Blame it on Rio

 

It is Sunday June 17, 2001, Father’s Day, and I am standing with my father and a group of people on the pebbled beach of Skilak Lake, Alaska.  The weather is cool with a silky breeze, sunny skies with only a few puffy white clouds transiting above us as if they were late for an appointment.  The lake is a mirror, flat and unbroken with only a large inflatable motor boat maring its pristene surface. Just beyond where we are standing a brook bounces overs rocks on its way into the lake.  Off in the distance I can see the terminal moraine of the Skilak glacier and beyond it the snow covered peaks of the Chugach Range.

A postcard perfect day…in a perfect postcard setting: The type of day that I had thought of when I had told my father that I wanted to go with him to Alaska nearly nine months before.

We were all listening to our guide. He looks to me the same way Grizzly Adams would have looked if he had been outfitted by the Cabela catalogue. He is bearded, broad, and has a gentle nature about him. And like many of the folks who work at this camp we are staying at this is not his full time work. He spends most of the year teaching biology to high school students in Washington State and he is addressing us as if we are his students and an exam is looming.  In fact, what we are doing is preparing for a day long hike up the south side of the lake to the foot of the Harding Ice Shelf

The trail, he tells us, extends throught a national wilderness area. What this means is that the trail is cut once a year and that all the flora and fauna are protected. You are not allowed to pick things, collect samples or even move a tree limb if it falls across a trail. The fines, he states, for breaking the rules are extreme and strongly suggests that we do not break them. He pauses for emphasis and then begins to describe the trip.

“We will be traveling through three distinct climate zones…” His tone and cadence produced in me much the same reaction that my high school science teacher had generated when he lectured on thermodynamics. My mind drifted.

The summer of 2000 had been a busy one for me.  I had new responsibilities at work which had kept my Executive Platinum Status at American Airlines safe for another year. My life outside of work had been of full of moving into a new apartment and trying to turn it into a home.  Combine the above, with the fact that while I lived in NYC, my parents lived 20 miles away in the Jersey suburbs. It meant that even though I talked to my parents nearly every day, I had not seen them in months.

So, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I pulled into my parent’s driveway early in August. I had missed them, and as for many people, the feeling of coming home to the house you grew up is a singular one.  The adult and complicated thoughts and emotions that define your everyday adult life seem to fade. Memories of childhood….street baseball, first kisses, and long summer nights….remind you of times when happiness and contentment were easier to define.  Fears of an uncertain world are replaced with the certainty and absoluteness of a parents love. You suspend your need to be an adult and, at least for a short while, can enjoy the feeling of being a child a little longer.

And it was with the enthusiasm of a child that I bounded up the stairs to the deck in my parents backyard. As the deck is directly adjacent to my parent’s kitchen I had hoped to surprise them at the kitchen table.  But as luck would have it my father was on the back deck asleep. He was wearing his summer uniform of a dark blue LaCoste shirt, khaki camp shorts that are several inches short of being instyle and only inch or so shorter than being imodest,  a slouch hat, and gold Ray Ban Aviators.  My father, always the good host, would normally rise to greet any guests especially his children, even if he was asleep. Today was different. He did not bother to get up. Instead, he just pulled himself up on the handles of the chez and said hello.

The father I saw there was not the father I remembered. My father is a big man 6’ 2. He is a man who has a robust appetite that is only kept in check by the vanity of wanting to look his best. The father I remembered was strong, active and vibrant.

The man in the chez lounge was only a shell of that man. He was gaunt and thin having lost at least 25 lbs since I had seen him last. His face was pulled tight and he looked uncomfortable in his skin…as if he could never find a position that made his body feel comfortable. And he looked tired, as if were effort just to stay up for the few seconds it took to greet us.

I said: “Hey Pops.”

“Pablo…hey hey how are you.” He managed to blurt out with the froggy voice of just awakening.

We gave each other kisses and hugs and he didn’t feel as strong as I remember. Those broad shoulders seemed some how frail. And he smelled different…not badly…just different. And I can remember thinking “What the fuck is going on here.” Clearly my father was ill and just as clearly this had been going on for a while and yet no one had bothered to let me know….WTF.

My father could clearly tell what I was thinking. He, much to my chagrin, has been able to read my mind for as long as I could remember. So he said “What do you think of my new diet?”

I replied “You look great old man. What is your secret?”

He explained, in the clipped voice he used to lecture his students at Columbia,  that for the past few months something odd had been happening to him that whenever he ate his body became very umcomfortable and when he explained this to his physician he prescribed an anti GERD medication and while it helped a bit, the symptoms had not gone away. He told me that the lack of eating had caused him to be tired all the time.

When I asked him what he was planning on doing about this he told me that I sounded just like my mother and that he was going to go to the Dr. in a few weeks so there was nothing to worry about now.

When I suggested that perhaps seeing a Dr. a little sooner would be a good idea. He just laughed and changed the subject. It was not that my father was not concerned about his health. He was. It was written all over his face. Instead, it was his way of taking the burden of worrying and concern away from me. It was his way of trying to protect me and yet at this moment my most precious wish was to protect him.

The guide was talking about bears and it was enough to snap me back to the present. Only the night before I was reading a book in which their was a description  describing in great detail how a man in Homer Alaska had been attacked by a bear even after he put five .44 caliber slugs into him. It reminded me that humans are not neccessairly the top of the food chain here and that I should probably pay attention to this part of the lecture. Our guide was telling us that there was a small but real chance that would run into bears on our hike as the trail was like a bear superhighway through the woods and that if we did that he would do his best to shoo the bear away.

A woman, who appeared to be more Neiman Marcus than Orvis, raised her hands and asked “What if he doesn’t shoo away.”

“Then we will wait until he does.”

“But what if he becomes aggressive?”

“The chances of that are small but if he does make aggressive moves then I will try to draw him off while the rest of you would be well advised to find a tree nearby to climb it.” He paused a second for emphasis, he then added “Folks, there is really nothing to worry about it if we follow the basic rules. Stay on the trail. Place any trash you have in the ziplock bags we have given you as bear’s have an extremely acute sense of smell, and bears are very aggressive when it comes to food….any more questions before we get on the way?”

There were none so he yelled “We leave in five minutes. Don’t forget to Deet up!”

I turned to my Dad and said “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here with you?”

“No” he grumphed “You should go…One of us should go it sounds like a great hike.”

I could not help but hear the deep dissapointment in his voice. My whole life with my father has been one of walks in the woods. In fact, my favorite picture of us, and one that I keep atop my bureau, is of my brother at about age 2 and me at about 1 at a pebbled stream near Troy New York. I am sitting on my father’s shoulders as my brothers wanders nearby.  I love the photograph because it reminds me of all the walks in the woods I went on with my father.  Whether it was just for a walk, or building minnow traps in streams, or looking for ferns he wanted to plant in our garden, it was time that he loved to spend with his children and that we love to spend with him.  As I grew older, and probably read too much, I began to think of these woodland jaunts we would take as wonderful metaphors for fatherhood…how a parent is always trying to help  child find the right path, give him survival skills to live in an untamed world…

Beyond the metaphor, these walks always described my father the best. He was active, curious, and engaged. When you were with my Dad, you never felt that any harm could come to you. The walks were also a great mystery to me. I always wondered, but never asked, how does a boy from the inner city of Vienna get to love the woods and the outdoors as much as he did?

Had it been any other time in my father’s life there would have been no question about him climbing to the top of this mountain with me. He would have done it with joy and likely beat me to the top of the mountain much to my chagrin. However it was equally without any doubt that he could not make the trip today. If I had any question about that it had been resolved the night before.

The camp we were staying in is best described as luxury rustic. It was run by a travel outfit called Alaksa Adventure Outfitters who made a living selling adventure travel to the Orvis adventurer. The folks like my father and me who want to see the wilderness but don’t neccessairly want to pitch a tent or build our own slit trenches.  Our encampment consisted of a combination of cabins, small log rooms with small porches with rocking chairs, half tents: that is canvas tents that were built on concrete platforms with a partial wood wall; a concrete bath house and a lodge house where meetings and surprising good gourmet meals were served.

More surprising than the epicure being served was that the owners of the camp had built a wood fired sauna. Our guides had told us after dinner on the first night that they usually heated up the sauna after the evening meal and that it, combined with quick dips in the glacier fed lake were an excellent remedy for mosquito’s bites. My father and I both had fed these insects amply on our way down river and were more than willing to try any remedy that would relieve the discomfort and itching that the bites had caused us. So, shortly after dinner we changed into our bathing suits and headed down to the sauna.

Once in side the hot box we both found benches on which to lie. It was extremely warm and before too long I had worked up an excellent sweat. My original intent had been to tough it out with my father and see if I could stay in the sauna as long as he did but when I looked over at him he looked as if he could have spent the night there so I decided to take a dip in the lake to cool myself down. The water was as frigid as the sauna had been hot…it could not have been much above 40 degrees and the bottom was not sandy but lined with irregularly shaped rocks so wading in gracefully was not an option. Intsead I sort of hip hopped into the deeper water until I could dive into the water without scraping my chest.

I returned to the sauna shivering and anxious for its heat. My father on the other hand was on his way out the door. He asked how the water was I responded by saying that I had glasses of ice water that were warmer and then I warned him about the rocks at the bottom of the lake. Instead of sitting down after he left, I watched his progress into the water through a porthole in the sauna’s door. I wanted to see his reaction as his feet hit the water… What I saw through the glass was an older man, who seemed to have trouble with his feet shuffle into the water, loose his balance, fall and then struggle to get up.

And while I knew from personal experience that the footing was difficult I did not expect my strong father to falter and fall, nor to see him struggle to get up. Even though he had been through an awful lot over the past year, and demonstrated in no uncertain terms his fragility if not his mortality, his renewed health had somehow convinced me that my strong father of old had returned. His struggles in the water had demonstrated to me vividly that the man my father had once been was no longer. That he had been replaced by a different man. One that I needed to get to know.

What is more I knew I had changed too. Instead of rushing to my father’s aid, I just stood there and watched. Not because I did not want to help him, I did, but I also knew that by going to him and trying to help would have embarassed and humilated him. He still had the need to be the strong Dad that he had always been and I had no desire to rob him of that. It made me realize most of all that our relationship had changed. That now I would begin taking care of him just as he had taken care of me all my life.

So it was with that knowledge that I went into woods that Father’s Day. Just before I dissapeared into the trees, I turned and saw him stading there watching us. He waved and I sensed, more than saw, his sadness but as he had taught me to all of my life I put on a brave face, waved energetically and trekked into the Alaskan forest.

Two things hit you almost immediately upon entering those woods. One is that it is quite a bit warmer than open ground. So much so in fact that you are tempted to remove your jacket which may or may not be a mistake as the second thing you notice is mosquitos. No matter the amount of Deet you apply they swarm you the minute you hit the woods with a ferocity that is reminiscent of Pirahna. But they warn you not to apply Deet to your face as it may cause an allergic reaction so within seconds of entering the woods those vicious insects had turned my head into a pin cushion. Luckily, I had come prepared and reached into my bag and pulled out a mosquito head net that I secured with my baseball cap. Now while the world would look as if I was sitting behind the screen at Fenway, at least I would not need a transfusion at the end of the hike.

The canopy of the forest was beautiful. High above our head, its few open areas allowed streams of light to illuminate our surroundings as if we were walking through a Renisance painting depicting divine providence. The trail was clearly marked and our pace reasonable enough so that it was quite easy to keep up. This combined with the heat, and my pixalated view of my surroundings allowed me to slip back into my thoughts quite easily.

It is a miserably hot afternoon in August in a way that only New York City can produce them. That is, in addition to the hazy, hot and humid you might find anywhere there is an element of grit that burrows into your clothing and skin like a parasite. I am in the back of cab heading through the west village on my way to visit my parents and while the air conditioning in the cab is working none of it seems to making it through the pexiglass and metal partition that  separates me from the driver. As a consequence, I am drenched as I emerge from the back of the cab and head into the building my parents maintain a pied e terre.

I had received a phone call from my sister about a half hour earlier letting me know that they she and my parents were heading here after my father’s afternoon of tests at Columbia Presbatirian Hospital. My father had finally seen a doctor the previous week and while preliminary tests had shown nothing his physician had palpited a large mass deep in his abdomen. He had ordered further tests. The studies that they had done today were supposed to give us some answers as to what might be happening to him. And while none of us said anything to each other about the possible diagnosis, the presence of the mass and the tests all drew us to one conclusion: my father had cancer.

Our unspoken fears and the tenision of not knowing what bomb would blow up next had turned us grim face and determined. It also provoked the desire in my mother, sister and me to do anything to help  my father lick whatever it was he was suffering from in the way that suited our little family best : equal parts humor, nostalgia, and growling at each other.

The air conditioning was blessedly on when I entered the apartment. It was a studio that my sister had rented for years. When the simultaneous blessings of my sister getting married and moving to a new apartment had coincided with the building going condo my parents had bought the place so that my father would not have to commute home every night from Columbia and my mother could have  a base of operations when she was doing work in New York City.

As I entered I could see that my Dad had parked himself on the day bed that doubled as a couch. He was sprawled across it diagnoly his head resting on cushions and pillows that my sister and mother had no doubt propped him up on.

I walked across the room and sat in a chair directly opposite him. As I sat down, my sister decided to crack wise on me, and said something to the effect that it looked like I had run through a sprinkler before I got here. Normally, I would have come up with some clever witty reparte such as “Well at least it doesn’t look like I just french kissed an electrical outlet” but today I was too focused on my father and his illness to bother. Instead, I looked at my Dad and asked him how his tests went.

He proceeded to give me a very scientific explanation of the tests he had undergone that afternoon. I understood. Long before this day I had come to the understanding that one of the reasons that my father had become a scientist was to help explain an irrational world in a logical way. Considering what he had been through in his life it is something that I could completely understand. However, there were times like these that I wished that he would forego the scientific and provide me with the emotional.

Perhaps it was his long unemotional, emotional response to my question. Or perhaps it was the worried looks and frenetic behavior of my mother and my sister. Maybe it was the oppressive heat and grit of New York in August or my own roller coaster of emotions that had begun three weeks earlier when I realized that my father was sick. Whatever it was , I suddenly was struck with the realization that my father may not survive this illness no one had yet defined. It was as if someone had stuck an icicle down my trachea. I was chilled to the core and choking on my own emotions. I had only one thought running through my consciousness: “ I am not ready to lose my father right now…I am just not ready.”

I could feel a sob ready to come gagging out of throat and tears welling up. I didn’t want to impose my emotions on anyone else in the room, least of all my father, so for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me, I got up and walked across the room , sat down by father’s feet and began to massage them. He looked down at me and we both exchanged a glance, and then quickly  averted our eyes, both afraid of what might come up if we held the glance any longer. Instead, he just put his hand on my head and said “You’re a good son.” And since no one could see my face I cried.

As I rubbed his feet and tried to hide my tears, I also tried to hide my panic. It felt as if my father had given up…that this was one battle that he felt he could not win. That he was willing to slip silently into the good night. And it scared me but it also motivated me. I racked my brain about what I could say to him to help him get over this hump of not knowing what he was battling and the exhaustion that the disease had delivered to him.

I said him “Dad, you have to get better. Who else will get to Alaska with me.” While my father and I had talked of going to Alaska many times for all the reaons Harry Chapin had sung about we had never managed to plan the trip.

I said “When you get better, the minute you get back on your feet, we will go to Alaska. Planning the trip is something that you can do while you are recuperating.” I looked up at him, and while he said nothing I saw him smile and I took it as a sign that he heard me and perhaps, just perhaps, it was the carrot that would help him keeping pushing on.

Emboldened by his response, I continued “Do you remember Dad all those walks in the woods you took with David and I? Do you remember how after a while he and I would get tired and start to whine about not be able to make it back. Do you remember what you used to say to us….”

I looked up at him and said “You used to tell us “Rothkopfs never give up.” So Dad, remember,  Rothkopfs never give up…..

After several hours of hiking the trail emerges from the woods onto the tundra. Despite it being the middle of June there are still large deep patches of snow that we need to climb through. Some are quite deep and climbing through them is a four limb operation.  Beyond the snow, on a small plateau, is a rock field no doubt left there by now retreated glaciers. They are our final destination on the uphill part of this hike and climbing towards them I become fascinated by the way walking on tundra feels which is similar to walking on partially dried sponges. There is a crunch followed by a light spring. I know it is something that would delight my father and I make a mental note to tell him all about it.

When we reach the rocks many of my fellow hikers cast off their day packs and use them as a pillow. They are exhausted from the two hour climb and need to catch their breath. I don’t feel that way because for the last two months I have been training to run a marathon. I break out my box lunch and greedily wolf down its contents of a sandwhich, apple, and super delicious chocolate chip cookie.

As I eat I stare out at my surroundings which are as beautiful as any place I have ever seen. Below me is Skilak Lake, the size of Manhattan, its waters grey blue color and opalascent from its glacier origins. To my left the Chugach range raw and jagged, its snow covered peaks scraping the sky like a primitive comb. To my right, is the densly forested coastal plain that leads to Anchorage and the ocean beyond. In front of me, on the cusp of the horizon, is a snow capped peak that I can not identify so I ask my guide. He stares for a while, checks his compass heading  and says “It is Denali.”

“How far away is that?”

“Has to be over 200 miles as the crows flies.” And laughingly adds, “You can see a lot farther with out any pollution.”

Involuntary, his comments makes me inhale and the air smells sweet and clean like sheets do after washing and hanging on line to dry. At this point, the hike, the food, and my surroundings all conspire against me and suddenly I am very tired and decide I need a nap before we begin our descent. I pull a fleece out of my pack, put it on, tuck the pack under my neck, pull the baseball cap over my face and close my eyes. And just like that I am asleep.

I am on the Eastern Spur of the New Jersey Turnpike.  It is early September, and very hot. The sun is pouring through the windows of my parents Jeep Grand Cherokee and is making the air conditioning work extra hard. Traffic has come to a stand still, a fuel truck has caught fire somewhere and the radio has told us that we are caught up in one of the largest traffic jams of the year. Next to me, on the passenger side, my father is sleeping fitfully…he keeps moving and adjusting himself so that he can find a comfortable position. My mother is in the back seat. She is silent and deep within her own thoughts as am I. It had been that sort of a day.

