December, 2021

Dad passed away on Friday Nov 5th 2021, after meeting his cohorts for his usual morning coffee and then taking his dogs Poppy and Benji for their daily walk along the Benicia waterfront at the Marina. He collapsed while walking, and was pronounced dead at the scene when the paramedics (who likely responded within 5 minutes of his going down) were unable to revive him after 30-45 minutes.

The cause of death was respiratory distress.

Dad smoked for likely ~30 years, starting around the age of 17. I recall periods where he smoked a lot, and periods where he didn’t smoke as much. He quit cold turkey, and spent the next 35 years suffering the consequences. With Arlene’s guidance he had annual checkup’s to look at his lungs; still, as he aged his breathing became more labored such that at age 80 he had inhalers scattered all around the house and car. When he collapsed he didn’t have an inhaler on his person; it was in his car.

Dad’s life could be carved up into 4 chapters: childhood, marriage & family, Joanne, and his last 10 years.

Childhood. I can only speculate; Dad never complained about his childhood, but he didn’t shower it with compliments either. I think his Dad, my Papa, was well intentioned but maybe a little emotionally distant and always distracted by – due to his early years living through the dust bowl and depression – his obsession to work and his passion for creating with his hands. A classic example is Tahoe: around 1954 Papa purchased a 99 year lease on a Forest Service lot at South Lake Tahoe, proceeded to spend many weekends building a cabin, and once finished Papa promptly sold it. So Dad’s recollection of this would be: too many long drives to Tahoe, weekends away from home and friends, and a cabin that was never utilized for family vacations.

Dad’s Mom, my Nana, was very loving and attentive; her compassion was inherited by Dad.

Late in life my Papa questioned his decision to only have one child; the motivation for that decision was (again) the difficult times of the depression and the challenges Papa had growing up (losing a father at 15, a handicapped Mom, etc). He simply wanted his child to be comfortable and happy, and having a single child presented better odds for that.

I suppose it’s different on a case by case basis, but I wonder how much of Dad’s (later in life) comfort with isolation was a by-product of growing up as an only child.

Notes from Papa’s perspective during Dad’s childhood are here.

Marriage & family. My parents met around 1959 in Napa; Dad was 18 and worked for the Vallejo school district within the landscape department. They married in 1960, unknowingly already expecting a child (Arlene) who was born in May 1961, 5 days before Dad turned 20. Another child (me) 2 years later when Dad was a month shy of 22, and a third (Diana) in 1966 when Dad was 5 days shy of 25. By then he had become an electrician, an occupation that suited his skills and one he enjoyed throughout. After Diana’s birth we moved to Napa (3528 Idylwild) so that Mom was closer to her family.

Dad would live here for 21 years until separating from my Mom and moving out in 1987.

Dad was an exceptional father, and I think he enjoyed this time immensely. He and my Mom had what I would consider to be a happy marriage; they were certainly different people, but they rarely fought, often held hands and kissed and said they love each other. Dad fathered by example: he was meticulous, organized, and decent to everyone. I was aware of this decency and wanted to please Dad by emulating his decency. He never yelled or cursed, or lost his temper, there was no drinking, and we were never grounded or punished in the usual ways. We fished, we camped, we vacationed, we went to Disneyland once (by airplane!), entertained the neighborhood with our fireworks shows, all while Dad slowly moved up the blue collar middle class spectrum. Christmas’s were huge affairs (tons of gifts under the tree), and while we did see Nana & Papa semi-regularly most holidays were spent with my much larger Mom’s family.

In April 1984, while I was in Arizona in my 2nd year of college and Arlene was living at home and getting her degree in Nursing, Diana was killed in a single car accident, running off the road asleep at the wheel after staying late at her boyfriend’s house in Santa Rosa. She was 6 weeks shy of turning 18, 2 months shy of graduating from High School at Vintage.

