Thoughts on My Dad, A Year Later

Grief May Have Stages, But It's Not A Straight Line

My father, Rich Galen.

My dad, Rich Galen, died a year ago. He’d been sick for a long time, but that didn’t make us ready for him to go. He was diagnosed with heart disease at 39, had quadruple bypass at 52, and it hounded him every day for the next 25 years.

He’d been in and out of the hospital since January of 2021, deep COVID, and the good folks at George Washington Hospital brought him back, stitched him up, and sent him home but he wasn’t the same. He’d gone in 74 and come out 84.

Anyone who’s seen a parent’s sudden or steady decline knows the experience can induce both helplessness and frustration. How many different kidney donors can back out at the last minute? Why didn’t he take better care of himself when he had the chance? How many times do we have to divine from doctors that ‘this is it’ from their diagnoses on the stages of heart and renal failure?

Rich’s father had his first heart attack at 35 and my dad told me after that it was just a waiting game. My grandfather had five more before he finally died in 1980. I see now, in the reflection of time, that my dad wasn’t going to let whatever time he had left go to waste.

His favorite place in the world was being on an airplane to go somewhere. He dropped into Hungary and Romania right after the Iron Curtain fell, helping newly formed political parties understand how to run elections. He went to India on missions of mercy. He flew to the Middle East carrying two passports because he couldn’t get out of Israel and into a Muslim country on the same visa.

In late 2003, he got a call from the White House to go to Iraq and was gone before Thanksgiving. Six months later he came back a different person. I think whatever he saw there haunted him. He’d always had a temper - legendary some old friends and colleagues would say - but what flared was an anger out of proportion to whatever the offense was. Maybe it was PTSD. Whatever we’d call it, he wrestled with it for the last 20 years of his life.

When I was a kid, my friends would ask me what my dad did. Even growing up in Fairfax County, my dad’s role as a Republican campaign guy, Capitol Hill staffer, and all around politico wasn’t the norm. My friends’ dads worked in government, say for the FAA or the Marine Corps, but all in all, those jobs made sense to 11 year old ears.

As I was thinking about him yesterday, I’d have to say my dad was a Believer. He believed in America. He believed in its people. He believed in the goodness of people. He didn’t look past the mom and her daughter at the car wash, he saw in them the best of humanity let down by the country around them.

There wasn’t a Lincoln Day Dinner speech he wouldn’t give or an RNC campaign school training he wouldn’t attend. Anything within 1,000 miles, he’d drive to. So long as he was going. We need you in Fargo, North Dakota? Great! I’ll be there, he’d say.

Believers are always over-matched by the world around them. Not everyone has the will, desire, or fortitude to be a full-time believer. But we need them now more than ever. We need people, like my dad, who are willing to put their back to the wind and protect the flickering candle that we call goodness, or humanity, or society, or whatever.

What happened to the Republican Party he came of age in, and I grew up within, broke his heart. Late in his life, he was devastated to think that he’d spent the better part of 50 years working toward something that was either a giant lie, bad enough, or didn’t matter at all, even worse.

I tried to assuage his concern - the burden many of us still carry, that we thought we were doing right by ourselves, our colleagues and our country. It was because of his role as Believer that he was so upset. My dad was many things, good and bad, but he was no cynic. He wasn’t naive to what Washington was, and the kinds of people that gathered there.

The flaw in his thinking, borne of belief, was that everyone in a position of power or influence should consider themselves privileged to have been there. To have the opportunity not just to wield authority, but to use it for good. He talked about working for then-Speaker Newt Gingrich sitting ‘in the room where it happened.’

He once shared a conversation that he and the late Tim Russert had, standing on the Speaker’s Balcony at the US Capitol watching fireworks on July 4th. They both marveled at the idea that the son of an upholsterer from Brooklyn (my dad) and the son of a garbage man from Buffalo (Tim) could end up where they were. Where else in the world was that possible?

Is it possible today? Maybe that’s what tugged so hard at my dad’s belief. That the country that allowed him to succeed was not likely to allow others like him to do the same.

Author’s Note: I’m a political nepo-baby so I don’t think it was me he was worried about.

What they don’t tell you about grief is that it’s different for everyone. For me, it comes in waves, in moments, in small things that I don’t think matter and then flatten me. I opened my laptop on a plane and saw my dad staring back at me in the reflection of a blank screen.

I tried to call my mom and dialed his number instead. I’d watch the news or see something in the political world and want to be able to talk to him. I’d have a draft of something I’ve written and want his perspective.

They also don’t tell you how a person’s life, the moment its over, becomes so logistical. They’re there one moment, the next, another patient is being moved into their bed. The are documents to file, and forms to fill out. The accounts need to be closed. The Social Security Administration needs to be informed. All of a person’s best and worst moments are suddenly Docusigns, password changes, and electronic funds transfers.

A few minutes after my dad died last year, a rabbi came into the grief room (or whatever they call the space they stick wailing family members at the hospital) to provide a little wisdom. This is a rough transcript of what he said:

“You’re in shock. You’re going to be in shock. This is normal. But don’t worry, once the shock wears off you’re going to be really upset.”

I burst out laughing. Maybe it was the wry Jewish humor. Maybe it was the absurdity of it, but in that moment, it was hilarious.

Last week my own daughter asked me what I do for work. She knows it’s politics, but wanted specifics. I tried to explain how I spend my days, but it didn’t make sense.

Now I know the answer. I’m a Believer, like my father before me.