Dubious Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of my father’s death.  Last year at this time I was very involved in a local campaign and had even taken a leave of absence from my regular job.  I knew that the end was near and we were waiting for it, but it still didn’t make it any easier when it actually happened.  Things were so crazy at that time that I only got time to go to the funeral and then get right back to the campaign office.  I still kind of forget that he is actually gone when I think of calling him to tell him something.

Losing a parent is hard they say.  I guess but I think it would be harder if I were younger and more dependent on my parents.  Being as old as I am now and away from the house not dealing with them as often as I did back then, makes me a little more removed from the situation.  My father was really good about calling me often and even though we really didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues, it made me feel important in his life.  I found out at the funeral that he did that a lot with people he was close to.  I often mean to do that with my friends, but somehow things just get in the way and much time goes by and I suddenly realize that I haven’t spoken to someone who used to be a daily part of my life for a while.  Maybe that part of him didn’t make it into my DNA. 

Since he lived in Delaware I haven’t even made it down to see his grave.  It’s not really important to me to do that though because I don’t need a place like that to remember him.  I have a picture of him on my desk and often one of his selections comes up on my iPod, so I think of him pretty frequently.  I kind of miss him, but I often think I should be missing him more.  Maybe if we were closer it would be more of an issue and in some ways I feel guilty it isn’t.  Then again maybe death doesn’t bother me that much because I believe I will see him again.

Slighted

Upon pressure from my mother, I sent away for a copy of my father’s will.  She has been after me since my father died to get back her furniture he took when they got divorced.  My stepmother won’t speak to my mother so she has imbued my brother and me with this task.  I received it yesterday and basically it said she gets everything, which was what my stepmother said when she called to tell me there would be no reading of the will as she suggested there would be.  Also, apparently they don’t do that kind of thing any longer.  I won’t go into the nasty details of the strained relationship between my mother and my stepmother here suffice it to say that it is quite hideous.  My relationship with my stepmother is rather icy so I wasn’t about to ask her about the furniture to begin with, so my only hope was that it was mentioned in the will.

I received the copy the other day and read through it.  I was hoping to see some reference of me in there.  My stepmother, rather unceremoniously, gave me a box of his CDs and told me that my father instructed that I was to get the proceeds of their sale.  I supposed I wanted to see that behest in there, or perhaps some other item.  My name was not there at all!  My brother’s name, on the other hand, was there.  It says that if my stepmother can’t perform the duties of an executor, he was to do so.  I was shocked.  I am the first born and I felt it should be my responsibility to have that honor. Granted, my brother and he got along much better than he and I did, but after all I am his first born child. I suppose since I am a woman, he in his old fashioned ways didn’t feel I was up to the task.  When he wrote the will, he knew he was not going to outlive my stepmother.  She is his junior by at least 15 years to start with.  There was a very small chance that she would not be able to perform the necessary duties in carrying out his will, so having an alternate was routine anyway.

The only thing I can figure out is my gender.  I just can’t believe that in this day and age I, the first born child, would not have that responsibility simply because I am a woman.  Of course I can’t ask him, but it really riles me.  I feel slighted, I feel worthless, I feel small. My father was a very conservative person.  He and I fought about many social issues because of the difference in our beliefs.  Perhaps my brother wasn’t as vocal as I was about standing up to his views even though my brother and I often share the same.  Maybe this was my father’s final word.

Unfamiliar Ground

A good friend of mine’s mother died the other day and since she is Jewish, she is sitting Shiva this week.  I am totally new to this and have never visited anyone sitting Shiva so I had to look it up to see what I should do to so that I won't be out of step with anything that was going on when I see her in a few days.  I found a couple websites that explained what the custom is and what to do when you visit someone who is sitting Shiva.  They were very helpful and now I feel much more comfortable about the whole thing.  I know I will still be a little shy about it as I do with any new experience.

Shiva makes a lot of sense to me.  The family is in mourning and it’s the community’s responsibility to take care of them.  The family does not cook, does not clean, or do anything else because the whole time is devoted to reflection of the person who passed and concentrating on their grief and prayer.  It seems a lot more involved than the Christian custom of visitation and burial with a luncheon afterward.  Having recently lost my father, I would have liked to have more time to reflect on his loss rather than having one day to grieve with family and friends and then having to get back to work.  

Thanksgiving

In a few days, you will be sitting down with your family and loved ones to celebrate a holiday that is uniquely North American – they celebrate it in Canada too, which I didn’t know until now. According to Wikepedia.org:

Thanksgiving in North America had originated from a mix of European and Native traditions.[1] Typically in Europe, festivals were held before and after the harvest cycles to give thanks for a good harvest, and to rejoice together after much hard work with the rest of the community.[1] At the time, Native Americans had also celebrated the end of a harvest season.[1] When Europeans first arrived to the Americas, they brought with them their own harvest festival traditions from Europe, celebrating their safe voyage, peace and good harvest.[1] Though the origins of the holiday in both Canada and the United States are similar, Americans do not typically celebrate the contributions made in Newfoundland, while Canadians do not celebrate the contributions made in Plymouth, Massachusetts.[2]

Over time it has taken on a new meaning – the start of the Holiday shopping season. Santa generally arrives at the New York City Thanksgiving parade and the craziness starts with every store vying for your attention as you ponder which gifts to buy your loved ones. But I digress.