I had met my parents a few hours earlier at Columbia Presbtyrian.  We were there to check my father in as his surgeon had scheduled a surgery for the next day. We had still not received a diagnosis but he wanted to perform exploratory surgery. When asked what the prognosis was the Dr. had coldly asked my father whether or not he had his affairs in order. Things looked very grim and all of us had mastered putting on a happy face while internally we fought back the twin demons of fear and despair.

We took my father to the registration desk. There, much to our surprise and somewhat to our chagrin, we were told that my father’s surgery had been cancelled for the next day and instead we needed to head up to his surgeon’s office. He needed to speak to us.

He kept us waiting in his office for a long time and none of us had very much to say to each other. None of us knew what was happening and while the surgery he was scheduled to have was scary…it included the likely removal of one of his kidney’s and massive blood loss…to me the fear of not doing anything and not knowing anything was far worse. So I busied myself by examing back issues of Time Magazine and silently fuming that the Dr. had the audacity to keep us waiting so long. Didn’t they know how sick my father was? Didn’t  he know how difficult it was for us to sit and wait when all we really wanted was some forward movement….some action that would move us to the known from the unknown…some action that would allow us to move to healing from watching my Dad seemingly slip away.

When the nurse called my father and mother into the Drs exam room I was left by myself so I tried to busy myself with my new Blackberry but  couldn’t concentrate on the emails that made up so much of my daily life. Somehow they seemed far less meanifull and consequential that they had just a few weeks earlier. I had already had flipped through all the magazines worth reading so I just sat there and did the only thing I could think to do. I prayed

A few minutes later, my parents emerged from the Dr’s office looking  ashen face and shaken. When I asked my mother what was up, she explained that the surgeon had cancelled the surgery. They had discovered the cause of the mass in my father’s gut and that it was inoperable. That my father had lymphoma and that another physician needed to be contacted so that they could examine him and prescribe a course of treatment. Worse, the earliest appointment we could make with his oncologist was nearly two weeks away. We had left the hospital confused and upset. None of us knew what Lymphoma meant. We just knew that instead of moving forward we are again at a standstill and that it would be weeks before my father would get any help with his struggle.

Traffic had just begun to inch forward again when my father began to mutter in his sleep. I thought  I had turned the radio’s volume up too loud so I turned down the sound only to hear my father say “I don’t want to die” as I leaned over the dial. I looked in the rear view mirror to see if my mother had heard him speak and it was clear from the stricken expression on her face that she had.

I squared myself so that I was staring directly ahead at the road.  I didn’t know what to say or for that matter how to feel. Both my mother and I had heard the fear and despair in my father’s voice. This coming from a man who I had only heard cry once….at his mother funeral…this coming from the man who I never known to be fearful of anything…for christ sakes he had survived Krsytalnacht and the Nazi’s before immigrating to the States and then he had gone back and fought them as an artillery officer with the Blue Devils in northern Italy. My pops was scared and I had nothing to give to him. Nothing to say that would make him feel better. And it made me feel like a failure that this man who had given me everything he could and yet I did not have a clue on how to comfort him now that he needed me.

We drove in complete silence for a while neither my mother or me knowing what to say to each other. Instead my father’s words just hung over us like smoke at a bar. Eventually, traffic began to move again and before too long we were driving through Summit. While we were passing the Junior High School, I heard my mother begin to cry in the back seat.  She blurted out “ Paul, I have never been alone. I went from my father’s house to your father’s house. I don’t know what I will do if he dies….I don’t know what I will do…”

I reached back and grabbed her hand and said “Mom, he’s not going to die….we won’t let that happen…..but no matter what happens I promise you I will never let you be alone. Not on my watch…you will always have a place with me. Always.”

When we arrived at my parent’s house, we had an hour or so before my mother needed to drive me to the train station for the ride back into the city.  So we scraped together some soup and sandwiches and ate and made small talk until it was time to go. As I walking out the door, I went to my father who was sitting in his chair at the head of the kitchen table, and kissed him on top of his head and whispered into his ear “Dad, don’t forget. Rothkopf’s never give up.”

And he didn’t.

We had almost made it all the way down the mountain to the trail head when our guide called for us to stop. I was standing right behind him and I saw him looking all around as if he was trying to spot something. There was a look of deep concern on his face so I whispered “What is up.”

He pointed to the middle of the trail and replied “You see that” pointing to a large steaming brown mound in the middle of the trail, “That was not there we went up the trail this morning and it is bear scat and its very fresh. But don’t worry, he doesn’t seem to be around. I just wanted to make sure.”

I paused for a second and then asked “Do you think the Ranger’s will mind if I took a sample of it?”

He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face and said “Sure…..but why.”

I replied “Well it is Father’s Day and I haven’t gotten my father a father’s day present….”

He laughed and said go for it. So I went over to the pile and using some card board from our box lunch as a tool and a zip lock bag as a receptical,  proceeded to collect a large sample of bear scat.

When we got back to the camp, I found my father sitting on an Adirondack chair on a bit of lawn overlooking the lake reading.  He looked up as I approached and asked how the trip was. I replied “It was great. You would have loved it but more importantly I answered a question that has plagued mankind for generations.”

“Really” he said with surprise “What is that?”

So, I reached into my backpack and pulled out my carefully collected sample of bear poo and handed it to him. He looked at, held the baggie up  to the sunlight, smiled with the recognition of what it was, and began to laugh and said. “So bears really do shit in the woods.”

With a wide grin on my face I asked him “So what do you think Pops.”

He looked at me with a mock serious look on his face and replied in his clipped professorial tone  “The most appropriate Father’s Day present I have ever received.”

 

 

Have you ever not realized that you have lost something until you found it again?

 

In 1977 I was a sophomore at Syracuse University. Trying to fulfill an academic requirement for my liberal arts degree I decided to take Art History 101. I heard that it was pretty much a gut course and that I would be able to ace it with out much problem. At the time, I was a pre-med student and had three science classes to deal with so this seemed like a pretty good idea to me. As it turned out it was a good choice. I ending up loving the course.

 

The course was held in Huntington Hall in a very large lecture hall on Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30 AM.  I was an early bird even then, so it was my second class of the day and I can remember distinctly always stopping and getting a large coffee and a bagel with butter before each class. I would sit in class, listen to the lecture, watch the slides roll by, and eat my breakfast all the while trying to take notes.

 

The class was large, perhaps 200 or so people but like everything else in life a pattern soon emerged. People like sitting with their friends. They feel comfortable sitting in the same seats. And, I was a creature of habit like everyone else. I would usually sit about 1/3 down from the entrance to the room, which was in the back, on the right hand side on the aisle. Close enough to see and hear well yet far enough back that I could bolt if I needed to.

 

Pretty much from the very beginning two very cute girls sat behind me. (How they could see beyond my Afro I will never know.) They clearly knew each other quite well as they would always walk into class together, leave together and talk to each other through out the class. Their chatting was not an indication that they were bad students. They weren’t. They took copious notes. They were just as comfortable with each other and their conversations reflected it.

 

You get to know people pretty well when you hear their conversations week after week. And these two it was clear had know each other for a long time. They talked about everything from their hometown, to high school friends, their boyfriends, and they laughed a lot.  You know how these things worked in college,  pretty soon you get drawn into a conversation as if by some gravitational pool. And before too long, you get to be friendly, and then you get to be real friends.

 

Their names were Debra Adelstein and Lisa Vigdor. They came from Rochester New York and had been friends, best friends, since they were freshman in High School. They were bright and attractive, often funny, and a joy to hang around. We became study partners where they helped me get an A but more importantly they made studying fun. Eventually, we became real friends.

 

Lisa was about 5’4” with dark brown curly hair. She had an a great figure but was so modest that she rarely showed it off hiding it behind overalls and flannel shirts. She had a serious boyfriend, whom she knew she would marry, who went to another school. She was also smart enough to know that marriage was going to be a long time so she made sure that she found companionship at Syracuse as well.

 

Debbie was not quite as attractive as Lisa. She was taller, with a long neck, dark blonde hair and green eyes. She was smart and driven and always seem to know what direction she was going in. Unlike Lisa, she was always, to use my mother’s term, put together. For what ever the reason Debbie always had a hard time hold onto relationships.

 

I could probably murder a lot of defenseless trees by telling you all of the things that we did together but I think it would be easier on my fingers and perhaps your ears if I told you my fondest memory of this relationship.

 

I changed my major my final year at Syracuse and as a consequence had to take 18 credits, or one more course than the norm both semesters to graduate on time. I had also made a deal with my parents that year. If they paid for tuition and room and board I would take care of the rest. Considering that I had a car and all that entails and was trying to date women in necessitated that I work about 30 hours a week. My schedule sort of looked like this:

 

8-12 classes

12-6 work at the Rathskeller

6:30-10:00 Studying at Bird Library.

 

After I finished at the Library, I would usually drive my Orange 1972 VW Superbeatle home. But Debbie and Lisa lived just down the street from me I would usually find myself on their door stop. Our routine was pretty much the same. I would come and sit on their couch. Someone would roll a joint, or pull out a bong, and we would talk, listen to music and play backgammon until the wee hours of the morning.

 

Two things stand out from those sessions. First, the music….the girls had a major obsession with Joan Armatrading. The song Love and Affection was always sung aloud especially after the consumables. Second, Debbie did something that nobody had ever done before. She asked me how my day was and wouldn’t let it go until I had given her a response that was significantly better than Ok. She really wanted to know and thinking back on it nearly 30 years later I am still touched by that thought.

 

It probably is good to note here that Debbie and I never slept with each other, dated or had a relationship more than a special friendship. We talked about it from time to time but always came to the conclusion that it was not going to be like that for us but the thought was usually with us like a silent guest at a party.

 

After graduation we went our separate ways but stayed in touch. I went to New York to start a career and Debbie went to graduate school and became a journalist. First in Louisville and then in Washington DC. We would see each other a couple of time a year, and talk on the phone often. It was always like starting a conversation in the middle and never quite finishing it.

 

Eventually, I got married. And then I got divorced. And then I got depressed.

 

I called Debbie on the phone and I said “Look I am going to go wacko unless I get out of town and just go somewhere and play for a week. I got a bunch of miles for airtravel. I have hotel points. Come with me to Cancun. We will have fun.”

 

Deb’s response was “How would be going….would we be a couple or are we just going to be friends.” Because I was not then nor am I now too bright I didn’t understand why she was asking the question and I said “Of course as friends…to be honest I don’t think I could handle anything else to well.”

 

Somehow I convinced her that to come with me. It was signally the worst trip I was ever on. I was depressed and wanted to just get away from the darkness that brings for awhile. I wanted to eat, drink and be merry. I did not want to have serious conversations nor really understand what I was going through. I certainly did not want to start a relationship with anyone. I especially did not want with Debbie whom I had decided long ago was going to be a good friend and nothing more. Unfortunately, Debbie wanted to discuss my bleakness at great lengths. She also wanted us to have a relationship with me. She did not want to eat drink and be merry.

 

We both left that trip with scars. And from time to time I would miss her and call her on  the phone but the conversations were never that good or that much fun, and eventually we stopped calling each other. Overtime I learned from mutual friends, she had married, started a family and was very happy and I was happy for her.

 

Right after labor day I started receiving calls on my cell from a 301 (Maryland) area code. I have a policy of never picking a phone call unless I know who it is from. I figure that why god invented voice mail. (Note: There is one exception to this rule known as the Kristin exemption which is that if the phone call is from Massachusetts I always pick it up in the hopes it might be you!) The odd thing was they never left a message and no one I know lives in Maryland. Yesterday they finally left a message saying that “If I wanted to make it a great day, I should call back this number.” So I did and it was someones home number and I left a message…I had a suspicion but….

 

This morning the 301 number called again and the person said “Do you know who this is?” and I said “Of course I do. Its Debbie Adelstein.” And proceeded to talk to each other for over an hour like we had left off in the middle of the conversation.  We forgave each other for our bad trip…my bad place in the world…her expectations from me and we go off the phones friends again.

 

When I got off the phone with her I realized how blessed a person I am. How over the course of my life that I have been able to make so many friends. People who honestly care about me and my life and my happiness. People who miss the bond we have together when it is absent.

 

I also realized that Debbie was a friendship that was absent from life for over 15 years and that I didn’t even realize that I had missed it until it found me. It made me wonder what other things have disappeared from my life that if I found them or they found me, would I realize that I miss.

 

Dawn was breaking over the Hudson. The giant grey brown snake that slithers between the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the Palisades of New Jersey was shedding its night skin and transforming itself into the golden beast of opportunity and new hope each dawn offered.  Off in the distance he could see the palisades being framed in the startling yellow of the new day, revealing a mosaic of houses, cars and trees on the far shore. In the foreground, were the twisted girders of the old ferry docks where trains from New Jersey used to be transferred to New York before the tunnels had been built.  The original owners had left them to rot and the city when it had decided to rehab the waterfront many years later had left them as their wreckage had become a landmark and at this hour of morning a beautiful piece of modern art. Other than the clink clank sound of the occasional car running across a seam in the nearby West Side Highway it was quiet enough to hear the lapping of the river against the shore.

 

Daniel sat on a bench that was on a small bluff just above the river. It was surrounded by freshly planted indigenous grasses that the Parks Department thought more beautiful and easier to maintain than a traditional lawn. He could not agree more. When he had discovered the place almost a year before he had been drawn to it because of its dichotomy of being both in the city and of nature at the same time. It is where he went when he was seeking refuge from the city he both loved and hated. It is where he went when he was seeking refuge from himself.

 

This morning he had come for both reasons.

 

Last night he had only been asleep for a short time when a recurring nightmare had awakened him screaming in a terror that was just beyond his grasp. Mia, his girlfriend of many years had barely stirred in the bed next to him yet he was breathless and his heart pounding. Knowing that he would not fall asleep soon he got him from the bed, put on the sweats he just taken off and made his way to the living room and the comfortable chair he liked to work in. But instead of writing as he often did at times likes these he just gazed in the darkness and tried to make sense of why this dream that had been dormant for so long had suddenly reawakened.

 

In the dream his father and he were walking along a pathway made of yellow white rock that he knew to be Jerusalem Stone. The day was bright and the reflection off the white stone made him squint in spite of the dark sunglasses he was wearing. The path was leading them to what looked like the entrance to a cave underneath a grassy hillock. The opening in the hill was surrounded by small pillars made of the same stone that lined the pathway. Daniel knew where they were.  They were at Yad Vashem, the hand of god, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem and were walking up to memorial that been created to honor and commemorate the 1.5 innocent children who were murdered by the Nazi’s. Daniel froze in his tracks. He did not want to enter the structure. He was afraid. But his father called to him urging him on telling him they had to go in. They needed to honor the children who would never know a future. He told his father to go on ahead of him but he would have none of that.  Instead his father grabbed his hand and pulled him inside the mouth of the cave.

 

It took his eyes awhile to adjust to the sudden darkness of the room after the blinding light of the Jerusalem afternoon. When his vision had adjusted enough to see it appeared that he was standing in the middle of the firmament surrounded by a universe of stars. As he could see more clearly he realized that they were not stars at all, but memorial candles, the traditional way Jews honor the dead, reflected infinitely in a series of mirror that had been cleverly placed by the designers. His father pulled at his arm and began to walk him through the memorial. In the background he could hear a voice slowly calling out the name of the dead. “Uziel Spiegel, Age 2.5, Auschwitz, Yitzah Diamansky, Age 1, Treblinka,  Rachel Hess, Age 4, Bergen Belsen.”

 

They had paused for a second to listen to the names and to stare at the infinite candles when they heard “Baby Boy Damroche, never born, Lenox Hill Hospital.” Daniel’s heart stopped. How had they known? He turned to explain but his father dropped his hand and pushed his way past people to get to the exit. Daniel ran after him. The light blinded him when he got outside but he could see that his father had made his way over to a stone bench that overlooked the memorial. He was hunched over, head in hands and Daniel could tell by the convulsions of his back that he was crying. Daniel walks over to him and kneels in front of him “Pops, I can explain….”

 

When his father looked up his face was flush and there were tear tracks his cheeks.  “How could you Daniel…how could you dishonor those who died…how could you deny our family its legacy…how could you have forgotten….how could my son do this to his family.”

 

The dream shifts. Jerusalem disappears.

 

A young man is standing in front of him, staring.  He is 18 years old and wearing the uniform of the young: blue jeans  tattered at the factory, ; a t-shirt that looks like it has been stored in a closet since the 70’s, a pair of mustard colored Puma’s that look more like slippers than they do sneakers. He has no tattoo’s and no apparent piercings.

 

He is tall, well over six foot and has light brown hair that is curly that he has cut short. He has a swimmers build, narrow in the hip with large broad shoulders that are rounded forward like he is about to leap from the starting block. It is father’s build with a hint of his mother’s athleticism.

 

His eyes are large, green with brown and yellow flecks, expressive, and intelligent. Their gaze is intense and unblinking. Equal part loathe and love, resentment and understanding. It is knowledgeable without a bit of forgiveness and it chills him so her stares back.

 

His jaw is square and solid, and his mouth looks like it was meant to smile but he is not smiling. Instead his lips are drawn tight and pursed. It is the same look this mans grandfather would adopt for punishing his father.

 

He is a handsome young man in whom you can sense the capacity for great things. The world could be his oyster if he so chooses. But you can also see a great heartbreak. A sorrow so deep that it seems to stain his soul.

 

Daniel senses his need for compassion, so he walks over to the young, his arms out as if to embrace and the young man disappears. He looks as if he needs to be comforted so I reach out to him and he disappears.

 

The dream shifts again.

 

It is a bright August day and Daniel and his wife are at an apartment that they have rented at the Jersey Shore for the summer. The window was open to catch the breeze coming off the ocean. The sounds of the beach is coming through the window: Waves breaking, radios playing, people laughing, airplanes flying overhead towing signs. They are arguing which is not unusual. They have known each other a long time and they have turned into one of those couples who communicate via sparring. However this is not like the arguments they normally have. It is far more heated. Both of them are doing their best imitations of heavyweight fighters and are literally going toe to toe.

 

Daniel’s wife has just told him that she is pregnant. They have been married for less than a year practicing birth control and she is with child. He is freaking out not only because it is too soon but because he has realized almost from the beginning that their marriage was a mistake. Daniel is not behaving well. He is feeling very betrayed as if this pregnancy was something that she had planned secretly behind his back. He demands that she tell  him how this could have happened.  She responds by lying to him  and saying that these things sometimes  just happen knowing full well that she had stopped taking the pill months before.

