Tomorrow at this time I, along with my entire family, will be in Los Angeles. My oldest brother’s youngest child (the lovely Miss Izzie) is having her Bat Mitzvah and we, as well as 300 other people, are going to be there to celebrate. Packing up and preparing for this trip (something I don’t so well under the best of circumstances) has proven more emotional than I anticipated.
Six days before David’s first daughter, Becca (who is now - kvell moment – a freshman at Brown…talk about setting the bar high!) had her Bat Mitzvah (or BM as we affectionately refer to it and all subsequent ones) all hell broke loose. My parents were at a late afternoon movie and my father did something not all that unusual…he fell asleep. What was remarkable about this cinematic nap was that my mother could not wake him after the credits had rolled. She nudged, shook and shoved, all to no avail. With the assistance of an acquaintance that happened to be at the theater she got him out to the car and headed directly to the ER. Upon arrival there, they took one look at him, didn’t even ask his name and got him on a gurney and into an exam room. My father was having a stroke. Within hours of his arrival, after all the standard tests, exams and xrays, the doc came in and inquired as to whether he was aware that there was a “large mass” in his chest. Um, no…in fact, he wasn’t aware. The stroke, it turns out, is what lead to the more grim diagnosis of stage 4, metastatic lung cancer. Boom. Just like that. And all he could focus on was that he was not going to miss Becca’s BM. Despite his grand, tenacious (read:relentless) efforts, not one doctor would give him the blessing to go. It wasn’t until one doc told him that if he were her father she would forbid him, that he finally realized that he was going to miss his oldest grandchild’s BM. About this he was more devastated than he was about his diagnosis.
Through the miracle of modern technology, my parents were able to hear every word of the service from the comfort of their den. Becca, despite having awoken with a fever of 104 degrees, rocked the house. Her best friend took over the role of First Aliyah in Poppy’s absence and we all braced ourselves for what we’d been told would be my father’s death within the year.
Two years later, it was Jack’s turn to “be called to the Torah”. Against all odds, my father not only made the trip to California, but even danced at the party. Sure, his step was slower, his hair, just growing back from the chemo, was not quite as full as it had been, but he was there and nothing could have made him happier.
Eight months later, while getting up to go to the office, my father suffered another stroke. This one took his life. As horrible as it was for us to lose him so “suddenly” (I know that sounds insane, but he was truly living with lung cancer and was literally gettting ready to head into work) they told us at the hospital that it was a true blessing as he never knew what hit him and went in a way far more civilized and less painful than had he died from lung cancer itself. His funeral was three days later and, for the first time since Jack’s BM, we were all together.
Tomorrow we will all be together again, this time for Izzie. We’ll all feel my father’s absence, but will also know that he is there with us. I can almost see him sitting in the front row just below the Bima beaming with pride. He loved this kind of stuff – when his children/grandchildren would show the world what he always thought – that they were terrific. We always knew he felt that way mostly because he always told us.
just so he knows I still love him.) Janet is away for the weekend alone with her husband (good thing her daughter got over the barfs from earlier this week), Riva hit the 100 friend milestone and Ellen has changed her email address. Barbara is impressed with my Scramble skills yet Mary continues to kick my ass. Michael has a strange affinity for all things oatmeal (he even went so far as to post a picture of an oatmeal smorgasbord!) and Jade is busily pulling together her daughter’s 17th birthday party (yeah, I appreciate the irony that the 17 year old is not giving the update, rather is the subject of it). Lora made a rhetorical statement about Uggs and set off a firestorm of opining from “friends” while Lydia hasn’t updated her status since last Sunday (which is highly unusual). Adrienne is debating the addition of another dog (and I am glad she has seemingly gotten over not only her cold but her Nyquil addiction) and Ally is trying to recover from her ill conceived birthday party for Parker. It amazes (and, okay, kinda thrills me) that I know all this (and so much more) yet haven’t spoken to a single person all week. Not one phone call or voicemail message. While some consider this the disintegration of human contact as we know it, I consider it a joy. 