Things were never the same. Both my parents suffered from the loss, but they couldn’t reconcile their different grieving processes. Later my Mom speculated that Dad felt guilty about letting Diana drive to Santa Rosa that Friday night, but I never sensed that from Dad. He was stoic, ready to tolerate what life threw his way and move on the best he could. In 1987 I had graduated from College and was living in an apartment in Tucson when my Mom called, in tears, saying that Dad had left her. It didn’t surprise me, as my Mom – who likely saw herself more in Diana than in Arlene or I – was grief struck and really having a difficult time moving on, even 2+ years after the accident. I can’t judge her – it’s inconceivable how a parent can survive the loss of a child – but how my parents dealt this that loss was not in sync.

Dad, who had spent most of his working life in Martinez at Alhambra Electric, moved to an apartment in Martinez. Mom and Dad separated in February 1987.

Joanne. Dad quickly met Joanne, likely a few months after his separation, in a hotel bar (keep in mind that Dad is a young 46 years old at this point). Joanne had some medical issue that night, and was taken from the bar by ambulance but left her purse at the bar; Dad, ever the gentleman, brought it to her at the hospital.

Their first few years were rocky, and this unfortunately colored my opinion of Joanne for the worse. She was mildly involved with at least one other man, and Dad viewed this as a “challenge” which seemed inconsistent with his personality of quality over quantity. Plus, Joanne was an alcoholic; the first time I met her, at Dad’s apartment pool, she was already drunk (her tattoos didn’t help my opinion of her, either).

Following the lead of other friends, Dad and Joanne opened a franchise Mail Boxes Etc store in Benicia in the summer of 1989. For the next 20 years Dad would work off and on as an electrician, enough to maintain his SS and medical benefits, and then work at the store the rest of the time. Dad was an extrovert; he loved the social nature of the store, establishing friendships with the repeat customer’s. While he and Joanne never married, they tried briefly to live together but pretty quickly decided that neither of them wanted that, either. They were a very tight partnership, but with room for themselves.

I lived with Dad, briefly, in Martinez from December 1992-March 1993. I had returned from Europe via Australia, had no job, no money, and no clue. 3 months later I was hired at Cisco, and moved to Mountain View. My 3 months with Dad was routine: he left each morning to work with Joanne at Mail Boxes Etc; he’d come home and we would have dinner together and watch some TV. This was my first opportunity to see Dad from an adult perspective. He seemed out of character renting a house; he didn’t spend any time or money on the yard or organizing the garage. He loved Mustang’s – owned 3 1965’s, one a super clean convertible. He owned dozen’s of beer sign’s, which seemed odd to me as well. I don’t recall seeing much of Joanne; it was as if their time spent working together satisfied all their desires.

For the remainder of the 1990’s and 2000’s Dad’s routine was fairly simple. Since both of them ran the store, their time off was minimal but that seemed to suit them just fine. They might take one night trips to Reno for fun, but otherwise their social needs were satisfied just being at the store. Dad formally retired as an electrician on 12/24/04, at the age of 63.

In June 2004 Dad took a train trip to Colorado, bringing his parents to live in a facility closer to Arlene, who would be able to take better care of them. On December 4th 2004, after a fall and some time in the hospital, Nana passed away with her husband and son at her side. She was 86 years old.

Papa moved into an Assisted Living Community in Evergreen, Colorado, near Arlene, in January of 2005. With Nana gone, although he was living in the State of his youth, Papa longed to return to Vallejo. On August 1 2005 Papa moved into Merrill Gardens Retirement Home, just down the street from the house he had built on North Camino Alto, in Vallejo.

In June of 2006, Papa suffered a mild heart attack. After a week in the hospital, he returned to Merrill Gardens weak and exhausted. 2 weeks after returning to Merrill Gardens, just as his strength (and humor) were returning, Papa passed away peacefully. On the morning of July 2, 2006, nearing the age of 92, Robert Lee Johnson Jr took his last breath while enjoying breakfast in bed.

