My father is alone tonight and he has been every night since my mom died this past Tuesday. Turns out she was very, very sick. And we are very sad.
She was in the hospital for five weeks and worked hard with rehab to walk again. She underwent radiation 26 times on her brain and lungs. And she came home for three weeks to spend with my dad, going to the casinos and buffets and meeting me and Mia.
And last Thursday we got a very optimistic report from the doctor, who thought she looked terrific and pleased with her progress. We were over the moon. But my mom did not want to die a long lingering death. She didn't want to be fawned over and tended to. She wanted to go out her own way. And so on Tuesday, one day after her 75th birthday, she let herself go. Like that.
So, for the second time in the span of two and a half years, I was responsible for eulogizing a person who is as dear to me as life itself. I buried her in a double plot that I had picked out in the Jewish cemetery where her parents are buried. It was a lovely graveside funeral. Mia was unbelievable, so pretty and perceptive.
The Jewish rituals surrounding death, grief and burial are wonderful and supremely comforting. Everything was simple and had a meaning. When they lowered her into the ground, I felt like my mom was at peace.
But my father is not. I am not sure what to do. My dad and I were never all that close. He would be very hard on my mom, which I now see was just his way of trying to make her feel better. When my mom's hearing went bad, she'd put my dad on the phone and I hated telling him all the things I wanted to say directly to her. It was my mom that I felt close to. I even had the audacity to suggest to her about six months ago that she leave him.
How dumb am I? How could I know that he would stand by my mom with all of his strength and love and spirit and show me the most important lesson of my life? What an asshat I am.
But I guess that's the way life goes. I could have never believed that I would be left with only my dad and my sister when I was 42. But life never turns out how you planned. I want to help my dad, but I don't know what to do. He seems so helpless and he keeps blaming himself ... I keep trying to soothe him, I know that it just takes time. I haven't even really begun to grieve yet ...
My faith, though, remains unbroken.