 

Daniel paces around the room. He tells her that he doesn’t feel ready to have a family yet. That they don’t have enough money in the bank, that they are too much debt, they have not been married long enough. He doesn’t tell her, because he lacks the intestinal fortitude, that he knows this marriage is not going to last and that the last thing he really wants to do is bring a child into a marriage that will not survive.

 

She tells him that she wants to have this child. That she is ready for the burden. That money doesn’t matter. That debt does not matter. That our marriage may be young but we have known each other forever. This child will make our marriage stronger.

 

Daniel continues to pace and preach sturm and drang. He tells her that he doesn’t think that having a child will help their relationship. The stress that this child would produce would blow them apart. He repeats over and over again his feeling of  betrayal and how he feels that she had decided this whole thing on her own and is presenting it to him as if it were a fait d’acompli. Daniel feels that his world is about to get very small and he is scared.

 

She counter punches with what Daniel has reminded her all too often. How much he wants to make his father a grandfather. How he wants to have a son for him to begin to rebuild our family all but wiped out in the camps. How he has often imagined what it would be like to place a baby in his father’s arms and tell him his name: Marcus….his fathers fathers name. It would be the greatest gift that he could give his father and this child would be the beginning of that dream.

 

Daniel says he knows what she has said is true but still he doesn’t know if it is enough.  He lets her know that he worries that if he brings a child into this world this way the resentment he would feel would last a lifetime. That he fears that those feelings would affect how he feel about the child and about her. Daniel argues with passion about this even though he has a feeling in the pit of his stomach that they may be making a decision he will regret. She senses his fear and asks “Do you think that you will ever get over the resentment.” Daniel tell her no, he doesn’t think he will.

 

It is September and Daniel is walking down E 76^th St. in Manhattan. The air is crisp and you can sense that before too long the trees will begin to turn color. The summer seems far away.

 

No one except Daniels wife knows where he is. His boss believes that he is having a medical procedure done today and will not be in. His parents believe he is traveling for business. He is on my way to Lenox Hill Hospital to meet his wife.  Daniel has bullied his wife into having an abortion.

 

When they meet at the front entrance they go inside and take the elevator up the clinic. They hold hands and wait for their name to be called. Eventually, a nurse comes to take her down the hall for the procedure and they hug before he watches her disappear behind the double doors that lead to the surgery.

 

The waiting room is mostly empty. Those who are there do their best to avoid looking at each other. There is no doubt in Daniels mind that no one here feels good at about what we are doing. He does his best to try and convince himself that they are doing the right thing. They are not ready for children. They don’t have enough money. They don’t own a home…They don’t whether the marriage will last…..He goes through the litany of reasons over and over again….But as he sits in the quiet of the waiting room where no one looks at each other he is beset with doubts as well…Are they taking a life…Is this a sin against God…Is this his only chance to have a child… is she okay…Will she ever be able to have baby…Can they find any happiness after this.

 

The nurse calls Daniels and takes him to his wife. She is lying in a bed in the recovery room, her face pale, her eyes closed. She looks uncomfortable. He strokes her cheek with the back of palm and says “Hey, how are you?” She says she is fine but wants to sleep a while and so he sits next to her while she dozes. He leans over to kiss her on the cheek. She holds him next to her and whispers in his ear “It was a boy.”

 

The young man is back.  He stares at Daniel in silence, with neither making an effort to break it. After an interminable time,  he smiles and says “You look like you have seen a ghost.” He has a sense of  humor if not irony.

 

“I bet you are wondering what I am doing here. Been a long time.”

 

“No. I knew you would show up one day. It was really just a matter of time. You never are that far away.”

 

He shakes his head, and with downcast eyes he asks  “Would you do it all over again?”

 

Daniel knew this question was coming. It was one he asked himself often. “We were very young….we weren’t ready…We weren’t in love…you would have witnessed a lot of unhappiness and then separation and divorce. It would have put a lot on you.”

 

“And…”

 

“And, if I had to do it all over again….I would change everything. I would have accepted the pregnancy. I would have suffered through  the challenges of raising a baby on no money and I would have tried to build a life….even though I knew that at some point along the way separation and divorce were inevitable and the difficulty of custody and all of it…. divorce just to have you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because you are the great regret of my life…You were the child I was supposed to have.” I am crying now. “I was too stupid, and selfish back then to realize what to do when a butterfly lands on my shoulder. Because I didn’t realize then that life is likely to play funny tricks on you…that if you don’t seize every moment like it is your last you are denying yourself the joy the world has to offer.”

 

“And…”

 

“And now my greatest heartbreak in life is not having any children…not having you.”

 

“Aren’t you ever going to have any children?”

 

“It is too late.”

 

“And….”

 

“And it breaks my heart.”

 

Outside the windows of his apartment the streets begin to stir. He can hear the bass notes of the bus passing by and the whine and crash of a garbage truck collecting its stock and trade. Pretty soon it will be dawn and the new day begun. Daniel knows that he needs to write down the emotions that he is feeling. That he needs to examine what he is feeling so that do not force themselves out in other ways that would be far more destructive. He needs to figure out these feelings so that he could move on.

 

He picks up the computer and lets it power on. As it is in perpetual stand-by mode it boots quickly. Daniel opens the file named bbbanks for baby boy Banks. It contains photographs that have been taken of the newest addition to the Damroche clan,  Zachary Arron Banks born just a week ago. BZ Bee, as Daniel has taken to calling him is the first male born into the family in nearly 50 years and the look on his fathers face when he held his grandson for the first time –a look of love combined with awe shaped with the satisfaction of finally fulfilling a long held goal- almost drove him from the room. He stayed and watched as his big bear of father was turned into a cooing machine by this 7lb 1oz miracle. It brought back to him all the things that could have been and never were but then again those thoughts were never farther away than the sounds of children playing. But he was pretty sure that the birth of his nephew alone would cause his nightmare to reappear after an absence of so many years.

 

The first picture in the file was a close up of the baby’s face while being held by his sister. The baby’s cap was a little askance but you could clearly see the Damroche family features on his face, the serious brow, the strong nose, and cupid like lips. In other baby Zack was a pre-shrunk version of his father. He smiled but the picture also brought back memories of yet another time in his life.

 

It was early February 2002 and Daniel had been watching the sun set over lower Manhattan and New Jersey from his offices his 27^th Floor office at Sports.com. The sky was alight in pink, purples and grays and he could tell by the thin white strips of clouds in the sky that it was both cold and windy outside. He looked south and saw the empty sky where the towers used to be. Just a few months before he had watched as that nightmare had unfolded. He had heard the first jet as it flew over head. He had seen the second jet slam into the south tower. He had watched with unbelieving eyes the collapse of the first and then the second tower. Then the nightmare of a walk home in a city so quiet you could hear your fellow refugees’ foot steps. He remembered walking through Central Park and seeing clusters of people sitting on the grass in a circle around a radio while fighter jets screamed across the sky. He recalled that someone had placed a single rose on the “Imagine” mosaic in Strawberry Fields.

 

Like most New Yorkers let alone most Americans that day had really rocked him. Ground that was once solid now quivered. Values once closely held were now re-examined more closely and the conviction that tomorrow was another day replaced with the certainty that none of us is owed anything beyond the present.

 

It was not unusual for Daniel to awaken at 3AM and be unable to fall asleep as his mind raced. “What was he doing with his life? What thing of value had he contributed to anyone but himself? What would be left of him after he was gone? Would he die alone? Is there something after this?  Would anyone ever care he existed? What is it we truly leave behind when we go? Aren’t children the only real contribution most of make to society? Would Mia ever relent and have children…..” These sessions of self doubt, insignificance, and fear would usually result with him climbing out of bed at 5:30 in the morning and heading for the gym for a run before work. His eyes had developed deep circles and the feeling of warmth and safety that he usually felt at home had morphed into a sense of being shut in and trapped.

 

Tonight those emotions were front and center. Daniel could not bear the thoughts of walking through the dark, cold and brownstone lined streets of the upper west side. They seemed so noir and foreboding. The idea of an evening in his apartment alone eating take out food and watching the Discovery Channel made him feel like a character in a Dickens’s or an O’Henry story….a person who had no life and no legacy…An individual in every worse sense of that word. It made him yearn for a family of his own.

 

Daniel sat down at his desk and picked up the phone and dialed his sister Marisol’s phone number. 10 years his junior she was the sibling that he never knew that he wanted and while he was a kid he had done almost everything in the world that he could to do to torment her. But that had all changed when he had returned home from college. The baby 8 year old he had left behind had been transformed in a wonderful and charming young lady. Their relationship changed. She became one his best friends and he tried to do all that he could to spoil her and make up for the years that he had tormented her.

 

Luckily she was home and even more fortunate she had no dinner plans. Oliver, her husband, was away on a business trip and the plans she had made had fallen through. The hard part was picking a place to eat. She was a foodie in the truest sense of the word while he was jaded after many years of expense account meals. The good news is that they were both in the mood for the same time of place. They wanted a restaurant that had both warmth and style, where the food tended to be simple and real not precious. They want a place that had a conviviality that was palpable from the moment you walked in the door. They eventually decided on a restaurant called Tonic. Located on a side street in Chelsea, it was a converted turn of the century saloon that had two distinct areas. The dining room which offered elegant dining in 19^th century style including, high ceilings,  gas lamps and huge sprays of flowers and the lovingly restored saloon with brass fixtures, dark wood banquets, and a white tile floor. The food served was best described as comfort food. It was the only place Daniel had ever ordered Pot Roast from the menu.

 

His glasses fogged the minute he walked into the restaurant. After he had wiped them off he could see that he and Marisol were not the only ones who didn’t want to be at home tonight. The bar was tightly packed with a mixture of neighborhood people and business folk. As he searched for his sister he could hear people laughing and see men and women conduct the mating dance that was quite particular to bars in New York City. He was happy to see it. For months after 9-11 people had hunkered down and nested and while that might be good for other parts of the country it was oddly unsettling in the city that never sleeps. He thought “Pretty soon people will stop being so nice to each other and the city can get back to normal.”  The thought made him smile. Only in New York would someone wish for a return to what some people might mistake for rudeness but he had always thought of as being the direct and honest expression of feelings.

 

He made his way through the crowd at the bar and saw that Marisol was waiting for him at Maitre Ds Podium. She was chatting up the hostess, no doubt trying to get them a choice table. He walked up to her and they hugged and it was all he could do to keep himself from crying. The emotion had snuck up on him but he was not completely surprised by it. The last few months had made him reexamine his life and as a consequence his emotions were never too far from the surface. But it was also more than that. It was seeing his sister and realizing not for the first time how well she lived up to the meaning of her name “sunlit sea.” She made him feel like he was a part of something bigger than himself and that he was valued and loved and no matter what road he decided to follow with his life she would be with him unconditionally.

 

Marisol’s work on the hostess paid off. They were given one of the few old style dark wood banquets that lined one wall of the tavern part of the restaurant. The table of the banquet was rough hewn wood that you used to see in bars in college towns with initials scratched in them. These had no messages scrawled into them but the texture and look of the wood brought him back to far more innocent and simple time in his life and he was grateful for it.

 

“Danny, you are the beverage maven. What should we be drinking this evening.”

 

“Are you thinking of having wine?”

 

“Doesn’t go with the Mac and Cheese I am planning on having tonight.”

 

“Ok. Hmmm. It’s cold out. This place makes me feel like we are back in the days of Tammany Hall and we are going to have food that is solidly all American so it has to be Bourbon.”

 

“Mamma  bourbon” replied Marisol doing her best impression of Homer Simpson. “Now what kind?”

 

This made Daniel smile. He knew when he was being played. Marisol had been adept at manipulating the men of her family practically from the time she sprung from the womb. He could remember observing her interact with their father after he had returned from college and saw how she wrapped him around her finger by just always asking him questions and listening as if he was the anointed one. She was doing that to him now and he really didn’t care. He loved the fact that she sensed that he needed tender loving care and was providing it to him without him having to ask.

 

“Why don’t we have some Bookers Noe. It is bottled at full strength, 120 proof, so you have to be careful to mix in a decent amount of water, but it is a single cask whiskey and the distiller is the great grandson of Jack Daniels himself so it is wonderfully warm and chewey.”

 

When their drinks arrived Daniel toasted his sister “To my sister, and my friend, thanks for coming out with me tonight. I needed to be with someone and I can’t think of a person that I would rather be with than you.”

 

They clinked glasses, sipped their bourbon, and made small talk as the brown liquid slowly worked its magic. They ordered dinner and another round of drinks when Danny saw that Marisol was looking at him a little oddly. “What.”

 

“You are my brother and I love you and I am a little drunk so I can say this.”

 

“What.”

 

“You look like shit. You have been circles under your eyes. You are slouching. You look grey and you don’t have any spark. You look like shit and I want to know why.”

 

So Daniel explained about the sleepless nights. The questions that had been plaguing him since the Twin Towers had fallen. How each night he lay in bed tossing and turning trying to figure how to navigate this river of life…that he was looking for meaning and finding little and how lost that made him feel. Worse than that he thought he knew at least some of the answers to the questions but felt powerless to reach them.

 

“Like what…”

 

“Like having a family. Like having children. These late night sessions have reminded me that all I have wanted all my life is a home…a wife to adore and be adored by…children to love and cherish. I am 44 fucking years old and the only thing of value in life just seems beyond my reach.”

 

“What about Mia?”

 

“What about her?”

 

“Does she want a family…does she want to have children.”

 

“That is such a complicated answer I don’t know even know where to begin. A good part of the time I don’t even know is she wants to have a relationship. Not because she doesn’t love me. I know that she does but because she has so many walls that she puts up and every time I think that I have scaled the last one she seems to erect another that is higher and more difficult to climb. It is as if I have to constantly prove my devotion and love even though I provide mine unconditionally.”

 

“But does she want to have a family?

 

“I don’t know. It is hard enough to get her to commit to the relationship….she says that she is open to anything but that she has serious reservations about having children. She says that she is probably too old to have them….probably too old to change her life style around to accommodate children.”

 

“What did you say to her when she said that to you?”

 

“I asked her if she didn’t feel like there was something missing from her life because she didn’t have children. And she replied that she had lots of nieces and nephews, that she was godmother to more, and that she felt that was enough. And then I asked doesn’t it feel like something is missing from her life and she no.”

 

“So she really did give you an answer then didn’t she?”

 

“Yeah, she did but she also held the door open for me to change her mind.”

 

“Do you think that you will.”

 

“What?”

 

“Change her mind?”

 

Daniel thought for a second, then took a sip of his Bourbon, looked Marisol in the eyes and said “No.” They were quiet for a while… Daniel trying to figure out what to do with the understandings that this conversation had produced, and Marisol trying to figure out what to say to both comfort and guide her brother.

 

“Marisol can I ask you a question that I have never asked because I thought it was rude and intrusive but I have always wondered about it and I need to know the answer tonight more than ever.”

 

When she nodded her head he asked “Are you and Oliver going to have Babies.”

 

She smiled and replied “We are trying Danny. You never know what is going to happen but we are trying.”

 

Daniel looked down at the the table trying to hide the emotions that were just under the surface.  “Can I be there favorite Uncle….the one who takes them to cool places and spoils them rotten. The one they call when they are getting on with Mom and Dad. The one whose Christmas present they always want to open up first but save for last because they know it is going to be so much fun. If I never have babies, and even I do can I treat yours like they are my own?”

 

Marisol watched the tears rolling his face and said “Danny my children will your children.”

 

Daniel blinked back the tears that the recollection of that evening had produced. Marisol had proven good to her word. When his niece Emily had been born she had made sure that Daniel was a part of her life and a very special bond had been created between them. Anyone who had heard  him speak of his niece, or saw them together, knew that their relationship was special. He wondered what shape his relationship with baby Zach would take. He knew it would be good but would it be as special as it was Emily?

 

He heard the sound of a comforter rustling in the other room. It was followed by the pad of footsteps out of the bedroom and into bathroom. After a flush the foot steps returned, followed by the sound of the bed creaking and the comforter being moved again. Mia had not even noticed that he wasn’t in bed and that made him both sad and angry.  Angry because it hurt his ego and pride that not being in bed would go without notice. He knew that if the shoe had been on the other foot that he would have gone looking for her. People had different styles and personalities and that was fine but he really thought of it as being more symbolic of a bigger truth.

 

It was the bigger truth that made him sad. Would she miss him if he wasn’t around any longer? His suspicion for sometime had been that he was not really her partner. Partners are missed and there loss mourned. But he wasn’t her partner and despite his efforts to create the relationship of equals he sought he was beginning to see that this would never be. He had often mused that he was more like an accessory.  One that generally spiced up the outfit, made it complete, and presented a good image to the outside world but an accessory none the less.  And what happened to accessories when they are lost or lose their charm? They are either put into a drawer never to be seen again or there loss mourned until a ready replacement found.

 

He had no desire to live a sad, angry, and replaceable life. It was not in his nature. He was determined to find a path that led him to peace and happiness, no matter how fleeting they may be. No matter if that path to them was lined with loneliness and heartbreak. He felt he owed to himself. He also felt he owed to his relatives who not had a chance at a life, whose life had been cut short because of anger and hate to live a life of joy and renewal.

 

He thought he owed himself and his family love. Did he love Mia? He knew that on many levels he did. She was a kind decent woman moreover she had a heart that was generally in the right place. But was that enough? Her desire to live a life without the burden of children had demonstrated certain selfishness about her that he had not seen before. Not the petty type of egocentricity that children demonstrate when they don’t want to share their toys but a self centeredness that resided far closer to the soul and while not evil was insidious none the less.

 

The blare of a fire engine’s siren broke his concentration. Since 9-11, a day of endless sirens, he always looked to see the trucks go by and wish them men on board “Gods speed.” The fire engine had stopped in front of the building across the street, its flashing red lights reflecting off the windows in the pre-dawn light. The firemen were rushing off the truck into the apartment house. He hoped that everyone was okay. That there were no injuries and the firefighters could leave this place without harm. His second thought was that his three year old niece would think this as neat as can be and he would have to remember her all about it when he called her later that day.

 

As he sat back down in his chair, he ruminated on the thought that the first person that he wanted to tell about the excitement outside his window was Emily. It reminded him of a conversation that he had with mother many years before.

.