A few years prior I had taken over responsibility for Nana and Papa’s finances; none of us had a clue of their fiscal situation, but it turns out Papa – who had retired in 1976 at the young age of 62, with his final salary of $6.39 per hour resulting in a pension of about $500 per month from the Vallejo School District – never had to spend his monthly pension money, and so kept tucking it away. He lived off the cash he would earn in the neighborhood and around town, doing odd carpentry jobs (replacing windows seems to have been a common task). Thus when Papa passed away 30 years later Dad inherited not only the house but about $800,000. Stunning.

Dad had moved from Martinez (renting a house) to Vallejo in 2004; when Nana and Papa moved out of their house, the decision was for Dad to move in versus for us to sell the house. Unlike the rental, he entirely re-designed the backyard and enjoyed taking care of it. In 2011 Dad, intending to ease up on his old knees, sold his childhood home and moved to a nice single level house in Benicia where he would remain until his death 10 years later.

In March 2012, after too many years as an alcoholic, Joanne passed away from liver failure. This was difficult for Dad; he and Joanne had sold The Mail Place (after some legal battles they had dis-franchised from Mail Boxes Etc) a few years earlier, but were still spending every day together. While I didn’t see them that often, every indication is that they were extremely happy and content together right up to the end. And in the end I came to like Joanne. She was rough and tumble which didn’t suit me, but she was well intentioned and was taking good care of Dad.

His last years. Getting old is tough. At 71 Dad lost his love Joanne, the second significant relationship in his life. He was retired, with a desire to see and do things but no one to do them with. Soon after his divorce with Mom he had done the inexplicable: fell in love with dogs, miniature dachshunds in particular (with one short exception we never had dogs growing up). First was Princess (11/17/89-8/19/05), then Buddy (dates unknown), then Buster (who overlapped with Buddy, dates unknown), then Benji (who overlapped with Buster, DOB 2/15/12 and adopted by Dad on 5/31/13), then Poppy (dates unknown). Dad was walking Benji and Poppy on his last day. The paramedics confirmed that despite all the commotion they never left his side, faithful to the end.

Dad was lonely. Beginning in 2014 he fostered a dysfunctional mostly financial exploitative relationship with a much younger (and married) Thai woman who went by the name Mam; he desperately wanted her companionship and thought (incorrectly) that was something he could purchase. It was this relationship that caused Dad and I to be estranged from each other by mid-2015; I could empathize entirely with his loneliness and need for a companion, but not for his dishonesty or enabling a gambler.

Sometime after Joanne’s death he met some men who were having coffee in downtown Benicia; he would end up forming relationships – some close, some simply friendly – with around 10 men, and they would meet almost religiously each morning, every day of the year, for coffee. These were the same men he would see on his last day.

Around the same time he became enamored with drones, and slowly got into the sport which ended in 2021 with him owning 2 high end ($2,000) drones. He would drive all over the western states (into the high dessert, up the coast), flying his drone, taking video, and then editing the video (with music!) and putting it on his own YouTube page. His last drone journey in October 2021 was as entertaining as any other: in Utah, on a dirt road miles from anywhere, he crashed his drone and in the process of retrieving it he lost his car keys. With no cell coverage he waited until a few friendly men who happened by brought him back into town. A few days later, after having his car towed into town and his spare key’s over night expressed to him, he was back in Benicia where he…found his lost keys, stuck in the side of seat.

While his coffee friends were retired with lots of time on their hands (some were still married, some were widows), most preferred to live vicariously through Dad rather than join him on an adventure. Dad would do day trips with Billy to try out new wines, or 1-2 day trips with Ken, but otherwise he was on his own with his dogs for 10-14 days, wandering mother nature and filming her exploits.

