The Panda Bear on the Death of Father Panda and Franklin Roosevelt

On Monday June 4, 2012, Father Panda Bear(the father of the Panda Bear) left this world after an illness of three weeks.  He was 89 years old.   His funeral was yesterday June 7, 2012.

Father Panda was a quiet man.   He had a PhD. in physics and was a very smart and intellectual person.   He was devoted to his work in theoretical physicians and Mother Panda(the Panda Bear's mother).  The Panda Bear was his only child.    He had no grandchildren.

Father Panda was also a very good person.    He was disappointed that his scientific work did not get the attention that he felt he deserved.    Perhaps somewhat naively, both Father Panda and Mother Panda believed that all one needed to do to get ahead was to work hard and be good and what you do.  The Panda Bear believes that it is often the egotistical and self-promoting who get ahead in this world.

The Panda Bear will share with her readers the speech she gave at her father's funeral.    While the Panda Bear mentioned in that that Father Panda was a Franklin Roosevelt Democrat, she did not make to much of it because she did not want her father's funeral to become political.

Father Panda loved Franklin Roosevelt and hated Herbert Hoover.  Father Panda who lived through the Great Depression believed his family would have starved without the New Deal.   He said none of the recessions that the Panda Bear has lived through was as bad as the Great Depression where there was no such thing as a social safety net until Franklin Roosevelt put in the New Deal.   Father Panda also believed that some conservatives really felt people should starve though they did not always come out and say it.

Father Panda hated big business and the political right.

Here is the speech the Panda Bear gave in honor of her Father:

I have the difficult task about saying a few words to celebrate the life of my father.   How can anyone’s life be summarized in a few words?Instead of focusing on the biography of my father’s life and I want to focus on a few of his personal traits that should be remembered.

He was a child of the Great Depression and a Franklin Roosevelt Democrat.   He would tell me stories of people seeing people starving in the streets and people losing their money in the banks before there was the FDIC insurance.   For him (and some others in that generation) Franklin Roosevelt was their hero who saved them from the calamity of the Great Depression.

As a theoretical physicist obviously my father was a very smart person.   He was extremely informed person.   However, it should also be remembered that my father was a good, conscientious and responsible person.   He always tried to follow the moral and ethical course of action.   He was a modest and unassuming person.

He was a physicist and his work was important to him.   His tools when I was younger were pens and graph paper and as I got older it was the computer.   He liked working by himself on complex formulas.

Next to my mother the great love of his life was his Macintosh computer.

My father liked being an active and involved person.   I think he would have liked the fact that he was seen as doing very well before his final illness and that he left this world on a high note.

I would like to tell the people in this room the things he talked about after he fell and hurt his head in his final few weeks of his life.    I think it shows a lot about his character.

He was worried that he was going to die which neither me nor my mother thought he would at the time.  He said he did not want to be an invalid.   He said he was not pain.

Once when I visited my father in the hospital he was able to talk about the Russian Revolution and could identify a picture of Kerensky, who wanted a parliamentary democracy for Russia on the television screen.

He told my mother she was best thing that ever happened to him and was concerned about her welfare.   I promised my father that I would help my mother.  He worried when my mother stayed late at the hospital.   One of the last things he told my mother was that he had a nightmare that she needed something done and there was no one there to help her. 

    

I remember my last conversation with my father.   It was just after he had been transferred to the Mass General ICU.   I called the nursing station before work.   I knew my father was very sick but still did not think he would die.    The nurse said he was awake and feeling scared.   I did not go to work that day and went to see my father.

When I came to the hospital he was awake.   The television was on so we talked about different television shows.   We finally settled on a show that showed pictures of nature.   We talked about the different animals on the TV screen and at times he laughed and smiled.  I told him I was reading a book about the founding of Facebook and how it made Mark Zuckerberg not seem like a very nice person.  

 

My father reached out and kissed me a couple of times and told me he wanted me to go to Europe.   Finally he said “Panda Bear please go-I want to take a nap.”   Those were the last words he ever said to me.

May my father, Father Panda, rest in peace.