Reckoning

I am my father’s witness.

He’s been sent home after spending two weeks in the

hospital. Colon cancer is killing him. There is nothing more

the hospital can do. We visit with each other three days a

week, just he and I, from noon until 5 o’clock We’ve recently

completed our eighth week together. He’d agree, I am certain,

that it has been the best time we’ve ever spent with each

other.

I’ve read that a son should ask certain questions of his

father. This I have done. I usually initiate the conversation,

but there was an occasion or two when he beat me to the

punch. I’ve always regarded my father as my teacher. Now

that our time is running out, I must learn to see things as he

sees them, from his inside out and, perhaps with just enough

gentle prodding, he’ll tell me about the stuff he’s never told

me before.

Never inclined toward casual conversation, my father and I

have always preferred the weighty dialectic of issues,

substance. These eight weeks really comprise our last, albeit

extended, substantive exchange, but with one important

difference for each of us.

For me, it is a matter of kibud av, my last chance to better

honor the man from whom I have fashioned so much of me.

For Dad, it is his time to tie up the loose ends, say what has to

be said and what he’s wanted to say. When he speaks to me

now, it is with what I’ll call a “sense of mission”.

It’s been during this time that my father has been fashioning

his cheshbon ha nefesh, his life’s reckoning. It is, I suppose,

comparable to a last will and testament but opened

and read only by The Dayan Emes.

“Alan, come back here in the bedroom.” My dad is not feeling

well today. To see him lying in his disheveled sickbed is a

disturbing sight. I spot his favorite sweater that he so enjoys

wrapped around his shoulders crumpled up in a ball by

the head board. We jokingly call it his “talis”. He wriggles

uncomfortably atop his bedcovers. His head is scrunched up

against four pillows, his frighteningly thin legs

poke through the ends of the same pajama pants he has worn

now for several days. A once robust, barrel-chested man and

golden glove pugilist in his youth, my father was someone

you’d want to have on your side in a fight  “Do you

remember what you said?” he asked me with a worrisome

look. My father is referring to one of the stories he’s been

reading that I’ve written about his struggle and our time

together.

“How you thought I was going to die that morning when

Bobbie (my dad's wife) brought me to the emergency room.”

“Yes, I do remember that all too clearly …”

 “Well son, I wasn’t ready to die that morning and, as a matter

of fact,” he added, “the thought never entered my head.” I

swallowed hard, having just shared a gritty, dramatic moment

with my father. “Dad, when I first saw you in that treatment

room, I was scared at how terrible you looked.  Your skin was

yellow, you were burning up from fever and the diarrhea was

unrelenting. Truth be told, I thought to myself: ‘This is the

end.’ “


Talk of death does not disturb him. He speaks of it almost

detachedly, with the calm acceptance of a man who has

squared his account with his maker. It’s important that I

transcribe the meanderings of his soul before colon cancer

takes him from us. He grimaced.

“Dad, are you all right?” He seems not to have heard me.

“Pain in your gut, Dad?”

“Some yes.” He tells me it’s been coming more frequently.

“I took a couple of Vicadin.”

“Dad, what kind of pain is it?”

 “It feels ‘sore’. You know, how I felt as a kid when I had eaten

too many green apples.” Somehow I was not convinced his

grimace reflected a merely “sore” stomach, but I understood

what he was doing,, he thought, for my sake.

My father and I had gone out in the morning on business

which completely wore him out. We had been able to get out

fairly regularly until just recently when he suffered a

precipitous decline in his health. Whenever we did make it

out, I felt like such a kid walking around with a toothy grin,

wearing a t-shirt with an arrow and caption that read: “This is

my dad!”

It is very difficult to leave my father today on Erev Shabbos.

As sundown approaches, he becomes contemplative, soulful if

you will, as if he had already acquired his neshuma yesaira.

 “You know I was thinking back when you were a baby,” he

began. “You were born with a club foot. Did you know that?”

he asked, his eyes becoming misty. I’ll miss this part of him

most. “No Dad I didn’t,” I managed to choke out those four

words. In truth, I had heard it untold times before, but for my

father, each time was as if it were the very first.

“And I used to turn your foot and turn your foot, again and

again, like this,” he demonstrated painfully and tearfully,

twisting his hands in the manner of one struggling to connect

two rusty garden hoses into one. It was enough to

emotionally drain both of us.

“What time do you have, Son?” he asked me, reaching for the

box of tissues on the nightstand.

“4:45.”

“4.45! You better get going. I don’t want you to be late for

‘shul’.”  

I gathered my things slowly. “Go home Son. It’s getting late,”

he counseled.

I turned to leave.

“Alan, thank you,” he said excitedly.

“Have a great weekend,” I said.

“Good Shabbos,” he responded.

I hadn’t expected it. I think I could count on one hand the number of

times Dad had ever used that expression. It simply wasn’t part of the

language of his world. When I was still new to the observant community,

my father taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten. I don’t recall how

many times I responded “Baruch Hashem” to whatever we had

been discussing on the phone, but it seems I had said it enough to

annoy him.

“Alan, speak to me in language with which I am familiar!” I

feel the sting of his rebuke to this very day. From that day

forward, I determined that I would speak to Dad exclusively in

secular terms. I had never heard him say anything in a

mean or coarse manner, and this instance was no different.

Even when angry, his words never crossed the line from “firm”

to “rude".

Why had he wished me “Good Shabbos”? My guess its

beckoning appeal may have begun to tug at him, a

validation of the difficult choice I had made years before to

become observant.

I leaned over. Kissing me as he had always done, I felt the

familiar scratchy stubble of my father’s unshaven face, but not

surprisingly, it didn’t bother me this time. I inhaled his

scent.

I looked back to his bedroom just before I opened the front

door and saw him peeking around the corner to check on

me. With a gentle wave and smile, he seemed content in

the autumn of his days.