievery. We could spend hours over meals talking about these shenanigans, and about politics and about family. He was always interested in whatever we were doing and loved to spend time with Robbie and the kids. In all of these talks, he was unconditionally supportive of me, of Robbie and of the kids (especially). He also had a very good sense of humor – a bit of a wise-ass actually – so now you know where I got it.

For example, last fall he told me that he couldn’t read my emails because his computer wasn’t working. When I came to see him, I sat down to see what the problem was. He said the problem was a “user error.” I turned on his PC, waiting to see the error message and it worked just fine. “Dad,” I said, “It boots up just fine, I don’t see a ‘user error’ message.” “Oh, there’s no message,” he replied, “I’m the user and I don’t know how to work the damn thing!”

Unfortunately, the last couple of years were very tough on him as his health deteriorated. In particular, his Parkinson’s Disease kept him from doing the things he enjoyed – most particularly walking his dog – and the complications of his heart surgery and a growing problem of dementia really wore on him. Then last November, he fell and broke his arm. That event began a downward cycle which my brother and I could not curtail, despite our trips to Florida to help him. In the end, those falls led to a brain hemorrhage last Friday and he passed away in hospice on Wednesday night.

While I’m sad to lose him, his health issues were robbing him of the better part of his quality of life. He often, in this last year, spoke to me about his concerns regarding the deteriorating effects of Parkinson’s and it was heart breaking to witness that decline with very little ability to help him stop it. So, in that regard, his passing means less suffering for him and for that I am thankful. I am also thankful that both Kevin and I were with him in his final days. And, in fact, his sister and niece were with us when he passed, which I hope brought him some comfort.

So, goodbye Dad. I will truly miss you but I am happy that your suffering is at an end.