He was in his off and had been to his embarrassment quietly crying for awhile.  Normally he did not indulge in feeling sorry for himself. To him it was a waste of time. What was, was. Your job in life was to press on, to find a way out of whatever mess you happen to be in, and run and catch happiness if you could. He also knew that he was human. He realized that there were times that no matter how disciplined one was in searching for the bright side that one found darkness instead. When those moments happened he knew that the best way to get beyond it was to experience it for a while and then use the anger and frustration that these feeling are sure to generate to climb above it.

 

This day had been one of those days where no matter how hard he had tried he could not seem to find the sunlight.  He had a conversation with his soon to be ex-wife over their property settlement. They did not really have a lot of things to split but he thought he had taken great care to be fair to divide up their possessions in a way that gave them both what they had wanted. However she had not seen that way.  She had wanted a number of items that she had loved but were keepsakes from his family. He knew that she was really negotiating for something else that she really wanted but had lost his temper anyway. Not as much because of what she had said but more because of what they had become. They were once a couple who had cared if not loved each other immensely. Now they were arguing over petty things and doing so in petty ways. And while the seeds of destruction of their marriage were brought by both of them, he had been the one to germinate them.

 

What frustrated him more and scared him more was the fact that he had no idea how he gotten here. How could something like love that seemed so simple to other people be so difficult to him? Why he couldn’t find the one thing in life that he really wanted: a soul mate? What was it about him that kept him from finding the dreams he was looking for? Did he even understand what love was? Was he somehow missing the point?

 

Each question, each piece of self doubt seemed to drive him deeper and deeper into despair. He knew that this could not continue. That this darkness would take him to places he did not want to visit and more immediately he needed to get back to work unless he wanted to turn his life into a true nightmare. Daniel wondered who he could talk to help him through to the other side. He picked up the phone and dialed the only number he could think to dial at the time.

 

“Hello.”

 

“Hi Mom.”

 

“Hey baby, how are you?”

 

“Bad day Mom. I feel like some one has unscrewed the top of my skull and poured dirt inside my head and started stirring it was a dirty stick. I am just so frustrated that everything I seem to touch right now is turning to shit.”

 

“What do you think set you off.”

 

“Well, Abby and I are trying to figure out the property settlement. It turns out she wants one of Aunt Helene’s paintings and she also wants some of Grandma’s furniture. She claims that she needs them to start a new life but I think she is really trying for something else even though I can’t figure out quite what she wants.”

 

“So why is that so frustrating to you Danny. You have never been that into things per se.”

 

“It is not the things. Even though those our families things if it was just them I would let her have them in an instant. It’s really more what has become of her and me. I mean for Christ sakes we used to love each other and now we are finding over things that are just not that important to either one of us. “

 

“So what is frustrating you.”

 

“I am frustrated because I never want to get myself in this mess again and this whole incident just serves as a reminder of that. I am frustrated because I have no idea what love is and I am frightened that if I don’t find out that I will just keep reliving this nightmare.”

 

Danny started to cry and his mother waited for his sobbing to stop. When he caught his breath he said “Mom, do you know what love is. I mean can you help me figure out what it is”

 

There is a long pause on the other end of the phone. “Danny I don’t know if I can help you much. I don’t really know any really good definitions of love. What I can tell you is something’s my father once said to me that while not defining love at least allows you to know when you are in the right ball park”

 

“Okay”

 

“The first test of love he said was if you were walking down the street and you saw something that caught your eye, not even something big, but just something that amused you, who would be the first person you would want to tell? The person that you most often want to share these things with is the person whom you love. The second test of love, is who makes you smile on the inside…like you have a secret that no one else knows…who whenever you think of them you can help but smile. The third test is who are the first person you think of in the morning, and the last person at night. Whoever that person is that is the person you love. And the final test is this. Imagine yourself with only a few minutes left in life, whose hand you want to be holding because that is the person whom you love.”

 

“Didn’t Grandpa die holding Grandma’s hand?”

 

“Yes….he did…

 

“So he lived what he preached.”

 

“Yes. And you don’t have to ask the next question. You know the answer….

 

“So with two such fine examples how did I manage to fuck it up so badly.”

 

“You didn’t fuck up Daniel. You just made a mistake and now are the time to accept it and move on.”

 

“I know but sometimes the mountain just seems so steep and the mountain top is no where in sight…

 

“You will find your way Daniel. You will find the energy to get to the mountaintop.”

 

“Thanks Mom…”

 

“That is why I am here. I love you…”

 

 

Daniel sat in the big chair in his living room the memory of the conversation lingering like the morning mist over water. That conversation had been a turn around point for him and the tests that his mother had given him that day had at least helped him to build a framework.   He thought about the checklists and then he thought about Mia  and suddenly the apartment seemed too small. He grabbed his keys and was out the door.

 

There was a light breeze coming off the river. The air smelled sweet today with only hint of brine. Birds still clattered in the trees near his bench and the clink clank of the cars on the Westside Highway had become more frequent.  On the path near his bench a woman elegantly attired in a Puma jogging suit and  wearing in-line skates flew by  being pulled by her German Shepherd Dog. He smiled to himself, amused by sight but amazed about how effortlessly some people seem to live their lives.

 

The deep bass tones of a ships horn came from the river. He turned to see a black and blue tug pushing a barge downstream, its progress slowed by the incoming tide. He stared at the boat and the slow but steady progress on its path downriver. Daniel smirked. He knew that boat. It was not the fastest ship on the river and even though it was headed in the right direction, he suspected that it spent a lot of its time pushing against the current. He was pretty sure that the boat had sounded its horn not out of warning but out of frustration about not making as much progress as he ought to and he knew that the ship would eventually make port no matter what its struggle.

 

 

Daniel watched the ceaseless flow of the river. Like life it just kept moving along whether we wanted it to our not. Sometimes you had to go with the tide to reach your destination and sometimes you need to fight it. Either way it was up to you to pick your destination.

 

Daniel got up to leave just as the woman on rollers blades came flying by. Totally out of control. No control whatsoever. And yet there was huge smile on her face. ‘Well that’s another way he thought. Although…not for me. I am too scared of skinned knees or worse.

 

Taking a look back at the river he saw that the tug had made a little progress against the current. He knew he had to as well. It was time to tell Mia which direction he was heading.

 

I made myself a Dick Magrath Martini last night.

I did this for three reasons: I did not have the ingredients for a “regular” martini and over the course of the last few days, I had been thinking about him a great deal. Finally I wanted to toast his son, my best friend of 47 years, who had died the day before.

Dick Magrath played a large roll in my development as a young man and as an adult. His son and I were each other’s wingman from the time we were fifteen and spent massive amounts of times in each other’s home with our respective parents serving as surrogate parents for the other. I know that my parents helped show Rich what a life a scholarly and intellectual pursuit were like and broadened him to the greater possibilities in life. I believe that one of the reasons he chose psychology as a major while at Lafayette College was because of my father who was an eminent experimental psychologist. Dick Magrath helped me see the world of business as a viable option for my life to the point that my senior project was conducted at the Insurance firm he ran.

Dick was also a man who managed to savor every minute of life. I can remember complaining to him, shortly after I graduated college, how much I despised doing errands on Saturday morning. Going to the dry cleaners, the bank, grocery shopping etc. were a major time suck and I hated it. He responded in a great booming chuckle (he had them patented) that doing errands were a joy to him because they were a bi product of his success and should be savored. I never thought of errands the same way again.  To this day I savor my Saturday errands. Instead of rushing through them I take my time stopping for a coffee, chatting with people in stores or just enjoying the day.

This was Dick’s entire attitude in life.

Rich and I were once truly fortunate to be in London with him at one point. He had to go to London regularly in the insurance business and had developed a routine. He would take the morning flight from JFK that would put him to London late in the early evening. He would have a light meal and go to sleep and wake up in the morning refreshed and ready for the day. But the first day was not for work it was for enjoying the city of London. That first day in London,  while we were all together, he led us on a walking tour of London showing us some of his favorite places to savor. We started out at the Grosvernor House where he was staying in a gorgeous suite and walked along Hyde Park until we reached Marble Arch. There we turned onto Knightsbridge and proceeded to the Food Halls of Harrods where we sampled out mid-morning snack. Then through the back roads of Belgravia to Constitution Hill and Green Park to Buckingham Palace. Then down the Mall and cutting past the Palace of St James to Pall Mall and then up to Jermyn Street to see where the finest bespoke shirts were made. Then on to Piccadilly where we went to Swaine Adney Brigg where you could have a custom umbrella made or purchase the most exquisite leather goods. Then through the arcade, where there were dozens of small stores in which to enjoy window shopping. We walked for hours with him pointing out the things he loved and punctuated by his booming chuckle.

His savoring of life could be as pedestrian as making a sandwich. Back in the halcyon days of my childhood making a sandwich was an art form. And no one practiced that craft with more style and verve than Dick Magrath. The bread had to be a special bread and then the condiments were required to be spread to an even consistency. The fillings (hand selected and shopped for specifically) were then placed with surgical care on top of the bread. Salt and pepper were administered with flair and then the sandwich cut with precision. It was a sight to see and I still think of his art whenever I make myself a sandwich.

Dick also liked to drink. This was something my parents, while not tea totallers, did rarely. He likely had a drink on the train coming from work (they did that then) and perhaps even a couple at lunch (Mad Men Times) but his first cocktail at home was incredibly special to him. I am quite sure it was his way of savoring the day and making it back to the family he adored. At one point, shortly before or shortly after, Rich and I, reached the age of majority (18,) he instructed us on how to make the proper Dick Magrath martini.

He told us, in a booming baritone, “find a tall narrow pitcher” and pulling one from the cabinet he would add “fill it halfway with ice.” When he had completed that task, he would take a bottle of good vodka that was handy on top of his bar and say. “Then you add as much vodka as you need….” And then holding the bottle horizontal he would tip it again and say, “Then a little more for evaporation.” Letting the vodka chill, he would reach for the jade green bottle of Noily Prat Dry Vermouth and said “Here is the secret part. You need to add just the right amount of vermouth to make the perfect Martini.” He would then unscrew the cap of the vermouth and then approaching the pitcher of chilling vodka he would say “ You just wave the bottle of vermouth over the vodka and whisper “Noily Prat” and then with a booming chuckle place the cap back on the bottle of Vermouth and pour himself a martini usually with two cocktail olives (I know now that this more of a Gibson than a Martini but this is Dick story and this is the way he told it.)

Last night I could not completely recreate the Martini that Dick Magrath taught me to make 45 years ago. I did not have a tall pitcher. I did not have any vermouth. So, I made do. I put a bunch of ice cubes into a tall glass and poured a liberal amount of Absolut Vodka over the top and then intoned the magic words “Noily Prat”. As I did not have a proper Martini Glass (thanks Bolsonaro) I poured the perfect Martini into a small cachaca glass and silently toasted both the father and the son.

Alcohol, when applied in the correct amounts, tends to make you sappy and sentimental. This Dick Magrath Martini made me reflect on the parallel lives of Dick and Richard. Both of them died young, in their early 60s, never having met their grandchildren. I thought this every time I would here one of Richard’s boys say to him “You are the best Dad ever” to which he would invariably reply “No, I did.” I do not know whether Rich’s kids will have the same reply to their children when asked the same question, but I do know that they will have missed a lot by not meeting their grandfather or great grandfather.

Richard learned the lessons his father taught him about savoring every moment of his life exceptionally well. I could tell countless stories of where ordinary nights became extraordinary because of Rich. Many of them I will not tell because they are still classified and like the Kennedy files will remain so until 50 years after our death. But one I will share is the time we went to a Bachelor party in Sweden.

Rich and his then wife Barbara had been living in Saudi Arabia where they had befriended a British fellow and his fiancé, a Swede, and had been invited to their wedding. As the times when we could see each other were rare it was decided that we would all meet up and attend the wedding together.

The night before there was an epic bachelor party that would have made any Viking proud. The amount of alcohol consumed was prodigious and both Richard and I enjoyed ourselves immensely. While I cannot tell you the whole story (50 year rule) I can tell you that we ended up at an all-night McDonalds at 3am in the morning laughing so hard at our exploits that Richard kept falling out of the booth.

Needless to say, we had hangovers worthy of Vikings the next day. Rich’s wife came to my room in full battle mode because I had gotten Richard so drunk that he was now refusing to get up. I needed to do something about it. I pulled my butt out of bed and went to their room where the sun was very unpleasantly shining and tried to rouse him. When I finally got him to open his eyes, we had one of those moments of nonverbal communication where we replayed all of the exploits of the night before in a nano second and both of us burst into hysterical laughter simultaneously.

Eventually, we made it to the wedding, where the alcohol slowly dissipated from our systems and a normally boring Church of Sweden ceremony became tedious to the point where Rich and I and probably many other guests were desperate for the ceremonies end so we could recharge our system with alcohol. Sadly, this took far longer than we had hoped for but eventually we made it to the reception where Richard quickly availed himself of the best hangover cure known to man…more alcohol…and quickly regained party form.

This was quickly tamped down by the dinner portion of the wedding which was held around a set of tables set in a huge square so all attending could see each other. The Swedes have different customs than we do. When we tap our silverware on glasses, we expect to see the bride and groom kiss. In Sweden they use the same method to signal the tappers desire to give,  in Swedish,  a boring speech on the obligations and challenges of marriage. After about the third one of these Rich turned to me and said, “I have to do something about this.” To which I stage whispered back to him “Don’t you dare.” This exchange went back and forth a number of times before Rich began tapping his glass. When everyone silenced, he stood up and said “I knew this country was fucked up the moment I got here but I have to say that this custom of giving speeches when glasses are tapped is really fucked up. Back in the United States where I come from, when you tap on the glasses the bride and groom kiss. Here you give boring speeches. That is so wrong. Would you please tap your glasses American style and let the bride and groom kiss?”

Stunned for a second the Swedes slowly processed what Rich had said and then broke into cheers and began tapping their glasses. When the newlyweds had completed kissing, Rich resumed his speech outlining with specificity and humor how fucked up Sweden and the Swedish people were. It was a diatribe no one else could have done and gotten away with . Needless to say, he became the hero of the wedding.

The Brazilian version of the Dick Magrath martini was done. There were no blue cheese stuffed olives to linger over. I knew that cocktail time would be forever the time I think of Richard and Dick Magrath, to relish the memories that I share with them and to remind myself that is up to me to savor every day. So I made another.

I am in a scene from Goodfella’s.

It is 2am and I am in my car outside a warehouse in Queens. The weather has cooperated with the movie like setting with a soft fog and gentle mist. There is the smell of jet fuel in the air as the warehouse is owned by American Airlines. The parking area was empty and dark, the only light coming from a single bulb above the entrance of the building and reminds me of the light play in “Nighthawks” by Hopper. The inside of the car is completely dark as the engine is off. There is little conversation and frequent looking at our watches, as we await the designated hour to make our big move. Every tick of the clock seems to be as loud as a hand clap. Time seems to hang in the air like the mist that surrounds us..

This is a moment that had been in planning for months. Books had been studied in depth. Research had been thoroughly conducted. Endless dialogue had been engaged to make sure that our plans would be executed well and to our liking. I knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, that we had done all we could do to prepare us for this moment. We were ready for all contingencies. We were ready as anyone could be. But, still, doubt creeped in like a ninja ready to assassinate any confidence I had.

I was reminded of the old saw for war planners. “The battle plan disappears with the first shot.” What if all goes wrong. What are the things we have not thought about…? The doubts are an endless loop and I know that only action can replace my fear. Doing is almost always better than doing nothing.

2AM. The appointed hour. I turned to my partner and said “Are you ready.” She nodded yes and simultaneously we emerge from the car, closing the doors gently, and make our way to the Hopper doorway.  Anticipation causes each step I take to multiply the butterflies in my stomach logarithmically. I reach for the door and pull hard. It is locked. For a moment of panic, I fear that the plan has gone terribly awry.  I search the outside of the door and see a squawk box with a button on it. I press.  A buzzer sounds, an electronic lock clicks, and we open the door.  Just like that we were inside. Phase 1 complete

After so much time in the dark we are temporally blinded by the fluorescents in the warehouse. Disoriented, I look around. It does not look like a warehouse to me. The ceilings are low. No long rows of shelving packed with merchandise. Just a long booth with a plexiglass window covered with sheets of papers of assorted color attached with scotch tape that is yellow from age. I am a little intimidated by the plexiglass cage, why do they need a bullet proof enclosure,  but bravely I walk over to it and push a piece of paper through a slot cut into the plexiglass that is similar to those you see in “token” booths on the subway. A man appears from the recesses of the booth startling me. He had been obscured by the paper covering the glass.  Grabbing the sheets of paper, I have place in the slot he reads as if it were the most important document presented to anyone since Moses came down from the mountain.

He disappears back into his booth. I can see nothing but there is the sound of paper being moved, clipboards being removed from hooks and then replaced, and the scuffling of feet on what I imagine is concrete flooring. Eventually he makes it back to the opening, I now see he looks like Steve Schirripa, from the Sopranos, and speaks into a microphone and says in a Brooklyn accent that is so thick that it seems fake “ “License and one other form of id.” My hands are not steady, so I struggle a little pulling my license and a credit card from my wallet and place them in the slot hoping against hope he does not see how unnerved I am. He looks at the picture on the ID and then at me several times before he is reassured that I am who I say I am. He copies down some information onto a sheet attached to a clip board, loudly stamps a piece of paper and hands it, and my id’s, back to me.  Pulling a larger microphone down from the roof of his booth he booms out in Brooklynese “Hey Lou. The people are here for da  dawg. Bring dem da dawg!”

He smiled a crooked, sweet smile of the type normally reserved for small children and puppies and points to a door adjacent from his plexiglass fiefdom and says. “Go dehr.” We go.

The door leads to the warehouse proper. It is the length of a football field and half as wide, 50 ft ceilings with 5 rows of shelving stacked with merchandise spaced far enough apart so a car could drive down the aisles. But there was no one there. Just silence. My companion and I just look at each other and shrug our shoulders wondering whether or not Brooklyn has directed us here as some sort of a practical joke on people from Manhattan.   I resist the impulse to go back and ask him whether we were in the right place. Instead I pace, like the trope of an expectant father, back in front of the door thinking about the events that had brought me to this place.

The morning of Sept 11, 2001 had blossomed a perfect day. A clear blue sky, mild temperatures. The type of day that made you wish you were Donald O’Connor singing with Debbie Reynolds “Good Morning.” My exuberance for the new day had propelled me to the office a little earlier than my normal 7am and I was making great progress on getting the work of the day behind me when I was shocked by the arrival of my always late assistant, Michelle, arriving at 8:30 am with coffee in hand to bribe the boss. I like bribes so I accepted and we spent a few minutes chit chatting about nothing more serious than the standings in MLB.

