The Battle's Over

Since hearing about my father's death in London which occurred last spring, but which was not reported to family members, I've been struggling with forgiveness for his widow for daring to isolate him from the rest of us, for daring to hold a funeral without us, for refusing to answer our calls and mail begging for more information. My therapist (I live in California, where you have to have a car as well as, eventually, a therapist) tells me how good I am about rationalizing the shitty behavior of others before I've really had a chance to fully experience my true feelings. Well, yeah ! Who wants to fully experience shitty feelings? I suppose I'd rather rush to forgive so I don't have to get my hands bloody with murder - a reverse Lady Macbeth, that'd be me.

It's true that a part of me wants to rush over and bash the door in with a fireman's axe, grab a few souvenirs of my dad, maybe a tie for my son, a couple of photos and records, nothing more, and holding the widow at bay with my steely determined gaze, demand an explanation,
dammit !!

But this would be aggressive, violent, and not what my lovely mild-mannered Dad would have wanted me to do. I'm wondering though if what she did was endorsed by him. Did he really want to be isolated from the rest of the family in his declining months? Did he encourage her to think she was acting correctly by telling her to keep his illness and dying as something just between the two of them? And if he did, was that because he didn't want to bite the hand that was literally feeding him? Or was it the old "I don't want to upset my family with the truth" excuse because he couldn't deal with us being upset?

If you can't be with the one you love, goes the song, love the one you're with. Well that's just f-d up and doesn't apply to an old man who told me, as he did on his 90th birthday that the best thing that happened to him was my sister and me. He didn't hesitate: "You and Sheilah" he shot right back when I asked him about the best thing in his life. It made me cry, because it just confirmed the love I always felt from him and more love for him welled up with the tears. I cry now because I miss him and didn't have a chance to say goodbye, tell him one last time how much I love him, thank him for passing along his genes, picky and annoying as they are.

He might just as well have been on Mars for all the access we had to him. Once he was bedridden, the phone calls, messages and mail all ceased to flow as it had previously. I didn't want to think ill of my father's wife, but I began to think something wasn't right. According to my sister, who was favored with the occasional check-in type call from Dad, they both blamed the shitty UK postal service, which might well have accounted for one or two stray cards and letters but not every single one over the course of at least 3 years. Something as unright about that as a crackpipe in the queen's pantry. Finding out about his death through my Dad's next door neighbor was equally unright, and needs to be accounted for one day somehow.

So, I made it as right as I possibly could by giving the old man a send off party to which I invited friends old and new to witness his musical genius, murmur over family photos and raise a cup of tea together at his Celebration of Life memorial service last Saturday. Most of the ladies from the church's flower team showed up the day before to adorn fat and skinny vases with freesias and lilies for the tea tables, narthex and buffet tables and the effect was simply stunning. A dear friend helped me to lug in and arrange two enormous vases of tropical ginger and orchids onto pedestals in the church sanctuary in an effort to create a warming exotic tropical mood for Dad, whose favorite tv show was Hawaii Five-O, because, he said, the locations were so appealing. A young bagpiper droned and marched smartly to Green Hills of Tyrol, The Battle's Over, and Amazing Grace, causing a few more tears (my cousins says the Scots deliberately intimidated their enemies by marching into battle with pipes that reduced even grown men to tears). The Scots abroad dare not marry or die without bagpipe accompaniment.

My beloved Wednesday night singing and djembe drumming group showed up in dancing shoes and bright ethnic silks, my Native American sister spoke and drummed, my Hungarian sister spoke about Dad's political bent, and sang a Hungarian freedom song, God and Jesus were barely mentioned, though snuck in via the minister and a gorgeous song about God's breath breathing us. My daughter and I spoke, sharing a few memories, but I'd left my script at home and couldn't find the cue card so had to wing it and of course only remembered a couple of embarrassing Dad stories from the early years, nothing too deep really.

A young dancer friend and I choreographed a tribute which we performed as a duet to one of Dad's pieces called Dreamy Fugue, a sensuous jazzy number worthy of Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly. We danced a tale of love, jealousy, separation, forgiveness and reconciliation, two dancers representing the four main women in Dad's life, my sister, mother, his widow and me. We danced offstage, down the center aisle, looking back at his portrait on the piano on stage, next to a yellow pencil, to remind me of his eternally composing self, the Dad who shushed us when he was communing with his Muse, scribbling on his manuscripts. We released him with a backward glance, the family tartan scarf shawled around both our shoulders as a memento of his earthly self.

Later, teatime included a too dainty version of Dad's favorite banana date sandwiches, the caterer having sliced off the crusts and cut the bread into triangles. Whereas he would take a slab of his own home-baked loaf, roughly mash a whole banana on top, sprinkle it with chopped dates and dig in, mouth like the jaws of a back hoe, grunting with pleasure. Cakes and finger food, tea in silver pots on pretty linen-clothed tables, all very like a British tea party, which the widow would have enjoyed, the bitch (oops). One thing about her that Dad always said: she was very good in the creature comforts department. I have to confess that goes a long way with most of us and I am grateful, truly truly grateful for all the loving care she lavished on him over the years and for all the sacrifices she had to make to care for him at the end and I am truly sorry for the enormous loss of love and purpose in her life that she must now be suffering. We cannot ease anything for another if the doors are stout and firmly locked. I'm very sad about all this.

My dear son, the swing dancer, drummer and dead ringer for his grandpa, showed up in a SUIT and tie !! He produced a Ken Burns' type montage of photos and background music from Dad's old vinyl lp, featuring Dad's exotic brand of jazz compositions inspired by Schoenberg's 12-tone technique. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZPuXSf4l8s). We danced to a collection of swing numbers from the era of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, the Dorsey brothers, Ella and Frank. Imagine, dancing at a memorial, some might remark. Yes, it was one of my favorite parts, kicking up my heels with my son, with Larry, watching my two kids dancing with my friends and each other. Dad would have beamed and wept with typically modest and surprised pleasure that all of this was for him.

Thank you Daddy. The battle's truly over.
Yours, aey, Carol.