#mummers

My Poppop is a mechanical and electrical engineer, an Enduro champ, the biggest chatterbox with waitstaff, the pirate-r of all my favorite childhood movies, a world-class malted milkshake maker, an incredible carpenter, the teller of a thousand jokes, and the best father figure anyone could ask for. He’s more comfortable under a few tons of water with a scuba tank on his back than he is on land, and he (and my Mommom!) are the reason I got bit with the travel bug so young. He got my entire family into scuba and takes any opportunity to show you his dive videos, especially the ones from Fiji. We graduated from the same university with vastly different degrees, something that delighted him. He loves his family fiercely and never looks at the camera when my Mommom is in frame, because “why would I look at the camera when I could look at her?”

Poppop passed very suddenly and very quickly one month ago tomorrow. The blow feels like it was dealt yesterday, but also a hundred years ago.

One of many things he loved were the Mummers, a Philadelphia parade tradition characterized by flamboyant costumes (the ‘Fancies’) and lively string bands. He loved music, GOD did this man love music. As he passed, my mind created a glittering, monochrome, larger-than-life-and-death Mummer brigade leader, and between that and the surreal haze of ‘he’s not here, he’s asleep in his kitchen chair back home, I can’t see all these tubes and wires’, I knew I had to draw him in one of those beautiful outfits. He’s too vibrant for total monochrome— like I said, read the last few slides for a breakdown of the color choices and iconography, you’ll learn even more about this sweet man. Neither of us are religious, but in my heart, he’s teaching the entire Black Parade how to Mummer shuffle.

Time for the OUTFIT BREAKDOWN: He’s too bright to put in black and white, so he gets green feathers for his beloved Pine Barrens, blue for the water he spent thousands of hours beneath, and purple for noble character. The whippoorwill on his medal is in honor of all the summer movie nights we paused to listen to their song outside on the deck. The gear embroidery on his shirt is for his countless hours spent in his workshop repairing movie theater speakers for his bedroom, building picture frames for the paintings I’d gift at Christmas, or helping one of his grandchildren build something for school. Down the center of the shirt are lightning bolts for both his expertise and energy, joined by a never-ending line of half hearts for both his endless love and the fact that his family will never not feel his absence.

He and Mommom bought me the iPad I drew this on, which allowed me to really start my art career. I’ll never cut a cantaloupe without thinking of the thousands of bowls of fruit salad he made for me. The smell of warm bricks will always be joined by the memory of him setting up hoses and sprinklers to make water parks for my brother and I in the summer. I’m heartbroken we never got to oil paint together. There are so many little pieces of him in what I do, what I say, what I think, how I act. There are so many things I didn’t get to tell him I remember. Maybe if I say it enough and think it enough and write it enough and cry enough, he’ll hear me.

It hurts. It hurts so much. But I’ll keep marching on.

I love you. I’ll miss you forever.

Thank you.

Thank you.