There is rarely a day when I don’t think of my Mother and Father. In fact, I can’t remember one. How odd, it seems to have reached an age at which one’s parents are gone (well, apologies, Dad, who abhored euphemisms for “dead”).
It is not as if I’ve no family to which to turn. But there is most certainly a void, and a rather severe one for me, as I had an extraordinary upbringing, family life and so forth. It was not without challenges, but my recollection of the negatives are minimal, insignificant.
My Mother, a psychiatrist was relatively acute until the last three or four days of her life. Her short term memory had dimmed, but her wit, intuitiveness and insight seemed not to have faded at all. Of course, the day before she died she recalled Trude Heller, a remarkably hot number who owned a small, old fashioned supper club across from our home on West 9th Street when I was growing up in New York.
My Father, a writer and politico, was sharp on the last day of his life, though I was not there. I was fortunate enough to have spent a week with him less than a month before he died. I recall that he had some hip and leg pain; he wouldn’t mention it, but one could see that walking was somewhat of a challenge. He, of course, refused a walker, preferring his Kenyan ironwood walking stick. Our last conversation was about fishing in Maine (where he preferred to be) and a book on which he was working, Benjamin of Tudela. It was unfinished before he died and it is a chore, Dad, to work on it as it’s quite dense, but I’m on page 180 of revision.
It is hard sometimes to grow old I think. It is not the aches or pains that take a bit longer to dissipate, but rather the approach-avoidance to memories that bring both joy and sadness