Giving thanks on one day is of course meaningless if you don’t really feel gratitude for the things you are blessed with. Some of us give thanks for our family, our health, the fact we have a job, or simply the fact that we are better off than others. We think of those less fortunate and perhaps dole out a penny or two to charities that provide meals for the poor and/or sick and feel good that we have done something, albeit little, to help. Many perform that little ceremony and go around the dinner table sharing what we are thankful for, sometimes shedding a tear when a wee one says something poignant.

What does it all mean unless we practice giving thanks every day? We should, of course and most of us do, but sometimes I think we tend to take things for granted assuming that we will continue in the lifestyle we have become accustomed to without realizing that all too often one event, natural or otherwise, can change our lives dramatically. But before I get into an even more cynical mood, I wish you are yours a Happy Thanksgiving; may you be blessed with all you hope for, for now and forever.

Ghosts

I am not sure I believe in ghosts, but I do believe that our soul does move on, but could be called back for some reason. As some of you know, my father passed away last month and yesterday some weird things happened to make me think that his spirit was passing through to perhaps comfort me, or remind me of something. When I was driving to work, my iPod was playing songs that were either about my father, or of my father – he was a pianist and some of the compositions on his two CDs are on my iPod. Weird how these things happen like that.

I went down to see him one night very close to the time he died. My iPod which I keep at the random setting, played several selections from his CD on the trip down. I kept thinking that it was because he was thinking of me and trying to tell me that things were going to be okay. It has been several weeks since he died and none of his selections have come up on the iPod. Yesterday they did along with My Father’s Eyes and In the Living Years. I know most of you are saying that in all probability it’s just that the random setting came around to those songs, but I refuse to believe that.

I believe that things happen for a reason. We may not know what that reason is at the moment, but eventually we will. There is some reason why those songs came up like that; in that particular order. I believe that my father’s spirit is trying to tell me something that I need to be open to what that thing is. Maybe my iPod will speak to me again.

Good Times

I just finished a book called Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan.  It basically a story about three generations of women and their interactions that takes place in their summer home in Maine.  The house was purchased by the patriarch when Alice and he were first married.  They spent many a summer there and after he died she summered there by herself.  The story takes place mainly during one particular summer while she is there and then the other characters come in.  First she is visited by her granddaughter and then her daughter-in-law and then her daughter.  It is a very good story with some twists and turns that you would not expect.

Once of the reasons I loved the story so much is that it reminded me of the house my late stepfather had in the Poconos.  His parents bought it in the 1930s and when his father died my stepfather was given the property as he was the only male heir.  He and his mother summered there until she passed and then he would go up all summer and my mother would go up occasionally (they had a strange relationship).  The house was situated on the lake with 200 feet of lakefront property which my stepfather had acquired over time.  It was a beautiful place and I loved going up there.  When my stepfather passed, the house was sold as my mother didn’t really want to continue to go up.  It was a very emotional time for me the last time we went up to get my stepfather’s car, which he had left for my son.  We had gone up in the winter and the house was cold and damp.  Even though there was furniture still there, the soul of the places seemed to have passed on as well as the person.

The house, like the house in the story, represented something that was associated with so many memories of friends of my stepfather’s, my family members, and friends that my husband and I were allowed to bring up when we were given the house for a weekend or so.  The times we spent there are a family were memorable but probably special more because of the house than because of my family.  The house kind of represented a third party in the cohesiveness that our family shared there.  After my stepfather died, like when the patriarch of the family in the book died, things began to fall apart.  It seems as if in both cases the person who died acted as a peace keeper of sorts with the house acting as the foundation for everything.  That seemed as if it was a lifetime ago and many things have changed since then.  Funny how a house can be all that.

Watching Your Parents Age

I see my folks are getting on and I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me and it makes us both feel strange

No matter how you tell yourself, it's what we all go through

Those lines are pretty hard to take when they're starin' back at you

Scared to run out of time – Nick of Time

It’s hard to watch your parents go through sickness toward death. My father is slowly dying because he is in heart failure and there is nothing they can do. He is so weak that the operation to fix his defibrillator would kill him. So they have him on hospice care and have turned off the defibrillator part and only the pacemaker remains. He has lost so much weight he is just skin and bones probably because the medication reduces his appetite over the last few years.