In late 2017 a woman, walking past the coffee group, caught Dad’s attention. He asked Debi out to lunch, and 6 weeks later (January 2018) they were married. However, and so very unfortunately, there were too many external factors (most of which I’m not truly aware of) going against them. Soon after marrying, Debi’s Mom moved in with them, then her wayward daughter. This was more than Dad had bargained for, and by the end of 2018 Dad was solo again. He and Debi tried once more in 2020, but it wasn’t going to succeed. While still remaining close and having deep feelings for each other, they formally divorced in July 2021.

After he passed, Arlene and I got a sense of who he was both by meeting friends he made down at the Benicia Marina, as well as by looking at his text strings (however inappropriate that might sound). He was generous with his time and money; he was supportive of everyone; he was good about initiating and keeping contact; and he was best at entertaining, either with drone footage or stories or pictures of his travels, as well as his GIF jokes.

His last year, 2021, was likely tough. He was a man with compromised lungs living through an air borne viral pandemic. His breathing issues were exacerbated after a trip to Arizona in April 2021. He was dealing with his loneliness, his desire for a companion, and his acceptance of not having worked out his relationship with Debi. As an only child he was comfortable with solitude, but it wasn’t his ideal choice.

Post mortum.  For what I would say are two uncomplicated guys, my relationship with Dad was diametrically opposed. At first, as a boy growing up, I loved and worshiped and was extremely proud of Dad. He was engaging and present and hands on. Our second stage seemed to begin when I left for college. Dad became a bit remote, not really motivated to participate in my life. We always got along, but it seemed…superficial. For example:

– I was in Arizona for 7 years, 4 in college and 3 after. With the exception of dropping me off with Mom when I started college, he never visited me in Arizona.
– I was in Europe for 3 years; Dad never visited, or even had a desire to see Europe
– Upon my return to California (and after having lived with Dad for 3 months), I lived in Mountain View (1 year), San Francisco (18 months), and Los Gatos (2 years). He never visited me once.
– When told of Andrea’s and my pending marriage in Germany, he indicated he wouldn’t be able to make it (Joanna, to her credit, made sure they did make it).
– During the 24 years we lived in Tahoe before his passing, he visited only 5 times: twice were due to me asking him for assistance around the house (he never hesitated if you asked for help working with his hands); once was at Christmas when he had no other plans; once was with Arlene when Andrea and I were away riding bikes in Oregon; and the last time was just for a day at Annika’s High School graduation.

Over the years when I mentioned we would be in the Bay Area, he aways expressed interest in seeing us – but it was still slightly indifferent. As if, “great” if you make it and “I understand” if you don’t. When Annika was very young I appreciated his flexibility and lack of pressure, but after a while I wondered how badly he wanted to see any of us. This feeling was exacerbated when I learned, years later, how often he and Joanne would cruise up to Reno for a night. He never – not once – called and suggested meeting in Truckee, or in Reno, for a meal or to see his grand daughters.

I’ve wondered over the years if this was partially due to our being two very different people. I went to college, and while Dad didn’t he was smart enough to have gone but he took more pride in (and generally respected more) working with his hands (and mind), versus just working with his mind. Whereas I traveled extensively for work and lived in Europe for 3 years; Dad loved to travel, but by car only. I don’t see these as issues at all, I just wonder if it caused him problems comprehending me and my desires and reality.

But at the same time, he acted similarly with Arlene. She lived in Florida for a few years, but Dad never visited. She lived in Chicago, and Dad visited after sufficient pressure from Arlene to visit his first grandchild (Jake). Arlene lived in Napa for 3 years, and didn’t see him all that often. Arlene lived on Kodiak island for 3 years, and Dad never visited. She moved to Colorado where she remains to this day, and he did visit more than he did in Tahoe but still not all that often – and I wonder if many of his visits were due to Arlene insisting he come, whereas I (and certainly Andrea) never did this.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give him a 9+ for parenting, but a 5 (or less) for grand parenting. It just didn’t seem to be a need or priority for him.