Julio Prol RIP June 4th 1999

My father died June 4th 1999. A few days earlier Lori woke me with a start. My sister had just called telling us that my Dad had suffered a stroke and was at Lenox Hill Hospital. I was in a state of shock. It didn’t seem possible. He wasn’t that old, 74, and he seemed in good health last time I saw him. We had just spoken on the phone a few days earlier and the conversation was strained between us. I had confronted him on some issues that were between he and myself and we were to continue our conversation later but we didn’t get back to one another. For whatever reason I let it go and thought it was too hard to talk right then. Then Lori’s announcement changed all that.

My Dad’s students were notified of his being in the hospital and that it was a life threatening situation. The response they showed was overwhelming and moving. Stephen Northrope was there with the family at the hospital keeping vigil. Steve was one student in particular that had built a strong personal relationship with Julio. They had become very close and in many respects a surrogate son. There had been a whole string of these close, loyal male student/friends of Dad’s through the years. They shared a special bond with him and were there when he needed them for support and companionship. My own difficult relationship with my Dad created a need in Julio I believe for relationships with some of his male students that were very much like a father and son relationship. The kind of relationship that I never was able to fully have with him much to my great sadness and regret. I envied Steve. It didn’t seem fair. Steve and I had never actually met until then. But at that moment all I was thinking of was how much I loved my Dad and that I wanted him to come back to us and be with us. When I saw him on his hospital bed he appeared smaller than I knew him to be and very fragile. He never regained consciousness from his stroke.

All he meant to me, all the memories, all the regrets, all the great times, all the sadness and frustrations, all the calamities and heart ache, all his help and concern, all that he meant to his adoring students and others, all his great talent, his intense passion, his profound insights, his mastery and intelligence, his wit and laughter, his rage and sorrow, his gregariousness and joy, his childishness and self destruction, his love of great foods, wines and music, his bitterness and shame, his pride and perseverance, his pain and frustrations, his accomplishments and failures, his stamina and charm, his contradictions, all that he was, was there before me, and then, he was gone.

In his passing something was given over to me. There were things that were revealed. There were things I had never known about him, never with such clarity. It was as if only then was I able to know what he really meant to me, how much I was indebted to him for so many things. In his passing a kind of peace was made between us. The things we were never able to say to each other while he was alive were now possible.  I do not regret a day that came between us, no matter how hard and how difficult things were at times.