I went to see him on Sunday. He lives in Delaware so it’s a long way to go and I don’t get down there often. I speak to him on the phone pretty much weekly, and now a little bit more frequently, but it’s hard for him to string more than a few words together at a time. He was going in and out of sleep because it is hard for him to stay alert because of the weakness. But he was cognizant of my being there. He is on oxygen, which is helping some, but the organs are slowly shutting down and he doesn’t have much more time. My step-mother of course hopes for the best and every tiny change for the better makes her hope more. She is almost 15 years his junior. I don’t quite know why she would hope like that. It is so obvious that he is on death’s door and at this point they are just keeping him comfortable.

He made a statement to me on Sunday that the hardest part was the waiting. I agree. I can only imagine what he is going through knowing that he is dying soon and wondering why he is still alive. There is no quality of life there. I don’t hold out any hope that he will survive this, and that may be callus of me to say, but the man is 86 years old and has had heart problems since his 60s. Unless there was some fountain of youth that was discovered in the next few weeks he is going to go. Miracles like that just don’t happen to regular folk. I only pray that he doesn’t suffer and that he goes quietly and painlessly when the time come whenever that will be. In the meantime I have to contact him as much as possible and let him know I care despite our differences. He’s my father, after all.

Dad

A belated Happy Father’s Day! My day was jammed packed yesterday, but I didn’t get to see my Dad. I intended to see him, but he called early in the morning to say that he didn’t feel well enough for a visit. His health is failing. He has goes into congestive heart failure quite often and now his heart is not pumping hard enough to allow him to get around. Some days he just sleeps. I had sent him a plant, which arrived Saturday and he was grateful for that.

My father and I never had a great relationship. He was away most of the time when I was little, and when I grew up he and I didn’t really see eye to eye on most things. We are actually totally opposite on major beliefs in life. But he is still my father and I feel obligated to pay attention to him. Needless to say, our conversations are short and to the point. I greatly respect his talent, though. He is the most fantastic pianist you will ever hear. You can hear him playing Chopin in this video I did of him.

I remember when I was young. We had moved to Wilmington DE, where he still lives, because he had gotten a job as the director of the Wilmington Music School. As my mother is a pianist also, we had two grand pianos in our living room. My father would invite people over from the school and they would jam for many hours after dinner. My brother and I could plainly hear them in our rooms, but we would sit on the stairs and listen. It was just much more fun to sit there as we felt we were doing something we weren’t supposed to do. When my parents would have parties at our house, music was always showcased. My dad used to do this thing where he would ask someone to pick out three notes on the piano and then compose something right on the spot. A comedian named Steve Allan used to do that too, but with four notes. People would try to trick him up by picking three notes that were on far parts of the piano, but that didn’t faze him at all.

He doesn’t do much playing any longer. He is 86 but still teaches, although he really has one student left. My step mother has taken over doing the teaching. She is 20 years his junior and still going strong. But my father is nearing the end of his life, and it is sad to see him hanging on and slipping away little by little. It seems as if he has lost the strong will to live that he has always seem to have which allowed him to bounce back every time he had a health setback. I keep waiting for that phone call knowing that when it comes even though I have been expecting it, it will still be a sad day.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Relations

My mother called me the other day and prompted me to call my uncle. He is old and feeble and doesn’t have a lot of people calling him, including his own sons. My aunt died about 6 years ago and since that time, he has gotten more and more disabled. He moved out of their house shortly after she died and went to live in a retirement village. He then found that he had prostate cancer and fought that. Since the second round of chemo, he has steadily lost the ability to get around on his own. He is slow, but very determined and I believe he will still driving himself around, although less and less.

I feel a little uncomfortable calling him. I was never very close to him during my growing up; in fact I was rather intimidated by him, and so I don’t really know what to say if I call. It’s like visiting a sick person who is in a coma. Unless you know them really well, what do you talk about? I suppose though, it would a nice thing to do.

Getting Ones Affairs in Order

I have been spending a lot of my time today getting my “affairs in order”. It’s not that I am going to die soon, but one never knows. I thought about this because of my father, who by the way is much better, and discussions with my mother. So I looked up some websites and found two that were helpful, one from the state and one from a church. Both have forms that you can fill out that have all manner of things to have on hand so your family knows what you want done and the location of important documents. I started a binder with sections and started printing out things and putting them in the book. I made up one for my husband too.

I think that most people are scared to think of these things. I guess it’s hard to face your own demise. But it’s eventually going to come and I know from experience if you leave things in an orderly fashion it’s so much easier for everyone. Take my stepfather for example. He left detailed instructions down to the tiniest piece and my mother and his sisters didn’t have to do any second guessing. I mean it was so detailed that he mapped out the role for each person to play at the memorial service as well as the disposal of all his personal belongings. This was far and above his will even.

Of course my mother scoffs at the idea that I get this information from the web. She wants me to go to a lawyer. I am sure that if my estate were complicated with a lot of real estate holdings or money, that would be prudent, but my life is fairly simple.