A few minutes into our conversation we heard an airplane going over our building clearly very low and going quite fast. This was highly unusual considering our location in midtown and I commented on it to Michelle “That pilot is going to get fined. You aren’t allowed to fly so low and fast over the city.” What I didn’t know then that plane was about to change the world by being the first plane to plunge into the World Trade Center.

I found that out a few minutes later when someone ran into my office to tell us that the World Trade Center was on fire. We rushed to the floor to ceiling windows on the south side of our  27^th floor offices. There we had an unobstructed view of the black smoke gushing from the ruptured tower. It is there that we learned that this was an act of terrorism. It was from there we saw, with our own eyes, the 2^nd airplane hit, a flash of orange and then black smoke that we originally thought was a secondary explosion. It was there we saw with unbelieving eyes the first tower crumble and then the second.

I won’t bore you with the details of the abandonment of our offices or my zombie like march home to the Upper West Side.  I won’t tell you how my apartment became a lifeboat for some I knew, and some I didn’t, who couldn’t make it home. I don’t need to tell you how many times I saw on CNN the towers being hit and the towers collapsing.

When I fell asleep that night no one knew how many had died. I did not know that my boyhood friend Todd Ranke had died when the second plane wiped out his offices. What I did know that day had indelibly changed my perception of the world. Life is fragile. That you never know when you get up in the morning whether you are going to make it out alive. I fell asleep knowing that there were things in my life that I had not done that I needed to do. That I had left unsaid feelings that needed to be said. That I had postponed what could be postponed no longer.

The next day I did not work. The city, the country, the world was in a fugue state knowing what happened but unable to process all the consequences. I decided, in a sense of meaningless defiance, that I wasn’t going to let those bastards change my life and went for a training run for the Chicago Marathon, which I had foolishly committed to running and was less than a month away. My route took me from my apartment at 76^th and Riverside through Riverside Park to the Hudson River Greenway. The West Side Highway directly adjacent to the Greenway was free of traffic, until I got to the Chelsea Piers where a que of ambulances began and continued the nearly three miles to ground zero. When I got within a half mile of the pile the path was blocked but the smoke rising from the collapsed building hung in the blue sky of the new day, testimony to the largest ever funeral pyre of US citizens.

As I made my way back home I once again wondered how the terrorist attacks of the day before were going to affect me. What changes did I need to make in my life? If there is no tomorrow what do I need to do today? My thoughts were scrambled and fleeting. So many things in my life were not the way that I wanted them to be. So many things had been put off as I try to steer my life to a path I thought I wanted that my inner dialogue became more white noise than cogent thoughts.

My run ended at the stairs that lead from the Greenway’s bike path to 72^nd St. Sometimes,  when I felt physically strong,  I would run up these steps but that day I had nothing left in the tank so I plodded up the stairs and crossed under the West Side Highway. There I paused, as I often did,  to look at the dogs playing in the dog park. 5 years earlier I had moved back to New York and had been forced through unfortunate circumstance to leave my German Shepherd Dog, Suki, in Massachusetts. As a consequence I had become one of those New Yorkers who greeted every dog who looked at him. Watching the dogs at joyful play in the dog park was one way that I could get what I called my vitamin K9. My girlfriend at the time had been more succinct, she had said “You need a dog.”

Suddenly, out of the many scrambled fleeting thoughts came one. I need a dog. I had postponed it long enough. For the next few months, I searched to find the perfect type of dog for me. While many had recommended a shelter dog, I decided not to go that route even though very admirable, but because I wanted a clearer understanding into what I was getting myself into. Books were read. Videos watched. Friends were consulted. And still I could not figure out what breed of puppy I wanted. I became obsessed with the subject and I am sure that I became quite a bore on the subject to friends and family alike.

Then one afternoon my sister called “I have found the perfect dog for you. I just met one on the elevator. Soooo cute. He is a golden doodle. So friendly. And his owner says he is super smart and get this. They don’t shed. Look them up. You’ll see.”

I looked them up. I found out that Labradoodles were originally bred in Australia because two friends were lamenting the fact that their recently blinded friend could not get a seeing eye dog as he was allergic. They applied to the Australian government for a grant to breed a dog that was non allergenic and smart and sweet enough to be a seeing eye dog. After years of research, and likely a few beers, they came up with the Labradoodle, a true breeding cross between a Labrador and a poodle. The breed clicked everyone of my boxes. I was sold.

The challenge was finding someone to sell me a dog. I checked with every breeder in the United States and apparently, I was not the first person to hear about the breed because not only didn’t they have any puppies, but their waiting lists were filled up for years. In desperation, I contacted one of the original Australian breeders and asked if they had any recommendations on where I could find a puppy. Her response surprised me. “How about one from us? We ship worldwide.” After a little research into how they shipped their dogs…better than first class…I gave them a deposit for a dog and for months heard nothing from them. I would love to say I was not obsessed with puppies during this time. That my focus remained on things that were in front of me such as my job, family, friends and relationships. However, that would be less than the truth. I was obsessed with learning about dog training and feeding. I watched Cesar Milan until I could predict his next sentences. I fantasized about dog names including Shamsky  (Jewish Player on the ’69 Mets,) Fenway (after my favorite ball park) and even Summit (after my home and a cheer in high school S-U-M-M-I_T, Summits the best.) But nothing stuck.

On the evening of July 4, 2002, I received an email as I step off an airplane in Seattle. It was from my breeder and included a picture of what was probably the cutest puppy who had ever been born. I wrote her back immediately thanking her for the photo and note but also enquiring if my puppy had been born on July 4 as Australia was 12 hours ahead. Her response came back quickly, yes, and I realized the puppy’s name had been decided for me. A “doodle” born on the 4^th of July needed to be named Yankee. Even if the dogs owner is a Red Sox fan.

That summer was one of anticipation. Not only was the Carly Simon song on an endless loop in my head but everyday seem to drag. Yankees arrival date seemed not to grow closer. I filled the time with re reading such classics as “The Art of Raising A Puppy” and “How To Be Your Dogs Best Friend” by the Monks of New Skeet and about a half dozen other books all relating to how I could be a better human to Yankee. I watched endless shows on dogs on the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

One of the books recommended I interview vets before puppy came home. As a consequence, I made an appointment with a highly touted vet. It did not go well. Not only was she confused and insulted as to why she was being interviewed about the position of being my dog’s vets but when I told her of his breed (Labradoodles were not well known at the time) she became indignant. Why was I bringing a “mutt” all the way over from Australia when there plenty of dogs for adoption in shelters here in the USA. I tried to explain to her that this was a “new” breed that reproduced true and had been developed by the Australian Government, but she kept on referring to Yankee as a mutt. Needless to say, she was not hired on but taught me about the “petinista” culture in City. A name I coined for those people who had such narrow views of pet ownership that they could tolerate no others except their own. For example, the Mercedes Vet. A woman vet who did not have an office but traveled to people’s home in her chauffeur driven Mercedes to treat those animals trusted to her golden care. And their was the heiress who came to your home to wash your dog while wearing her diamonds and rolex.

By the end of the summer, I had managed to find a dog concierge (yes, they exist) who would arrange everything from dog walking and sitting to any other needs your puppy could want. And a doggy day care that would come a pickup your hound from you in the morning and deliver him home to you in the evening. I was ready.

So, why was I so nervous standing here on the loading dock of a warehouse in the middle of the night at JFK? Everything was ready for his arrival. Perhaps some of it was the same sort of anticipation that new parents have after waiting 9 months to meet their child. I had only waited 6 months but some of the fears were exactly the same. Will the puppy know me (I had sent a worn t-shirt to Australia 6 weeks ago) so that he would have scent memory of me?) Will I love the puppy…what if he is a disappointment? What if the puppy is sick or ailing from the trip?

 

Just as my litany of doubts was reaching fever pitch, I hear the sound of a forklift’s tires screeching on the polished concrete floors of the warehouse. I turn in the direction of the sound as I do it appears, forks laden with a palette about 6 feet above the ground, and on the palette a dog shipping crate with a little black nose sticking out from it. I was smitten.

The forklift came to rest in front of us and lowered its cargo to the ground. The black nose was joined by a raspberry pink tongue and barks that sounded a little Australian (no, really) and a bit squeaky. The case was vibrating from what I can only imagine was wagging. Be still my beating heart. But before I could even look through the grill of the crate, the driver of the lift hands me a clipboard and says, “Sign this.” I don’t even look at what I am signing and manage to scribble something resembling my signature. Paperwork complete, the driver, who resembles Joe Pantalone and speaks with a very distinct Queens accent says “Cute little motherfucker” before driving away.

We decide against opening the crate inside the warehouse as I want our first meeting to be in private. Call me sentimental and old fashioned. At the car, I place his crate on the ground, and unhook the latch that holds the grilled front closed, and out bursts this beautiful apricot colored fluff ball who first runs around in a circle a couple of times before launching himself into my arms his whole body wagging. It is a singular moment of bonding that is sealed with many licks from him and girlish giggles from me.

The ride back to Manhattan is spent with more time spent looking at this precious new creature in my life than on the road. Thank god it is the early hours of the morning with little traffic or we might not have made it home.

The walk from the car park to our apartment is dotted with two firsts. One of which you could bronze if you really wanted to and another that just disappears in the gutter. But that does not make me less proud. Yankee has made his mark on New York.

We are exhausted. It has been a long day and a very emotional night. We decide that as much as we would like to play all night with the puppy that sleep is our first order of business. In preparation for slumber, we place Yankee in his new crate along with a well-worn t-shirt of mine and an old-fashioned water bottle for comforting warmth. The puppy easily goes into his crate but the minute I slip under the sheets, and when he could no longer see me, he begins to whine. I try to be patient, (what is the dog equivalent of Ferberization) but he does not stop, and my heart is to frail to resist him. Eventually, I lay down on the floor next to the crate and place my fingers through its wire sides so Yankee can smell them. He quiets and eventually both of us fall asleep.

The next morning, after an early walk, I am in the  bathroom to take a well needed shower. Yankee follows me in and had the tub rim been lower he would have followed me into the spray. I decide to serenade him.

You are the puppy that I’ve always dreamed of
I knew it from the start
I saw your face and that’s the last I’ve seen of my heart

It’s not so much the things you bark to me
It’s not the things you do
It’s how I feel each time you’re close to me
That keeps me close to you

Yankee does not bark his approval, but I can tell from the way he licks my leg when I get out of the shower how much he appreciated my song stylings.

……….

“My love.”

“Yes.”

“You know that you have told me this story a thousand times.”

“Sure.”

“And you know that Yankee is the first dog I ever loved, and he is forever special in my heart.”

“Okay.”

“So why are you telling me this story again. It is late don’t you think we should go to sleep?”

“Yes, we should go to sleep but there was a reason I was telling you the story.”

“Which is”

“Well, part of Yankee’s story is that the idea of him was born out of a time when we realized that there are no guarantees in this world. That we are never promised tomorrow. Only today. That it is up to us to seize every bit of happiness and joy out of every moment of every day.”

“And?”

“Look how well Yankee turned out….and right now with all the talk of death and horror that the Covid 19 virus has produced and with Richard’s death….”

“And?”

“You are not going to make it easy on me are you. I thought…I thought…it might be a good time for us to get another puppy. It would be our affirmation of life.”

“You know we have talked about this before. How difficult it would be to get another dog with the amount we travel and often live in other places.”

“I know but just think of the puppy smell. And the sweet licks and cuddles.”

“My love, you know how hard it would be for us to have a puppy right now.”

“But I have a thought on that…. perhaps we could get a miniature labradoodle. One who could ride on the airplane with me when we are in Rio.”

“My love…”

“We could get a black puppy with a little white star on his chest.”

“Paul”

“And since he had the right coloring, we could name him after your favorite football team “Botafogo”, or Bota for short. How cute would that be? “

“My darlingo…don’t you think it is time to fall asleep.”

“Okay, but can we talk about this tomorrow?.”

“Good night my darling. Sleep well.”

 

The backyard of my parents’ home is back lit by the setting sun. The oaks, elms, and evergreens and even the lawn seem to glow a yellowish orange, as if they are working overtime to catch every bit of light before the world falls into darkness. I am sitting in the sunroom, on the couch, watching the gloaming unfold. My father who has spent the better part of the afternoon having an animated conversation with himself is asleep and I am sorry he is not awake to enjoy the pretty scene unfolding outside these windows.

I think about the word “gloaming” and wonder about its origins. It is so close to glowing and that is what the backyard is doing right now. I go to the dictionary on my iPhone and look the word up and find that is from middle English and is related to the word glooming as in when the darkness sets in it becomes gloomier. I love word play and so does my father. Family legend has it that he learned English by going to Ronald Coleman double features and reading the English dictionary. A testament to that is that one of his favorite possessions is an old copy of the Oxford English Dictionary that he keeps on display in his office. He and I often have long speculations and discussions about the origins of words. No more so than during the last two years when he was desperate for mental stimulation of any kind. It was a game, albeit very nerdy, that we loved to play together.

I turn to tell him what I had found out only to come to a triple realization. My father was asleep. That even if he wasn’t asleep his current mental state would not allow him to comprehend the origins of words and finally that I would never have these types of conversations again with Pop. It is  the final realization that cracks me like an egg and the pent up emotions of the afternoon spill out of me. It is a silent cry as I don’t want him or anyone else to hear my anguish, but my face is awash with tears, my nose dripping , and my throat feels as if I had swallowed a grapefruit whole.

I cannot tell you how long my private pity party went on but it is interrupted by Didi, one of my father’s home healthcare aides. She tells me in her soft Haitian accent that she needs to prepare my father for the evening…his diaper changed, catheter drained, bed sores dressed and the like. I ask if she needs help and I spend the next twenty minutes helping her move Dad around his bed as she did all the difficult tasks like changing his fouled diaper and dressing his sores. It leaves me too much time to look at what the ravages of this disease has done to my father’s body. He has almost no muscle left, his skin lays limp and sallow, against protruding bones and joints that look far too big for this withered body. He looks for all the world like the images of the inmates at Nazi concentration camps, a fate he barely escaped, not the happy grandfather being cared for by his family at home.

The site of his withered body fills me with anguish; my strong father, my hero, reduced to this? When Didi no longer needs my help, I kiss my father on the forehead and say “I love you Pops” and immediately find my way to the kitchen and pour myself a drink.

 

———————————————

The surgical waiting room and the waiting room of the Intensive Care Unit is a shared facility at Overlook Hospital. It is made up of two rooms and more closely resembles a break area in an auto plant than hospital waiting room. The first room is made up of heavy tables and chairs that belong as props in “That 70’s Show” as they have grey Formica tops with accent pieces made of wood veneer. They are scattered about a room made bright by a skylight and accented by a sideboard that has Formica to match the tables and chairs and there is a payphone that too is a relic of a time gone by. The other room is a more traditional waiting area. Here the lights are turned low and its grey tone is matched by a carpet that has seen a marathon of pacing. Tables, couches and chairs ring the room and no doubt looked worn and old even when they were new.

The mood here is much the same as it was in the Emergency Room. People would not be here unless someone they cared about was in a desperate circumstance. The difference is that in most cases the initial shock of knowing that a person they love is on the brink has left. By now they know the score. They have some idea of what to expect. For some it means hope and for some it means prayers and secret deals with god to get their loved one through the next few minutes, hours and days.

Mom and I entered this area 6 hours previously full of hope. After all, Dr. Knightly told us that Dad would be back walking in six months and this really nothing more than a little carpentry work to help Pops achieve his goal. I have tried to relieve the anxiety and boredom of waiting by teaching my mother to play scrabble on the computer and when that fails tournaments of solitaire where we try to beat each other’s score. But nothing works. Every tick of the clock seems a little slower than the tick before and adds just a little more anticipatory tension to our moon. This increases logarithmically when we sail by the 4-hour time we have been told that the operation would last.

When the Dr. does finally meet with us, we are strung tighter than a tennis racket at the US Open. He informs us that the operation went as well as could be expected for a man Dad’s age. That it had taken longer than anticipated because they had to stop at several points when his blood pressure fell so low, they were forced to pause until it could be raised. Mechanically, they had stabilized Dad’s cervical spine by placing a series of plates and screws. That everything looks good for Pops to make a full recovery but only time and extensive rehab would be able to determine if, and when, he would walk again.

Dad never walked again.

Long stints at rehab facilities such as the Kessler Institute and Runnels Hospital and Rehabilitation Center followed. Invariably, he would be making good if not great progress in getting his feet back under him when he would develop an illness born of the cure. There were urinary track infections from a catheter. C-Dif, a bacterial infection of the lower intestine, that required a fecal transplant to cure.  Several pneumonias and colds. Each of these illnesses required hospitalizations. Each negated any progress he had made in regaining his strength that would allow him even partial mobility.

Eventually, the decision was made to bring Dad home and set him up in the Master bedroom. It was large enough for us to create a “suite”. There would be a place for sleep, a work area and a bathroom that was large enough to accommodate his wheelchair. Home health care workers, visiting nurses, and me, on weekends, could give Mom a helping hand. Medical care would be provided by us taking Dad to Summit Medical Group which was nearby.

This worked for several months. Then one morning in December Mom found it difficult to rouse Dad. When he is taken to the hospital where it is discovered his kidneys are failing. This is not entirely a surprise. In 2000, he had been diagnosed with non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which was localized around one of his kidneys. Chemotherapy and radiation had beat the disease down but in the process it had severely damaged one of his kidneys. The healthy kidney has worked overtime ever since and now it was kidneys showing signs of shutting down. His nephrologist, Dr. Gelber, is a kindly, well-spoken, and patient man calmly explained to Pops that he needs dialysis. Without it he will die. Three days a week he will have to go to a dialysis center, be dialyzed and then returned home. Dad questions his diagnosis, the protocols and is generally dismissive of the idea. He says he needs to think it over.

When the Dr. leaves he announces he does not want to do this. It is too much. It would mean an ambulance coming to the house three days a week. Him being carried down 2 flights of stairs in doors and ½ flight outdoors, then transported for 30 minutes to an hour to the dialysis center, 6 hours there,   and then returned home. He did not want to live his life that way. We plead with him to reconsider. We beg him to think not of the inconvenience but of the life it would maintain. That is not his time. This argument goes on for a long time with both side sides being testy. Eventually, we manage to convince Dad to test the protocol for six months and to re-evaluate.

