BB-8

I buried my father today.

He was in his early 70s and had recently been given a clean bill of health following a successful heart surgery, but then a short bout of COVID turned into a long bout of COVID and, about two weeks ago, he suffered a sudden heart attack and died. In fact, as far as I can tell, I posted my last post on Cohost probably minutes before he died. I got the call from my mom almost immediately afterwards.

I love my dad. I love¹ my dad for a tremendous number of reasons, but— this being the place where, in relative anonymity I try to only talk about Star Wars— also because we watched Star Wars together. He was always more of a Trek guy, to be clear— after 50 years of engineering, first electrical, then software, Montgomery Scott simply has more to offer you than Han Solo² — but he enjoyed showing me the Original Trilogy, first on VHS, rented first from the local library³ and then as father-son excursions to the re-released Special Editions in the buildup to The Phantom Menace. He had a killer Jabba the Hutt impression.⁴⁵ I’m going to miss explaining each new episode of live-action Star Wars to him five times because he couldn’t keep any of the lore details straight.⁶

I don’t think anything can prepare you for your dad dying. Oddly, not even Star Wars, despite it’s surfeit of canonical dead dads.

Anakin Skywalker, Owen Lars, Galen Erso, Bail Organa, Han Solo, Clem Andor, Dathan⁷, Jeremitt Towani, hell, even the little LEGO kids in The Freemaker Adventures are orphans, and that’s not even counting non-familial paternal relationships, like Qui-Gon Jinn or all the slightly older clones to all the slightly younger clones, etc. Most of these dads even die on screen! Its a graveyard of fathers from end to end, and my favorite thing; why wasn’t there anything there for me?

I’ve been orbiting this for a couple hours, and I think it’s because they’re, to mostly a point, figures driven by purpose, and incapable of expressing love. That is to say, dads in Star Wars are there to have causes and then for their causes to be picked up by their surviving children. If they do express love, it’s in a general, protective way, absent from the specificity of intimacy and care. Galen Erso is the closest we get to an ideal parent in Star Wars, I think, and the most he gets in the way of knowing his daughter is a plot-critical nickname and a truly dubious plan to entrust Saw Gerrera with childcare⁸. Luke buries Uncle Owen without shedding a tear⁹; and while I love and defend the Sequels with a passion, the idea that there’s any depth to Han Solo and Ben Solo’s relationship is ludicrous.¹⁰
When your dad dies, the truth is, you realize the causes are meaningless. The TV shows and movies are meaningless. The things that had meaning, that have meaning, are the moments you had with them— the conversations, the laughter, the knowledge. The small seeds he planted in your heart that have grown, the pieces of him that continue to live inside you now. 

It’s entirely ludicrous, but if there’s any image of fatherhood I can draw sustenance from now in Star Wars, its The Mandalorian. I really loved the moments in the last season where Din would put Baby Yoda in his lap and point at stars or locations on Mandalore and explain their significance. The way it takes him a while to figure Baby Yoda out, and in the process, figure himself out too— I assure you, that’s a deeply dad thing. The building a hot rod. I dunno, it keeps lining up.

I love my dad. He had an odd way of viewing things. He taught me a tremendous deal about empathy one day when he remarked about Star Wars, “Do you think their mothers miss them? Do you think they were excited to go to Stormtrooper school? “. He wouldn’t say things like this out loud, but the notion of dehumanizing someone— even a stormtrooper— upset him. That thought sticks in my head anytime I watch Star Wars now. Its odd, trying to feel compassion for a stormtrooper.¹¹

I don’t really know where this post should go. I just wanted to get something out. I love my dad. I miss him terribly. I’m glad I miss him terribly. Star Wars has shown me so many people that don’t miss their fathers at all; I’d rather have this ache than not. aa

1. I encountered this writing his eulogy this week, but— there’s a very curious thing in English, where, when you refer to feelings about the deceased, you want to put the verb into the past tense: I loved my dad. But it’s my dad that’s in the past tense, not my love. My love is active now. So I love him, not loved him.

2. None the least of which being, if you want an image of him, James Doohan in the Dyson sphere episode of The Next Generation would probably open his phone lock.

3. I haven’t been to that library in 20 years; this week I’ve driven past it five times. The funeral home his body was kept in, and where we held his visitation, is directly across the street from it. Each time I drove by, I had the same three flashes of memory: scanning the kids section for new books, circling the rotating towers of rentable VHSes by the main checkout— between the two areas was where the Garfield treasuries were kept— and finally sneaking upstairs to the teen section, where they had the Crestwood Monster books, as essential to my imagination as anything else in the world.

4. “Nishtu wongi Chewbacca… woh-hoh-hoh-hoh…”

5. In the parlance of the moment, my dad was all about the little freaks in Star Wars. I don’t think he gave much care to the story or themes, but a good muppet or goofy whatsit would tickle him. Of course he loved Baby Yoda.

6. I am pretty sure he was just watching to have something to talk about with me. Sometimes I’d watch the Bears with him. It’s called love.



7. That would be Rey’s birth father, the failed Forceless clone of Sheev Palpatine.

8. I bet Two Tubes watched Bluey with Jyn back at the Partisan base.

9. I do have more sympathy for reacting to death without crying now; shock is a hell of a thing. I absolutely get Leia comforting Luke in the wake of her home planet being annihilated— what is there for her to do? How could you hope for her mind to wrap around the enormity of what’s just occurred? Of course she comforts this dopey farm boy. That makes sense. That’s what she can reach in the moment.

10. If anything Luke winds up playing a father roll to both Kylo and Rey, but that’s beside the point.

11. Needless to say, he enjoyed Syril Karn on Andor.