My father, myself…

It has been only four days since my father passed – only two days since his funeral – and it still hardly feels real.  We have been overwhelmed by the amount of well-wishes, prayers, words, and deeds of consolation that have come pouring in from our families and friends from all the many stops life’s journey has taken us.  It is impossible to convey the gratitude we feel towards those who have taken the extra step and gone the extra mile.

I managed to get through the eulogy I delivered on Monday and a number of people who were there and an even larger number of people who were unable to be there have requested a copy.  I realize that a significant number of people who read this blog do so for professional purposes.  And although I do occasionally weave personal anecdotes and information through my posts, I typically shy away the overly intimate.  But life is not so easily compartmentalized…

Last week, when I thought things were headed in a positive direction, I blogged about how I believed this experience would be make me a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better person…and most of all, a better son.  I am still hopeful.  But that last one will be awfully bittersweet for an awfully long time…

To my father…

My father was in the best shape of his life when he passed.

This was an irony that was lost on no one, including him, during the week he spent fighting back against the stroke that eventually took him from us.

“Why get in such great shape to have this happen?” he said in the hospital.

At the time, I believed it was to give him the strength to survive it. To suggest that it was to give him – and us – sufficient time to say goodbye today seems cruel, but perhaps in time will be a comfort.

It is easy to make fun of my father.  He certainly had his shticks.

Expressing his political opinions too loudly at the risk of confrontation was a frequent occurrence.  Hopefully heaven has MSNBC…

Treating each part-time tax return like a full-time job.  Hopefully heaven has an Internal Revenue Service…

Eating cereal with warm milk was a daily meal that never seemed appealing to the rest of us.  Hopefully heaven has Cheerios…

Reading book after book after book after book.  Hopefully heaven has a Nook – and good customer support…

A childhood filled with such puns as “Jerry Rice and his brother Fried”.  Hopefully heaven has a generous sense of humor…

Baseball caps and T-shirts from wherever he had just visited. Hopefully heaven has a gift shop…

Checking his messages with obsessive regularity well into retirement.  Hopefully heaven has voicemail…

Taking out the garbage was the one household chore he could be counted on to perform. Hopefully heaven collects the trash…

Changing hotel rooms to avoid noise or the potential for noise was commonplace. Hopefully heaven has a corner room…

Nicknames for the ones he loved most.  Hopefully heaven has my dad…

But my father was more than shtick, although it wasn’t always easy to see.  Expressing his deepest emotions did not come easy for him, but there was never any doubt they were there.  He understood his primary role in life was to take care of his wife, his sister and me and the successful performance of that role was his greatest pride.  Even through their darkest times – the lost pregnancies of my youth and the lost jobs of my teenage years – he was there to protect us and to shield us from life’s difficulties.  He took it all on and mostly kept it all in.  He would bear the weight so we would not have to.  Maybe that took such a toll on his heart that it didn’t leave space for some of the words we sometimes wanted to hear, but his actions spoke loud enough.  It now falls to us to ensure those actions continue to speak on his behalf so that his memory endures.

When I delivered my grandfather’s eulogy eleven years ago, I expressed gratitude that he had lived long enough to see me married and regret that he had not lived long enough to meet his great-grandchildren who were not yet.  Oh how he would have loved our Eliana, named for his wife, and Maytal, named for him.  One of the last things my father said was that he planned to bless the challah at Eliana’s wedding as his father had done at mine…

Oh how he loved his granddaughters…they were his pride and his joy.  Getting down on the floor with them and playing in the pool were his greatest delights.  My father’s father was such an important presence in my life and all I ever wanted for my father was to have a chance to be the same in the lives of my children.  My heart breaks to know he will not have a chance to watch them grow and it shatters to think that they will not have a chance to really know him and that, perhaps, they will be left years down the road with few memories of their own.

These last years were good ones.  For that I will be grateful.  He was slowly coming to terms with retirement and striking the right balance between keeping busy and finding purpose.  He was proud of his work with the IRS and with H&R Block and with good reason. He was proud of his volunteer work with NARFE and within our Jewish community.  He traveled to Israel for the first time and many trips were planned.  He was working out regularly, had lost weight, and was proud of his newfound strength and energy.  He had spent his whole life working and working and thinking about working and now it was time to finally relax and enjoy his wife, his children – for Jaimee truly was the daughter he never had, and his grandchildren. And in the space between his 44th wedding anniversary and his 71st birthday, his time simply ran out too soon.

And so it is left to those of us who knew and loved him best to keep his memory alive.  I am counting on you to share your stories with me and my children so they will always have their Grandpa to guide them, to protect them and to inspire them as they grow up in a world diminished by his absence, but better off from having had Michael Mitzmacher – shticks and all – in it.