 

——————————————–

It is a beautiful June morning when we arrive at the Summit Medical Group to see Dr. Gelber for a regularly scheduled check-up. He tells us how well Dad is doing. His blood work looks excellent and the dialysis is working extremely well. This is when Pops stuns us. He tells the Dr. he no longer wishes to continue with the treatment. He claims that he never believed that his kidneys were malfunctioning, and that the dialysis is superfluous. Gelber uses logic and scientific fact to persuade him that he is wrong. I used emotion and indignation as attempt to divert him from the path that will result in death. . Mom appealed to his intelligence. We nearly harmonized we were so in tune with each other.

Dad remained adamant that he did not need dialysis any longer. He, a man who had dedicated his entire life to science, did not make an argument based on data but feeling. It was confusing and upsetting and I was about to launch into a more impassioned expression of my upset when Dr. Gelber interrupted me by asking Pops “Do you understand what will happen to you if you decided not to continue with dialysis? That you will likely go into a coma and we may not be able to revive you. That even if we can revive you we may not be able to get you back on dialysis. And that you will die without dialysis….”

Pops, paused for a second, and then looking Dr. Gelber in the eye replies “yes.”

Gelber then replies with resignation “Okay” and proceeds to tell my parents about what they can now expect. I am only half listening as I am enraged. Furious with my Dad for being so stupidly pig headed that he cannot see that he needs to have the dialysis to live…not listening to reason…not listening to those who love him. I am livid with the Dr. for rolling over so easily. Isn’t he supposed to promote life not allow someone to willfully take his own?”

It is not until a long time later that I understand what happened in that room. Dad was not telling the Dr. that he did not need dialysis anymore. He was letting his physician know that he had enough. The three times a week of being carried up and down three sets of stairs, the hours of boredom as his blood was cleansed, the tortuous trip back and forth to the clinic in ambulance and the exhaustion that followed had robbed him of a life. He was telling the Dr. that he was getting sicker not better. That he was ready to face what is next because what was here was no longer tolerable for him. But he was telling it to the Dr. in a way that would spare hours of us arguing for life, trying to change his mind, and perhaps succeeding. Hours of pain and heartache we would all feel that he thought to spare us from.

Dr. Gelber got it even when Mom and I did not.

Thinking back, my father’s performance that afternoon was the greatest act of courage and compassion I have ever seen. Even as he was leaving us, he was teaching us how to be brave and how to really love the ones you care about.

That weekend, my sister and her family came to our parents’ home. It is a splendiferous late spring day with warm temperatures, light wind with a French blue sky dotted with cotton ball clouds. I have brought some of my father’s favorite foods from Barney Greengrass in New York City: Lox, Sable, Whitefish salad, Pastrami, Chopped Liver, and bagels. My sister has brought cake and cookies. We feast and delight in each other. Cate and Oliver, my sister’s children, charm my dad with pictures they have drawn and with their hugs. After lunch we sit outside on the deck enjoying the day and basking in the glow of Pops who is reveling in every moment of this day.

Later, we are sitting in the television room when Dad becomes confused and irrational. The march towards the inevitable has begun.

——————————————

 

After I eat dinner with my Mother, and she retires to her bedroom I go and pull up a chair next to Dad’s bed. His mouth open, as if in mid snore, and his breathing is labored. I hold his hand and find myself feeling like the little boy I once was, when holding his hand had protected me from the world. It makes me feel lost and sad but glad I could be here for him and for me.

For Jews, the time between life and death is considered extremely sacred. It marks the conclusion of the person’s journey on earth but also tis the beginning of the soul’s eternal life in heaven. I have been told that at the moment of passing every positive thought, word, or deed that occurred in this person’s life is concentrated into a pristine spiritual light and then this light is revealed to the world and to the heavens where it continues to shine and effect those in heaven and on earth. I want to be here for Dad’s moment. I don’t want him to be alone.

My thoughts are interrupted by Didi. She tells me that she believes it is time for Dad to have a little morphine as it will help with his breathing. She cannot administer the medicine as she is not a nurse so that tasks fall to me. It is not a difficult task. Just placing a few drops of a liquid into Pop’s mouth but my hand is shaking so badly that I am embarrassed by my performance.

After my embarrassment with the morphine I reward myself with several fingers of Woodford Reserve bourbon and take it out to the front steps and sit. After 45 years it is a familiar view. The manicured lawn with two gigantic old oak trees that pepper the ground with acorns in the fall. I see the houses where, as a child my friends lived. I am convinced in the moment that if I squint hard enough and listen carefully I would be able to see and hear echoes of one of the endless games of street baseball or football that were played there.

I walk into the yard and I feel a profound sense of gratitude to Pops for the fortunate life he made for us here. Here we were safe and free to explore. Here we learned to learn. Here we were loved and cherished. I look up in the night sky and see Orion and a few other constellations whose names I can’t recall and say a prayer. I ask god to show mercy on Pops. That he has suffered so much the last couple of years. That he has done so mostly with grace and humor. Please take him tonight so his suffering ends and the endless exploration begins.

When I walk back in the house, I can see that Didi is examining my father. Checking his pulse, his breath sounds. I ask her “How is he doing.”

In her rich Caribbean accent, she replies “He is about the same.”

Not wanting to say the obvious out loud. “Are we okay for a while? Can I catch a few hours of sleep?”

“You’ll be fine.”

I go to the television room which is directly adjacent to the sunroom where my father is ensconced. I collapse on the couch pulling a blue green mohair blanket over me and tucking a pillow under my head. Sleep comes quickly and is dreamless.

Didi wakes me around 1AM. She says “Mr. Paul, I think your father needs more medication.” Barely awake I stumble to the kitchen and getting the morphine out of the refrigerator I measure out a dosage which I administer with greater ease than before.

I ask, “How is he doing?” She tells me that his breathing has become more labored, but she still does not think that anything will be happening tonight. I return to the couch and surprisingly, as I am not an easy sleeper, I fall back into a dark sleep. Later I would begin to believe that this was a father’s gift to his son.

Several hours later, I am awakened by Didi nudging my shoulder. She whispers “ Mr. Paul I am so sorry. Your father is gone.”

The first emotion I feel is shame. I feel like I have let my father down in not being there for his final moment. This morphs into anger with Didi for letting me go to sleep thinking there was time and not waking me when she saw he was in extremis which turns to shame for being angry at Didi for anything as she has done more than her share to ease Dad’s passage.

However, when I walk into the other room, and see my father’s lifeless body all those emotions are replaced by overwhelming grief, sorrow and self-pity. I stand over him overcome. For a few moments I say nothing because my brain has ceased operation and when it resumes all I can think to say is “Oh, Pops” and kiss him on the forehead and sob as if I am  in a silent movie.

When my crying has subsided to just a few tears Didi puts her arms around my shoulders and says, “He is in a better place.” While I have my doubts that there is anything beyond this place,  I pray now that there is. I thank her for her kind words and being so gentle and caring with my old man while he was alive. She gives me a nod of acknowledgement and lets me know she needs to call her supervisor so she can come and certify Pop’s death and clean the body.

It seems wrong that anyone needs to do anything right now, but I tell her to go ahead as I have my own grim task to take care of. I need to tell my mother. I walk up the flight of stairs that leads to Mom’s bedroom and knock on her door. Without waiting for a response, I say “Mom, he’s gone.” I hear a guttural sob and she tells me that she will be downstairs in a few moments. I reply in a whisper worthy of a sleeping household “I love you “and return to the sunroom where my father is waiting.

I am standing next to the bed that holds my father’s remains when Mom arrives at my side. She looks at him for a moment before breaking into sobs. I put an arm around her and try to provide her with comforting words. “He got to die at home and what a blessing that is.,” “Think of his journey and how lucky and fortunate it was for him to make it here.” And, “He loved you so!”

Of course, none of this ameliorates Mom’s pain and saying them gives me no comfort at all. But they were words that needed to be said anyhow because they were the truth.  Dad, was born into abject poverty in Vienna before the war. They lived in a one room apartment with a bathroom down the hall and where the icebox was the ledge outside the kitchen window. His family managed to escape to the States months after the war began. He went back to Europe to fight as an officer. When he returned home, he became a distinguished and noted scientist and raised three children who adored him and pampered 4 grandchildren who loved him more.

The love he held for my mother was fierce and unique. The fact that a Park Avenue debutante would fall head over heals in love with a penniless immigrant speaks volumes about both of them. While my father tried to recover from his illnesses he would often reminisce about their early marriage. He told me, for example, when my brother was only months Dad had been transferred to Denver from Illinois. My parents  had decided that until he could find them a place to live that my mother and brother should live with her parents in the city. He told me he missed them so much that the time they were apart were the loneliest times he could remember. And, how he had never been happier to see anyone, when shortly after July 4, 1956 when David and Mom had walked off the plane in Denver he had never been happier…which is how I learned, by doing the math, when I had been conceived. They loved to fight often screaming to make their point and was only as an adult that I realized that this was how they expressed themselves and drained the toxicity from the marriage. They knew each other’s buttons and when to push them. But they knew each other’s strengths. When, during the last days of Pop’s lucidity, I promised Dad that I would be there for Mom. He said “Don’t worry about her too much. She is far tougher than you think.”

At that moment, standing next to my father’s lifeless body, she demonstrated her toughness. . She dried her eyes with one of the Kleenex that she perpetually kept in her robes and said “I need to call the funeral home” and left.

I retreated to the couch next to the bed in which Dad lay and began to think of how I wanted to memorialize him. It was difficult. Every new sentence I would create in my head, each cherished moment recalled would produce tears of self-pity and sadness. Thinking that I would not be able to share my words with him, made me sob.

Eventually, I wrote “He escaped the holocaust. He fought a war. He was married to my mother for nearly 60 years. He raised three children and cherished 4 grandchildren. He was my father, my travel buddy, my friend, and always my hero. This morning he passed quietly into the next world. I am grateful for his life, his love, his legacy, and his peace.” And weep some more.

The doorbell rings. It is Didi’s supervisor. She is very straightforward even bossy considering that it is 4 AM and my father lies lifeless a few yards away. She tells me that she needs to fill out the paperwork required by the state to issue a death certificate and then she and Didi need to clean the body as after death all of the sphincters relax. This is far more information than I need to know and when she asks to be alone with the body I readily accept and disappear into the TV room.

While waiting for Didi and her boss to complete their grim task. I debate with myself about calling my brother and sister at this hour to share the news with them. On one side it is so early and waiting a few hours will not change the news and perhaps it is better for them to sleep now because as later it will be more difficult. On the other hand, Marissa did say she wanted to be told of things as they happen. Thinking about it, I do not really have a choice and decide to call M first. The phone is picked up on the 2^nd ring by my brother in law. I am happy it is him answering the phone because I did not relish the task of telling my baby sister that her Daddy has died. He is British and takes the news stoically but his rush to get me off the phone tells me how difficult the news is for him to hear as I know he both admired and loved Dad.

Next, I call my brother and I am not surprised at all that his phone goes directly to voice mail. I leave the grim message. Him not answering the phone is yet another log on the flames of anger I am feeling towards him. Already stoking the fire is his inattentiveness to Pops while he had languished these past few years and his refusal to quit a tennis game and pack his vacation home early to come and have a final goodbye with Dad yesterday. These are hot flames and I know that over the course of the next few days and perhaps even years they will be difficult to extinguish let alone control.

The doorbell rings again. At the door, are two somberly dressed men who look like they are out of central casting for morticians. They express their condolences to Mom and me and asked to be taken to where “your loved one is resting.” I find their wording cloying and offensive but lead them to the sunroom where Didi and her boss are just finishing up their tasks. I introduce the two groups to each other and realize both are in the business of death and wonder how people can deal with these things every day and remain sane. The undertakers ask for privacy as they need to “prepare:” the body for transport. I am not sure exactly what this means but I want no part of it.

Didi , her boss, Mom and I retreat to the kitchen. There they explain the paperwork of death. How “Dad”, because he was in hospice care, does not need to have a Dr. examine him for a death certificate to be issued. How, even though “Dad” died in the home, that does not to be disclosed should we want to sell to property. I stop listening. Not because the information she is sharing is not valuable. It is. But her continued use of the word “Dad” I am finding ridiculously hard to deal with? This was my Pops. Not hers. But I tamp that down. She is trying to be kind and helpful and being angry with her would make her feel bad now, and me later. She asks my mother to sign some papers and they leave with Didi giving hugs to us both as she exits the front door.

The morticians, the men in black, as I have nicknamed them in my grief addled, sleep deprived brain, have completed their task. They too come to the kitchen table with their paperwork of death. They need my mother to acknowledge that they have been authorized to cremate the body and wish to know what kind of “receptacle” my father’s “remains” shall be placed in. These terms annoy me. They seem unfeeling and clinical when referring to Pops. He deserved special words.

Signatures and approvals received, the men in black wheel my father, now shrouded in a black body bag and resting on a trolley, out through the dining and living room and down the front steps. I follow them as they make the short walk down the slate path that leads from the stoop to the driveway. They place the gurney, with my father’s body in the back of their hearse. I watch as they drive down the street I use to play on and disappear into the last vestiges of the night.

I think “Dad’s last trip.”

Then, in the cold and dark of the pre-dawn, I cry the cries of a child unbidden by age. They come in gasps and soft cries. They make my chest heave and deny me the ability to speak or even swallow. At that moment I do not believe there has anyone ever who has been sadder than I am at this moment. It takes moments which seem like hours to compose myself.

As I turn to go back in the house. I see a lonely star just above the treetops. It reminds me of the Kabbalistic belief that at the moment of death every positive thought, word, or deed that occurred during a person’s life is concentrated into a pristine spiritual light and this light is revealed to the world and in the heavenly sphere where it continues to shine above and below.

Perhaps that wasn’t Pop’s last trip after all. Tomorrow I will go looking for that star again to make sure.

 

My parent’s yard was much bigger when I was a child but it is still plenty big enough for my dog Yankee to tear across the front lawn doing his version of a NASCAR race. He runs around me in circles, tongue flapping, tail wagging and getting more excited with every lap as we approach the front door of the house. For the past 10 years he has been my best friend and companion and for the past two years he has been acting as a therapy dog for both of my parents. From the gyrating motion of his tale and the speed of his laps I can tell that he is very excited to see them.

As Yankee sets new speed records running in circles I look up at the house my parents bought in 1967 when I was 10. I remember moving in. It was so different and scary. Different because this house, a split level colonial, was so much different from the modern style ranch house I had spent most of my first ten years in. Scary because I was the new kid on the block and had left a group of friends that I had known since earliest memories. As I step onto the front steps of my parents’ house, I remember the moment that fear faded way. It was the first day we moved in and we had the doorbell rang and when my mother went to answer she saw two 10 year little men, Danny Sylvester and Todd Ranke,  standing on the stoop, their Sting-Ray’s laid helter skelter on the front lawn. They were wondering if any kids moving in and could they come out and play.

Funny, all these years later, I still felt like the new kid on the block even though my parents were the only ones left from those days. I think of Danny now leaving in Georgia and writing him on September 12, 2001 to let him know that Todd was among the missing and presumed dead in the World Trade Center. I had only seen Todd a half dozen times since High School but his death had personalized the terror attack for me even though I had witnessed the entire tragedy with my own eyes. Seeing the horror and knowing that Todd had perished as I watched gives me nightmares to this day and climbing these steps I never fail to think of that first day, when he and Danny asked if my brother  and I could come out to play.

Yankee is doing his best imitation of a good dog sitting at attention and waiting for me to open door to my parents’ home. When I do he races into the house looking for my father first racing up the two flights of stairs to the master bedroom and when he doesn’t find him there clumps back down the stairs and dashes into the kitchen to see if he can snatch a friendly pet from my mother. He finds my mother sitting at the kitchen table reading a book and he immediately thrusts his head into her lap for a proper pet but my mother on seeing me gets up to greet me a look of relief and happiness on her face. Happiness because my mother revels in the love of her children and relief because she knows that she will not carry the burden of my father’s final journey by herself and the hug she gives me tells me all that more.

She tells me “I am so glad to see you” and she hugs me harder.

“I missed you too Mom. How is he doing?”

She shakes her head and says “I don’t know. He isn’t eating very much. He is not drinking. Most of the time he is off on another planet jabbering away about things we cannot understand and then out of the blue he says something that is completely cogent. Completely in gear and you wondering what is going on….” She shakes her head and hugs me a little harder

“Let me go say hello.”

My father loves the outdoors. When my parents decided to expand the kitchen, they decided to add a sunroom at the same time.  Directly adjacent to the kitchen it serves an extension to the existing dining room. It was designed  with great care to ensure that it would allow as much of the outdoors inside as possible. Two of the walls are entirely of glass, a vaulted ceiling with a half-moon window at the top, and sight lines were such that no matter where you sat in the room it was nearly impossible to see anything but the old growth trees and lawn of my parent’s backyard. It had quickly become my father’s favorite room in the house. It is where he would read the newspaper, where he preferred to entertain guests and when the weather was too cold or too wet where he preferred to write. So when it came time to bring my father home for the last time it seemed the best place to place his hospital bed and the accoutrements that went along with it.

Walking into the room it is very hard not to let my emotions get the better of me.  Pops is in his bed, a sheet and blanket covering him to his chest, his head propped up with pillows. His illness had not robbed him of his looks. He handsome and his face belied his 86 years but even with the sheet and blanket covering him I can see how emaciated he was. When this adventure had begun his 6’2” frame carried 222 lbs. Now he weighed just over 140 lbs. The man who had for most of my life had epitomized strength was now so weak he could barely lift a fork. The towering intellect that had made him one of the most important and respected men in his field was now reduced to incoherent ramblings.

I lean over and kiss him on the forehead and said “Hi Abba.”  Abba is not the name I normally called him. Most often it was “Pops” a name I gave him in high school that originally was meant to be a little disrespectful but had become an endearment as I grew older. But years ago, when I traveled to Israel with my Dad I had learned of his “secret” Zionist past and how he plotted to immigrate to Israel before his parents had managed to arrange passage to the United States. Sometime during that conversation I had learned that he loved being called Abba. It made him “kvell” and ever since then when I wanted to be tender with him it is what I called him.

He looked up at me with a surprise look on his face and grabbing my hand in a very strong grip said “Pablo, how was Rio. I am glad that you are home. ” I am completely taken back. According to both my mother and sister this man had been talking nothing but nonsense for the past few days, yet he had remembered that I had gone to Rio.

