About Thankfulness

Bye, Bye Daddy: putting together the pieces of an idea

It was Black Friday, 1992, though I don't think we called the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" back then, or, if we did, it wasn't such a crazy big deal as it is now. In any case, my family celebrated Thanksgiving day with my in-laws when they were still hosting the family feast. We had done this since we were first married. It was the one holiday in my husband's family where everyone, no matter where they were and what they were doing, made a huge effort to travel to Ohio to join the Thanksgiving day feast. Our family stories for years were measured in yearly Thanksgiving day beats.
As was also usual, I called my Dad on Friday to see how his holiday went, to touch base, to chat, to hear his voice. It was evening time, and when he picked up the phone, his voice sounded funny. We had a short and sweet conversation, and when I said goodbye, he replied with an uncharacteristic "bye, bye." I hadn't told him I loved him. By the next morning he was dead; Saturday, November 28, 1992. I am thankful we had spoken the night before.

Fast-forward twenty-six years, another Thanksgiving weekend, and here I sit, like I do every post-Thanksgiving weekend, remembering and still loving and missing my Dad. That part never goes away. I had lost my mom the year before Daddy died, in 1991. Her death was sudden, too, and shocked me to the core, because I had never experienced a loss like that before. Dad's sudden death numbed me somewhere deep inside, where a part of me would move forward permanently broken.

Part of my dad's shirt holds together the other bits
and pieces pulled together to tell the story.

Luckily for me, I am an artist. I have a place to put those feelings, to let them birth out of me into the world where I (and other viewers) can contemplate the expression. It wasn't long after Dad died that I started this piece using bits of his clothing, a photo-transfer I made of an old Army picture, rubbings made in Mexico, hand dyed fabrics, and Depression-era ration tickets for food and gas transferred onto fabric. I got to tell my story and begin to heal my soul.
I have made several artworks about my Dad over the decades since he died, each time reprocessing my thoughts and feelings onto another surface, something I can hold up and examine. I call this group of artwork  my Hero Series. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to show the pieces in numerous venues, and thankful for the chance to touch and connect with a new audience each time.
I became obsessed with genealogy research after my Dad died. On a shelf in his bedroom closet, there was a stack of photographs that I had never seen. Dad's sister Carole, the genealogist on that side of the family, had sent them. He hadn't shown them to me or my siblings. That was a the beginning of a new way to heal for me. Instead of feeling like an orphan, I could literally connect myself to a larger family.

Hero 4: Bye Bye, Daddy by Gayle Pritchard. An ancient Tibetan prayer box anchors the top,
and my story is written in on the fabric as well as hung onto embellishments that hang down
or are stitched onto the surface. Over dad's Army picture, juxtaposed in strips with the
statue of David, there is a sheer veil, my representation of death.

With a chance to do some lazy-day, Thanksgiving holiday digging around on my computer, a moment of serendipity occurred. I was adding photos and scanned documents to my Ancestry family tree, when I ran across a 1949 clipping my sister had found online during a newspaper search. It had the simple heading: Airport News.

Neil Vickery, my dad, landed at this airport.
At that time, 1949, he was a barnstormer,
doing air shows around the area. 

"Hmmm, interesting", I thought. I have vivid memories of barnstormers who flew into my small hometown. We would stand in our backyard and watch in amazement as they performed tricks in the sky. I could now put my dad's face on those brave flyers.
Then I ran across a picture of dad from 1949. It is actually a photocopy of a picture of dad, and I wish I knew who has the original. In the photograph, he is standing next to his biplane. He's wearing a flight suit and, instead of his flashy Army aviation sunglasses, he has flight goggles pushed up onto his leather flying cap.
For a moment in time, I am connected to my dad in the year 1949, eight years before I was born. Two moments in time, a newspaper clipping and a photograph taken of the young flyer, fell into my lap as a gift. Both had been sitting in my computer, but I had never put them together before. Now, a little piece of my dad had been returned to me. I am so thankful.

My dad, the flyer, the barnstormer, in a picture dated 1949.