Not funny, this time.
I have a good friend – let’s call him the Unintentional Lawyer – who has backed into a large chunk of his life. It’s not that he dislikes it, per se; he’s in a loving marriage with a splendid woman, he’s got two smart, kind, articulate children, and he lives in an exciting and dynamic city. UL’s problem is that he hates uncertainty even more than I do, and he’s stayed in a job that, frankly, annoys and worries him, in large part because, as a friend of his once said, UL would rather know that he was in hell than not know where he was. UL has this way of describing unwelcome events. “Life strikes,” he says. And so it does.
The last time we spoke, I believe I described it as my job to deal with the vagaries of my father’s health issues, being the son with relatively larger amounts of time on his hands and the spouse with a relatively lower tolerance for overfunctioning. And, I believe, I confidently forecasted that my father would be fine. But life has struck, as UL would say.
She Who Must Be Taunted and I went to Cleveland for a week, which turned into an additional weekend health crisis, which turned into an additional two-week deathbed vigil. My father passed away on July 5, attended by the kindest, calmest hospice folks you could possibly hope to meet (hospice rocks, folks). I am here to tell you that this is OK. He was 92, and lived on his own until the very end, and you and I should be so lucky.
The things you learn about your parents from people who aren’t you or your siblings can be kind of amazing. I came back to Boston with stories coming out of my ears. His auto mechanic told me about how he’d come into the shop (the Lusty Wrench, it’s called, I kid you not), and hang out in the office while they banged the dents out of his car and chat and sort his stamps, part-time stamp dealer that he was. And invited the mechanic to chamber music concerts. This, the man who, for several decades, existed exclusively to answer the phone and hand it to my mother when I called.
He was himself to the very end. He lectured us, before any of us knew that he was going to have a sudden health crisis, not to waste our money on the fancy funeral home, but rather to make sure to use the bargain-basement cremation service provided by his secular Jewish community. And then, after his kidneys had started to fail, he rallied for a few days, twice a day, to present the morning and evening briefings, during which he’d insist, for instance, that we can get $50 for the lawn mower if we sell it.
And then there were the estate documents, which appointed me just about everything besides pope, and were so complicated that we decided to get in touch with the lawyer who prepared them, who turned out to have been subsequently disbarred for embezzlement. It’s not like it’s any easier in Ohio to get disbarred than it is here – I believe, in Massachusetts, you have to run over a judge or something. My cousin tentatively said, about this state of affairs, that he chuckled in spite of himself. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s hilarious.
As many of my faithful fans know, my dad asked me a number of years ago to “write me a song before I’m dead”, and what came out the other end was the Handyman’s Waltz, which appeared on my most recent album (The Great Indoors, still available at fine bitbuckets everywhere):
The sink was backing up
I didn’t wanna call the plumber
So I turned on the wet vac
And shoved it down the drain
I managed to dodge the hairball it dislodged
And it unflushed the toilet
And I inhaled some methane
And it sucked up some sewage
But it worked just the same
A preposterous human being, like every one of us. A great, kind, rueful, wise, preposterous human being. That’s my dad, people.