“It was great Pops. Elaine sends her love and kisses and told me that when you get well you must come and stay with her in her house. She has a room waiting for you.” He gripped my hand tighter and looked at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say “come on, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. There will be no trip.” I grip his hand a little tighter and double down “You will love her house. The bottom floor has walls of glass and there is lovely garden where you can see some beautiful birds and monkeys. And there is a pool where you can rehabilitate yourself. “

My father smiles back at me, his eyes flashing confusion and awareness, as if he were searching for words and cannot find them. Finally, he was great difficulty says “It is good to see you.”

“You too Pops.”

I walk to the couch adjacent to my father’s bed and sit and try to engage Dad in conversation. But the spark of awareness that was there when I walked into the room has slipped away. He continues to talk to me and ask me questions but the sentences are disjointed and don’t make any sense. At one point he begins to recite “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson with a gusto that suggests that he is channeling some old memory, perhaps a school recital. He booms out:

 

 

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns’ he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’

Was there a man dismay’d?

Not tho’ the soldiers knew

Someone had blunder’d:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

 

Listening to him, I am  relieved that he is lost in a difference place. It is comforting to me that he doesn’t know what it is happening to him; that he is lost in some old happy memory that provides him with joy as opposed to being trapped in the reality of the present and facing the unknown of what is next. But there is also a part of me that wonders whether his selection of poetry is totally at random or if there is a deeper meaning. Is he undertaking his own charge into the valley of death.

It is late on very hot, extremely humid day in mid-June. My mother and I are waiting in my car for the ambulance carrying my father in the parking lot of the Berkley Heights Nursing and Rehab Center. The facility is housed in a building that looks like it could be inexpensive chain hotel; a single story brick building with a high, steeply angled, roof. It is surrounded by a large green lawn with little landscaping. It looks pleasant enough but for some reason this place is giving me a very bad feeling that I try to rationalize as just heebee jeebees that I have gotten from too many investigative reporters on television exposing awful conditions in nursing homes.

But I know some of the bad feeling comes from doubt that we have made a good decision to place my father here as rehabilitates in preparation for surgery. As a family, we had almost no familiarity with nursing homes, rehab facilities, and the like. All of my parents immediate relatives had either died quite suddenly or after a relatively brief illness in hospital. Fortunately, or so we thought, the hospital offered assistance in making this decision through their social work staff. I don’t know why I found it surprising that this advice would come from that department. Perhaps, it was because I had always thought of social workers as professional who helped people through various emotional and psychological trauma’s in their lives and while I suppose that our families situation could technically fit that definition the service they provided did not.

Instead of providing with counseling and advice they provided my parents with brochures from the various facilities and arranged interviews with representatives any facility that they wished. They provided no counseling or advice. When we asked them what they thought of one facility or another they would tell us that it was against the policy of the hospital to offer any opinion. When we pressed them a little harder they would tell us that if they could venture an opinion it would not be based on anything but conjecture as they have never visited any of the facilities.

I understand the legal limitations that companies operate under these days. If they made a recommendation and a client had a bad experience that they could and probably would be become part of a law suit. But that is sort of like saying a Dr. doesn’t want to provide you with a diagnosis because he is frightened that he might be wrong and be party to a law suit. The Hippocratic oath states “First, do no harm.” How can a hospital send someone to a rehabilitation center without knowing how the facility operates and do no harm. To us and our experience the social workers in the hospital while kindly were acting more like the three monkeys covering their body parts than medical professionals.

My parents had made the decision to go to Berkeley Heights Nursing and Rehab Center under pressure on a single afternoon, while I was at work. They had been told that my father was being discharged the next day and they had to make a decision immediately. It didn’t given them anytime to check online to see if the facilities have outstanding violations, or to have someone in the family physically inspect the facility. They told me at the time that the reason they had made the decision they did was because the facility was near enough to my parents’ home that my mother would feel comfortable driving there herself, they supposedly had very good rehab facilities, and there representative seemed bright, trustworthy and helpful. But in the end it is a blind decision made more with hope than with solid information.

The ambulance finally arrives we walk to catch up with my father in the lobby of the home. We are not alone there. There is a crew of about 20 residents in wheel chairs in the lobby. They are dressed in clothes that looked plucked from the steepest discount bin and their level of self-sufficiency range from being able to push their own wheel chairs to drooling. They are all staring at us and remind me of a scene from a Stephen King novel or from George Romero’s night of the living dead. It is, in my over active imaginative way, as if they are they are to consume my father and indoctrinate him into this netherworld of human existence. I am both scared and disturbed by the scene.

The walk to my father’s room does nothing to relieve my fears. We walk by several rooms where elderly people lay in their beds staring up at the ceiling, mouth agape with only a television to keep them company. I cannot believe we are putting my father together with these old people.  He is 84 years but he has never been old to me. Two weeks ago he was driving to New York several times a week to advise students, he was working on both a professional manuscript and a novel that he hoped to have published and now we were putting him a home where people are barely living and are being warehoused until death. All that I see scares me and tells me that we have made a horrible mistake placing my Dad here.

But there is also something else within it that scares me. I see myself in a home like this. I am single and have no children. When I get old is there where I will live the final days of my life and warehoused and forgotten? The thought chills me and blink my eyes and shake my head in the hopes that it will knock the thought from my consciousness.

My father’s room is what you might expect from a chain motel 3 months before undergoing major renovations. The room has faux wainscoted walls that are painted white where they are not scraped to the bear wood by indiscriminate movement of furniture. There is armoire made of pressboard that would not pass muster at Walmart that contains a small television. There is a matching locker made of the same material and in the same condition. The floors are linoleum and non-descript except where the floors are scratched and gouged. The bed, which is twin sized, is in the far corner of the room as if it is hiding from the rest of the world and who can blame it.

As nurses and ambulance attendants move my father to bed from gurney a fight breaks out in the hallway between a staff member and a resident. There is a lot of yelling at full volume, the resident claiming he has not been given his medication and the indignant staff member telling him to wait his turn.  They begin calling each other names that suggest they know each other’s habits and sexual preferences before someone separates the two of them before the argument escalated to blows.

Our introduction to this facility had not gone well from the horror film greeters, to the warehoused patients in the rooms we passed, to the unnerving fight we had just listened to. I was horrified and a brief look at both of my parents faces showed me that I was not the only one who was disturbed by this place. My mother was wide eyed and looked as if the thought of touching anything would cause her grievous injury. My father while stoic, had a look on his face that I only seen a few times before…at Yad Vashem and a cemetery in Sopron, Hungry where his Uncle Ede is buried…it is a combination of sadness and anger.

When the folks attending to my father leave the first thing I do is close the door to my father’s room and turn to my father and say “So what do you think?” He looks at me and gives me his brave face and tells me that is nothing he can handle for the few weeks. I tell him that he doesn’t have to stay here. That we can find a better place for him if this place is not to his liking. He tells us that it is okay. That he only has to be here for a few days and that he can handle “Berkley Hardware” for a few days. He is making a joke, referring to a store we frequented when we lived in this town and is a few blocks from the facility.  I am relieved to hear him make a joke evening though this place is not funny in the least to me.

It is with great trepidation that we leave him that evening and as I kiss him good bye I whisper in his ear “You don’t have to be a tough guy. If you don’t like this place just say the word and we will find you something better.” As I drive away  I can’t help but feel as I had abandoned and failed my father.

The next day we return. We are shocked to find his hands looked as he has engaged in a bare knuckle brawl. According to the staff he had somehow managed to wedge his fingers into the loose wainscoting on the wall. They did not apologize for the loose boarding nor did they fix it. They simply bandaged my father’s fingers and moved his bed a little farther away from the wall. In fact they didn’t apologize about a lot of things over the next 10 days. They didn’t apologize for dropping one of my father’s medications on the floor and then insisting that my father take it or for the vile things they said to him when he refused. They didn’t apologize for the daily fights that took place between the residents of the home and the staff that seem to bully them more than caring for them. They did not apologize for the amount of time that it took the staff to respond to my father’s request for a bed pan that more than once left him shitting on himself. They didn’t apologize for a litany of things that made my father’s time at “Berkley Hardware” a time of pain and suffering as opposed to rest, recovery and healing.

Needless to say the inadequacies of the staff and the facility drove us all crazy. My mother was the most effected. Not only because they were slowly torturing the man she had loved for 62 years but because she had grown up the daughter of one of the earliest gerontologists practicing in New York City. His care of the elderly, seasoned with love and kindness, differed greatly from Berkley Hardware where their version of care seemed to be flavored with indifference and disrespect.

From the beginning we begged Dad to let us find him a better place to recuperate. We could not trust this place and we were more than fearful of his mental and physical health. But every time we brought it up he refused to even consider being moved. At the time I thought it was sheer stubbornness on his part but looking back on it now I wonder if it wasn’t something else. Perhaps he was trying to prove to himself that despite his depleted physical condition he still had strength. That even he was not strong enough to walk, mentally he was still as strong when he survived the Nazis in Vienna and the battlefields in Europe.

It was great relief that 10 days after my father’s arrival at Berkley Hardware we returned him Overlook Hospital for the operation that we hoped would return to him the use of his legs.

 

It is early afternoon on Thursday July 12, 2012.

It is a hot humid summer’s day. The type of day weather forecasters like to warn you to drink plenty of fluids, put on copious amounts of sunscreen, and not to go outside if you have any respiratory problems. Cicadas buzzing in the background and somewhere in the distance I can hear a lawn mower’s growl.

I am standing in my parent’s driveway, next to my sister’s car. She is just leaving and I have just arrived. We talk about my father’s medical condition. Over the past two years he has been fighting his body and time in a losing battle with the inevitable. For the last six months he has been fighting the failure of his kidney’s by undergoing dialysis three times a week. Four weeks ago he made a decision to stop his treatment which after a week sent him to the hospital with acute uremia. Three weeks ago we brought my father home to die.

When we had him settled at home and hospice care in place I left on a trip to Brazil to visit the woman I love.  It was not an easy decision to make. I recognized that there was a possibility that my father could die while I was away. But I knew that we were playing a waiting game and that my staying at home would not change any outcomes or that I would have any positive effect on his care. I also knew that I needed to be with my “namorada’s”, she had just lost her father and I knew that being with her would give me the strength I would need after my father’s last chapter was written. She would give me the hope I needed to carry me through the despair that was coming.

My sister had been taking up the slack in my absence. Looking at her in the afternoon sun I am a bit overwhelmed with how fortunate I am to have her as a friend, an ally and a sister. I ask “How he is doing.”

Marissa responds as she normally does, airily with a sense of humor. These are tools she uses as a shield against many things. Today I know she is holding off the grief and sadness she feels about my father’s impending death. Who can blame her. I wish that I had the same ability to replace the heaviness of my heart with humor. “He is doing fine. Goofy.  I am not really sure that he knows where he is but he is in good humor. Yesterday, he was chit chatting all day long and then recited from heart The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayem. And then he slips into long conversations about absolute nonsense but enjoying every word. He was not making any sense but he was very funny and charming.”

“And Mom?

Marissa raises a single eyebrow, a trait she picked up from our father, and replies simply “You know.” I do know.  My mother has been heroic in the past three weeks let alone the last two years but she also has an overwhelming need to control all that is going on around my father and has minor and major meltdowns over minor and major things when they go wrong. Who can blame her, it is her way of coping but her need to manage and edit every situation can add to the stress level of the household significantly.

“I love you M.” And I give her a kiss on the cheek and a hug that hopefully lets her know how much I cherish her. Just as she is about to drive away I lean in the car window and ask “If I see a significant change in his condition do you want me to call or would you prefer to just to call  in for updates.” I am asking the question not because I question her devotion to Dad but because one of the sad facts that I have learned over the course of the past 25 months is that people handle grief very differently. If she were like my brother she would bury her head in the sand and tell me to call her after the last act is written. Or she could be more like me with a need to be there in the end…to make sure that Dad’s passing is gentle, surrounded by all the love we feel for him.  I believe it is better to ask the question than to live with any regrets unspoken and destined to fester.

“Good question” and then after a minute of thought says “Call me.”

As she drives down the street that we grew up on, I make my way up the slate stairs to our front door. There is a part of me that can’t wait to see my father. I have missed him while I have been away. He always loves when I am on trips, especially recently. He loves the adventure and the stories I tell him of life on the road. This is the first trip in my adult life where I have not been able to call and talk to him and I have missed the connection. I also know what is inside awaiting me and dread opening up that door.

It is early in the morning on May 26, 2010 and I am a bit of a panic because I have slept a little later than I wanted to and I am rushing to my office to make a conference call with my Israeli teammates. Luckily, a cab was just passing my building as I emerge so I breathe a deep sigh of relief as the cab makes it way across town on 65^th St.  I take the time to check my email. As many of the people I work with are in Israel they have been at work for at least the five hours and there is usually a surfeit of email at that hour . I am shocked when I flip on my phone to see there are six voice mails from my mother beginning at around 4 in the morning.

Nothing ever good comes from a call in the middle of the night from your parents and my mother’s message is no exception.  My father had fallen on a walk from the bed to the bathroom. He could not get up after his fall and had called my mother to help him. Even with her assistance he could not get up because his entire right side had been paralyzed by the fall. They were now at the hospital. I tell the cab driver to turn around and take me back to the building as my priorities of the day have changed.

Emergency rooms are not amusing places to be. They are full of desperate people whose lives who have taken an unexpected, horrific turn. Folks like me, who have been called with the news of their loved one’s plight, add to the general tension. A horrendous turn of event has transpired with a person they love, and they are caught cold and are struggling to keep up with events and make sense of a new reality. They arrive at the Emergency Room carrying their anxiety like luggage. I was guilty of this myself as I entered the Overlook Hospital Emergency Room. My anxiety compounded by the difficulty of trying to escape New York at the height of rush hour.  I am not a steering wheel pounder but I am surprised that it had survived the trip with all the abuse I had inflicted on it on my drive to Summit.

When I reach the admitting desk, I ask in a voice that is so angst ridden that I barely recognize it as my own “What room is Ernst Rothkopf in. The tone of my voice surprises me and I realize that I am not going to help my parents at all if I walk into my father’s room with that level of unease. When the attendant gives me my father’s room number I take a deep breath,  force a smile on my face, and will myself to notch it down.

Dad is laying on a gurney in an exceedingly small examination room towards the back of the ER. He is wearing a cervical collar and there is pain and some other emotion I can’t identify etched on his face. Mom, sitting next to him in a folding chair, is holding his hand. When she sees me she say’s to my father “Look who is here!” and  gives me hug that contains a choked sob that signals how relieved she is to see me.

My father growl back at me “What are you doing here.” This is not him being unfriendly or unappreciative. It is actually just the opposite. He has always put his children first and me being here is makes him feel he is taking advantage of me. It is also his way of saying to me “I love you and I am glad you’re here but I can’t be a tough guy if I admit to it. “ I lean over and give him a kiss on his forehead and say “I don’t know. Someone called me and told me that you were hanging out here and it sounded like fun so I thought I would drop by.”

He smiles at me despite his pain. We have both completed the ritual of two males who love each other very much but are more comfortable with code.  I ask him gently, “So how are you doing?” He tells me simply that he has felt better and after I acknowledge that I have seen him look better and then ask “Tell me what happened.”

He tells me that around 3AM he had gotten up to “take a leak” and had stumbled near the foot of his bed and then fell. When he tried to get up from his fall, he found he could move his arms or legs. Frightened he had called for my mother, who was sleeping in a different bedroom, until she had arrived. Together they had tried to get him up but to no avail.  Finally, they had called 911 and they had come and taken him to the hospital.

My father’s fall is not a surprise to me. He has been having problems with foot neuropathy (lack of sensation) for over a decade.  I first noticed it on our trip to Alaska almost a decade before when he could not maintain his balance walking in a lake. He had seen specialists in orthopedics, neurology, physiatry, and even chiropractic medicine’s but none, to his frustration, had provided him with an adequate explanation to why he had developed neuropathy or how to treat it. Some of his frustration was self-inflicted. My father is a man with an over powering intellect and in most cases he is the brightest guy in any room. And he is a scientist. The combination produces a healthy skepticism about any answer if the person offering that opinion could not adequately explain it. If a doctor offered him a solution that he couldn’t explain or justify my father would at best question it or ignore it all together.

For example, we had visited a physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York who is considered the foremost expert in the world on neuropathy. The Dr. said he did not know whether he could help Dad, but he had some approaches that he thought would be worth trying. The first step (pun not intended) was my father having some MRI’s taken of his neck and spine. Dad told him that he just had MRI’s taken and in fact had brought them with him, but the physician had insisted that new ones needed to be taken otherwise he could not treat my father. My father had grumbled about this for weeks. Delaying and postponing getting the tests done because he just couldn’t or wouldn’t see the need in taking this tests.

I ask him if he is in a lot of pain and he says no as long as he remains still he doesn’t hurt that much. So, I say “A priest, a rabbi and a reverend walk into a bar and the bartender says What is this, a joke?” Pop grimaces and says “Carol, he is trying to kill me.” This is a part of our normal banter when he has been hospitalized. I tell him bad jokes that he has heard hundreds of times before and he pretends to be pained by them. It is our way of acknowledging each other and telling each other we love each other without getting sappy about it.

Eventually, a Dr comes in. He, like many emergency room Dr’s, is very brusque and to the point. He tells us that he is from the Summit Medical Group, a collective practice of physicians in the area that treats the old man. He says that my father’s x-rays have come back negatively and that his neck is not broken. That they can’t determine whether or not my father has had a stroke but for now they can remove the cervical collar because it is not doing my father any good. He also casually mentions to us as he is removing the collar that the likelihood is that Dad will never walk again. He either is completely oblivious to his patients comfort or distracted or both because he is very rough with my father removing the cervical collar resulting in my father screaming in pain as the collar comes off. I have never heard my father in pain before and I am stunned into silence by his pain and the Dr’s awful behavior.

After he leaves, I am so angry that I cannot speak. I don’t know how physicians are trained to behave around patients but clearly they should not drop bombshells like a person never being able to walk again casually as if they were describing a case of flatulence. They should never be in such a hurry to accomplish a task, like removing a cervical collar that they cause the patients to scream in pain. I am about to head out the door to find the physician and give him a piece of my mind when another Dr appears at my father’s bedside. She too is from the Medical Group, a neurologist, and she wants to test my father to see if my father has had a stroke. Where the first Dr. was brusque and abrupt, she is patient and gentle with my father. She completes her exam and lets us know that she doesn’t think my father has had a stroke but that there is likely some neurological damage to the neck and wonders why they have removed the cervical collar. When we explain that the previous Dr. has done so she just shakes her head and gently places the collar back around my father’s neck.

As she leaves the room I ask her if I might talk to her for a moment.  Stepping into the hallway I thank her for the kindness and then tell her that I want part of the medical record to show that the first physician is not to see or treat my father. His behavior and actions were outrageous at best and  I thought the Nazi’s had treated my father with more compassion. She asks who it was that treated my father and when I tell her, she gives me a look that tells me that this is not the first complaint she has received about this guy. She promises me that she will be guiding the case from now on and for me not to worry. As I go back to my father’s cubicle I realize that medicine in this time is more about process than the patient and that Pop’s treatment would depend as much on us as it will the Dr’s,  some of whom seem to care more about the amount of money they bill than how they treat their patients.

The rest of the day slides slowly past. It is taking time to find my father a bed on the neurological floor of the hospital. I tell my father jokes and we chat but he is pretty heavily drugged and so he sleeps most of the time. Mom and I chat but there is only so much we can talk about while my father is sleeping so we are most lost in our own thoughts.

I wonder whether the damage to my father’s spine is permanent. If he is paralyzed what will it do to the man who at age 84 still went to work every day, who worked out three times a week, and who been living an independent life since grammar school. I try to push thoughts out of mind that are negative but deep in my soul I know that this is the beginning of the end.

Mom is dozing in her chair. Even though it is early afternoon her day is already 12 hours old. I wonder what the consequences of the day will mean to her. It is not difficult to recall a conversation from a car ride on a hot summer’s afternoon, the last time Pops had been seriously sick. “I have never been alone” and the tears that followed echo in my memory.

The Henry Liss Neuroscience center is located on the fifth floor of Overlook Hospital. It is considered one of the best care facilities in New Jersey for those who are experience neurological disorders and it is named for a close friend of my parents who was a pioneering neurosurgeon. It is here they bring my father late in the afternoon. As the nurses examine my father and get him settled into the room, my mother gives Henry’s wife Amy a call. She is hoping that she can use Amy’s resources to find the best available physician to treat my father.  Amy, who takes her husband’s legacy very seriously, promises that she will call a surgeon that Henry trained, Dr. John Nightly and make sure that Dad is treated with the utmost care. We leave the hospital that evening knowing that we have done all that we can and hopeful that Dad will recover the use of his legs

I arrive at the hospital early the next morning as a member of Dr. Knightly’s team, Dr. Singh are beginning their exam of Dad. He is very arrogant and is wearing his lab jacket as if it is a ducal robes. I am instantly reminded of the old joke “What is the difference between a neurosurgeon and God? God doesn’t operate on the brain.” He is confident, brusque, and speaking so quickly you wonder if he is late for another appointment. He informs us that Dad has taken a profoundly serious fall. (Thanks) That if he had fallen a little harder or landed just a bit differently, he would either be paralyzed from the neck down or dead from his cervical spine being driven into the brain stem. He tells us that the only way for us to proceed is operate on Dad to stabilize his spine or even the slightest of spills could kill him.  However they cannot operate on him now as they need to reduce the swelling and give my father time “to rest” before the surgery.

Dad asks him whether he will regain the use of legs again he tells him, brusquely and with little apparent consideration that there is a 99% chance that he won’t. That is his parting line and it leaves us feeling far worse than when he walked into the room.  Mom, the daughter of a physician is outraged over his behavior and uses language to describe his behavior that is better suited to a rapper than a grandmother of four. We  agree that we need more medical opinions than the one that was just provided so my mother once again gets on the phone with Amy Liss and gets her to promise that she will get Dr.Knightly to examine my father directly.

We spend the rest of the day sitting my father. My mother reading the ink off the NYTimes and I working on my computer. My father spends the day shuttling between tests to further map his injuries and sleeping. In our own way we all are thinking of how bad the situation is and how much worse it could have been. We all secretly hope for some magic way out of this hole we have found are selves and worry about what the future holds for my Dad.

The only good news of the day comes when they start administering glucosteroids to my father. They are being given to him to reduce the swelling of his spinal cord but they have a wonderful side effect. They take a man who has been worrying over whether he would walk again and turn him into a confidence generator. My father has always been optimist, how else does one survive a holoacaust, a war to end all wars, and George W. Bush but now he is like a good vibe transmitter. His mood is so good that I take a picture of him to send to David and Marissa. It shows him in a hospital gown, cervical collar around his neck, smile on his face giving the camera a middle finger salute. At the moment, I thought it was a turning point…a moment where he made the decision that he was going to fight back against this piece of bad luck and perhaps even kick its butt.

We get further encouragement on his prognosis the next morning. Dr. Knightly arrives followed by an entourage of attending physicians and nurse practitioners. They huddle about him in much the same way as drone bees attend to a queen as she makes her way through the hive.  Normally, this type of entrance would leave me a little cold. A Dr. arriving with entourage is sort of like a man arriving on a first date with driving a Porsche, it makes you wonder what other type of deficiencies he may have. However Knightly is very personable. He charms my mother and father by saying lovely things about their friend and his mentor Henry Liss and then in very calm tones proceeds to tell us that from what he can tell from the various images that have been taken of my father’s neck that he very nearly killed himself in the fall. A little more energy one way and the spinal column would have crushed the brain stem; a little the other way and my father’s spinal column would have snapped. That at this point, Dad’s spine is severely unstable and that the only way to ensure that Dad’s next fall will not kill him is to surgically reinforce the spine by fusing his cervical spine.

My father asks him “Will this operation allow me to walk again?” Dr.Knightly responds without hesitation. He says” There is absolutely no reason that within six months after the operation you shouldn’t be walking again.” The relief felt by all of us at this point is palpable. Give this guy anything he wants, he is saying he can help my Dad walk again. We forget in the moment that he is a surgeon, who like a mechanic on a car can and will promise you anything about the success of the repair because he is not the one who will have to drive the car afterwards.

My father asks when he can have this surgery and Knightly lets him know that his body needs to heal a bit before they operate. Not only does the swelling around the spinal column needs to subside but he needs to regain his strength as the procedure he is suggesting is massive and will last at least five hours. Knightly also explains my father’s recuperation can’t take place at home…we need to find a facility that can care for him medically for several weeks while he heals. He tells us that there will also be scheduling issues that need to be worked through and some more images that need to be taken and the details will be handled by his staff. We thank him and he and his entourage disappear as if they had never been there.

{To be continued tomorrow May 15, 2020}

 

Last night I dreamt I was at “big” Kings on old Rt. 24 in Short Hills.

It is a supermarket that I know so well that I can put together a shopping list on an aisle by aisle basis. I guess shopping in the same store for over 40 years will do that to you. But in my dream, I was not there to do a “big” shop. I was there on a tactical mission. First stop, aisle one to pick up a loaf of Calandra’s Italian Bread. Then a quick sprint to aisle three to pick up a large jar of Skippy Super Crunch Peanut Butter. I don’t remember paying for either item but found myself in the front seat of my car spreading heaps of peanut butter on chunks of that delicious crusty bread. I could not stop. I just kept eating more and more.

Then I woke up. I found that I still had the taste of peanut butter in my mouth. It was such an intense flavor that I found it impossible to roll over and go back to sleep despite the fact it was 3am. Every time I rolled over and tried to fall asleep the taste sensation of me eating peanut butter on Italian bread would return.

Here is the odd thing. While I like peanut butter and almost always have a jar in the fridge (yes, I am one of those) it is not even close to being one of my favorites. Yet, I could not for the life of me get the taste of peanut butter out of my mouth. It was so intense that it forced me out of my bed and downstairs to the kitchen for a mid-sleep snack.

I was joined by Romeow on my kitchen raid. I am amazed how much noise a single cat can make walking down the stairs. He is making more noise than I am, and I am wearing flip flops. It might be time to cut back on his food ration.

The cat, tail in full question mark position leads the parade into the kitchen. He runs (more of a swaying waddle) and leaps surprisingly well onto the counter where his food is kept. I am relieved when he does not crack the granite on landing. Then he meows. It means, I have learned, feed me (imagine Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors with a Brazilian accent and slightly more intimidating) Commanded, I pour a little kibble in a bowl and when he looks up at me as if to say “What are you kidding. More is required” I vow to let Elaine put the beast on a diet.

Cat tended to; I open the pantry doors in the hopes that I will find something that will supplant the peanut butter craving that I have developed in my sleep.  Ideally, I would find a jar of Skippy’s finest sitting there awaiting my arrival. Sadly, that is not the case. The care package my nephew Sean has sent me 3 weeks ago, that contains this precious cargo,  has been held in customs for three weeks. I scan the shelves and finally fixate onto a basket that contains our collection of crackers and other savory snacks.

I am excited when I see a familiar metallic blue bag that I suspect may contain peanuts. While not the chunky stuff I am jonesing for, it is adequate for tonight’s craving. When I examine the bag more closely I am saddened to find Amendoim Tipo Japones and this variety is “Mais Croconate.” For those of you lacking Portuguese language skills it means extra crunchy peanuts Japanese style. Many people enjoy this style of peanut, which is essentially a deep-fried batter dip peanut and, in this case, extra crunchy. I enjoy them from time to time. But at this moment in time I am wondering why you take a perfectly good product and batter dip it. I feel the same way about Oreos at state fairs. Just say no. And so, I do.

There are a variety of other crackers in the bowl and my eyes light on a product called. Pit Stop Recheado Integral Peito de Peru. It sounds melodramatic (imagine it being said dramatically with a deep male voice with a Lusophone accent.) It means whole wheat crackers stuffed with turkey breast filling. I decide to eat it, while I am scrounging up something else that can better soothe my itch for peanut butter. I am surprised when it actually tastes good. Sadly, there are only two crackers and my hunger are quite a bit bigger than that so I continue my foraging.

This takes me to our refrigerator. I did not want to go here as what is stored inside almost by definition will have to be reheated in the microwave. I have long thought that if you are having to use a microwave during your dark of night food scavenging, it ceases to be a snack and becomes a meal. And, I am on a snacking mission.

I see almost right away the remains of our meal from the night before. Chicken parmesan. Back home in New Jersey this is one of my favorite comfort food meals. I revel in the rich bath of Napolitano red sauce and its rich coating of Mozzarella, But I have suspected for sometime the Italians who immigrated to Brazil came from a different region than those who came to US and the New York Metro area. The sauce is not as rich, and the chicken looks like it has been blessed in sauce instead of bathed. The Mozzarella tastes different and is stingily applied. Finally, they add a layer of ham between the chicken and the cheese. It is not unlikeable. It is just not home.

This leads to other food imponderables.

Why ham in everything? Well maybe not everything but the lasagna I had the other night had a layer of ham in it. It didn’t taste bad, but I would have preferred a layer of mixed ground beef and Italian sausage. The other day Elaine ordered a side dish of French fries, hearts of palm, and ham. Again, not bad, and high marks for imagination on the pairing, but I am still left wondering why?

Don’t even ask about Pizza. Perhaps I am spoiled having grown up in the region that is responsible for the finest pizza in the world but the Brazilian version while having a crust, sauce and toppings is more like soggy bread with stuff thrown on top. For god’s sake, they eat it with a knife and fork. The most stunning indictment of Brazilian pizza is that the best we have found is delivered by Dominos.

I would love to find those familiar Chinese food take out containers in the refrigerator. I would love some everything fried rice, mooshu pork, sesame noodles…. But I know I won’t find the remains of anything like that in the refrigerator because as far as we have been able to determine it does not exist in Rio. Mexican…yes, Japanese…yes, Arab…yes, kosher. Yes, German…yes but Chinese no. Well actually that is not true. There is a restaurant called China Box, but the food is so vile it begs the question that the most popular food in the world has not established a foot hold here in South America’s most populous nation.

Perhaps it is the farofa factor. Farofa is a toasted cassava flour usually served with egg, bacon and other add ins. It has a subtle flavor and a texture that many consider akin to sand. I like it. But when I am in the United States, I don’t miss it at all. On the other hand, when Elaine is in the states, she yearns for it, so we keep a supply of manioc flour in our pantry.

Then there is Brazilian cream cheese. It tastes good, albeit differently, then what we have back home but instead of having the consistency of butter it resembles plain yogurt. If you could find a bagel there would be no schmearing, it would more closely resemble spritzing.

I close the refrigerator door. There is nothing within that interests me. Briefly, I consider raiding he freezer and my stash of Ben and Jerry’s Doughlicious but in addition to its being precious merchandise my hungry is more savory.

It is then I realize what my dream was all about. It was not about Skippy Extra Chunky. It was missing my comfort food at a time when comfort food consumption should be mandated by law. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who once wrote “An Oreo, an Oreo, my kingdom for an Oreo.” Sadly, I leave the kitchen realizing that there is nothing here that will scratch that comfort food itch. “Perhaps, Sean’s care package will finally be released from customs tomorrow.”

When I reach the stairs, I make a note to ask Elaine if we can order from Bob’s Burgers (can you believe it) tomorrow. Their milkshake, French Fry, 200-gram cheeseburger combination is as close to American comfort food as you can find near us.

I crawl into bed. Elaine is gently purring, and I know that all the comfort in the world is wrapped up in her. But still, I fall asleep hoping to dream of Sloppy Joes.

Mark Twain was fond of saying “There are three types of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

I was thinking about that particular quote while reading The New York Times this morning. I had just read an article by  Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman and Linda Qiu titled “White House Orders Staff to Wear Masks as Trump Misrepresents Testing Record.” The article said that Trump claimed (and proclaimed via large banner adjacent to the podium) “America leads the world in testing. While the statement may be true in absolute terms it is patently false on a per capita basis. Germany, Russia, Spain Canada, and Switzerland and at least 20 other countries do better than US in testing per capita.

I thought the article an important read. I thought that if  people read the article would help inform that about the misinformation that the White House is perpetrating in regard to Covid 19. I was thinking of posting it. But then I remembered that quote and all the arguments that I have had with “Trumpists” (a term coined by others, but I take to mean an unwavering supporter of Donald Trump.) Typically, they love to use random falsehoods and statistics to claim that the mainstream media is misrepresenting the truth. In this case, the President delivered his statistical argument that we had tested more people per capita than “South Korea, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland, and many other countries”

Then I thought of another statistic, that my wife and I had been discussing a few minutes earlier. We both noticed that when we post serious articles (e.g. an article I posted yesterday about Trump’s racist remarks to a CBS reporter of Chinese descent) they have a very low response while flippant or off color remarks about similar subjects produced large response from social media. An example of this might be a post my wife and I created about  President Bolsonaro of Brazil on Sunday. Using a meme originally created for Donald Trump “If you could heal Covid 19 sacrificing just one person, who would it be and why did you choose Bolsonaro.” That meme generated over 1,000 shares before it was blocked by Facebook as “hate speech.”

It occurred to me, that while posting an article that is serious and contains valuable information, that could help inform and make those who read it more knowledgeable and, would make me feel better, the social impact would be negligible. And of course, the only ones who would comment or respond to it in any way are those who already agree with me. While there is value in sharing information with those who agree with you in that increases the group zeitgeist it would do little to change opinion or inform those who disagree with you.

So why post the article. It gives me an opportunity to vent my outrage and when people respond in the positive and to some extent negative, I feel rewarded. As a big fan of BF Skinner, I recognize it as a prize in the operant conditioning paradigm. Which of course keeps me posting so I can continue to get those attaboys. It also makes me feel like I am being heard which in the days of social isolation is especially important when you are 5000 miles away from home as I am. Perhaps, there is also a touch of a hero syndrome thrown in. Fighting the good fight regardless of consequences makes you feel larger than you normally would in life.

In other words, the only reason to post, is because it makes you feel better. That is not a bad thing. But understanding it is helpful self-awareness.

This first cup of coffee analysis also made me think of something else. Beyond, what I am going to post comes what am I going to believe? There is so much data mining going on right now to create statistics that support a person’s own point of view how do I discern what is a “lie, damned lie and statistics.”. With so much data mining to produce statistics that support a partisan point of view how do I know what “fact” is and what is data manipulation.

I believe the first rule is never believe anything that Donald Trump says as “the truth.” Statistically speaking it is unlikely. Since becoming President he has told nearly 20,000 lies, falsehoods, or misleading things. That is an average of over 16 untruths per day of his presidency.

BTW the above is an example of datamining to support a political point of view. But that brings me to my next point.

When I was in 8^th grade my social studies teacher was Mrs. Segal. She believed that the reason we should all want to study the social sciences could be found everyday in the newspaper, or on the nightly news from the networks. She keenly aware that history was a matter of perspective. That different people could view exactly the same thing and based on personal experience, training, and a host of other things, would see and report differently. As a consequence, she set out to teach us how to consume the news in a balanced way that would lead to a fair interpretation of the facts. Here are some of her tips:

• Read news sources from differing points of view. My own political points of view are more in line with CNN and the New York Times. But I watch Fox (usually at the gym as my annoyance with the commentators fuel the fervor of my workout.) and read the Wall Street Journal. While this may not ensure complete balance, it does provide perspective.
• Look for consistencies between news sources. Where news agencies agree is the most likely the nearest thing you will find to objectivity.
• Does the website employ standard, accepted journalistic standards such as multiple source rule? This does not preclude them from making mistakes or non-journalistic sites having valuable information, but it helps in removing the grain from the husk.
• Do they publish retractions? New sources that do not publish retractions cannot be trusted to publish the truth. Put it another way, if you had a friend who never admitted to making a mistake would you trust them when they told you they had not made a mistake.
• How do they make their money? News sources that have only advertising revenue are most interested in page views or copies sold so have a greater temptation to bolster sales through false hoods and half-truths to boost sales as opposed to new sources that have multiple sources of income including subscriptions.
• If what they are reporting, seems to be convenient to their point of view then it needs to be supported by outside, reliable news sources. E.g. If an anti vax website reports that Dr. Fauci has been linked to vaccinations that murder 1,000s then further investigation is required.
• Who are the authors of the story? If there is no byline search out verification of the story. If they have a byline, then you should check what else they have written. Were they plagiarists? Did they publish false stories?
• Check the date. News changes with time and what was relevant and important yesterday may not be newsworthy today.

All this from thinking about one Samuel Clemens quote. Perhaps less coffee at breakfast is in order…are their statistics on coffee consumption and tangential thinking?