Mementos

 I went over to my dad's today, really not to take anything, but to pick up mail. But I went in anyway. My uncle had managed to take what I thought were too dirty horizontal blinds and make them look like new. I decided I would take some more of my father's books and put them in the bookcase that my uncle gave me for the occasion. It's not like I don't have enough books of my own. I have a whole closet made into a library, but I cannot imagine tossing out my father's books. Some of them, surely, I haven't read and probably should before my end comes. But mostly, it is about the memories they evoke, such that they are among the indispensable mementos of my relationship with my father, with my own past, with even my mother, with a place that has long been gone, the old apartment building on Townsend Avenue in the Bronx. Someof these very books I passed at age 6, or 7, or 15, comfortably residing in their earliest bookcases, and they were with him still, in California, and now with me until I pass.

Today I took three large ones, volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's take on history. There is another box full of them and each will be placed in my apartment and kept wherever I might find myself in the next year or two. I have only lately gotten to the books. The very first thing I took from my father's apartment to keep near me were his pipes and the last package of tobacco that he bought at Rite Aid on the corner of Fairfax and Sunset. They were first because the night before his procedure, when he couldn't sleep, he clicked and clicked the lighter to keep the smoke going from his pipe. I watched him that whole night, go from chair to chair, to bed to chair, trying to be comfortable. I think even then the sepsis was more than nascent, a thought I have to put in abeyance for the moment, it upsets me so. He was cold. But he had been cold for months it had seemed. So I wasn't alarmed. The pipes I guess are the closest thing to him alive. I had to have them near. That, and a really ugly jacket he was wearing all the time. If I had had my way, it would have been tossed, when he was alive. But now, that jacket sits in my closet, still with a bit of his scent. Something he wore even that day at the hospital for the "procedure" that would be his last.

I kept, also, his good set of dentures, the ones he was wearing when I took him home that April 4, thinking we had dodged another bullet. When they intubated him, the teeth had to come out. It would be the first thing he'd want back, his full set of dentures.

I told my uncle that I want to keep this one really ugly pan, the one in which my father would make his most excellent eggs on a Sunday when he convinced me to come back to the house and not spend money on Jan's or IHop. My uncle said, "This?" Yup. That. I don't need it for cooking. I don't do but the most minimum of that. But that was part of our ritual, something I admit I resisted, but I now cherish, father and daughter, sitting at the little table in the dining area, putting mayo on our eggs on waffles. He would drink his mixture of orange juice and wine, or a Milwaukee's Best beer, also from Rite Aid.

The slides. The little forks that he used to use at parties with which guests ate their baked clams. The swizzle sticks from all those long gone New York bars and restaurants and several from Montreal, nine months before I was born.

There are many more such mementos that will become part of my apartment tapestry until I decide what is next for me. As I write, I just saw the crucifix that was above his casket, next to the one that was above my mother's, a last memento of each life.

 

 

Ordinary, but Strange, Days

                                                                                        

I haven't done much of import this last couple of days, Sunday, and today, Memorial Day, so it is hard to imagine that I'd have anything to write about in this blog. However. There were a couple of things that seemed to me, at least, messages from Providence, the Very Hand of God. I can't prove it of course. But I just have to note it for blogosphere posterity.

Yesterday, I went over to my father's and organized a bit more, as I have been doing, ever so slowly, and removed  mementos (that will be the subject of another blog this week, I think), that have turned out to be far more in number than I expected. I came home and the weather being warmish, I opened the back door and placed the gate that I use to keep my indoor cats indoors and the outdoor cats, outdoors. They could, if they wanted, jump the gate,but it seems they are disinclined to do so. The suggestion appears to be enough. Well, all except for my newest boarder, Bleu, the largest domestic whitehair, actually the largest period, cat I have ever seen or owned. I do usually keep an eye on him, knowing his predilection for pushing the gate with his powerful nose and dislodging it and out. But I got distracted by household chores, including shredding some 20 year old paperwork, that probably did not need destruction, but I did it anyway. So about 6 ish or later, I notice the gate was askew and I hadn't seen Bleu in quite a bit, and it being circa dinnertime, I was troubled. Still, he is capable, as are all cats, of hiding and when you want them, declining to come to you. I called. I looked in all hiding places he would fit. I shook the crunchie food. All cats came to me, except Bleu. In days past, losing an animal outside obsessed me. I couldn't do anything except look. I remember once getting my father to go in search with me by flashlight and I was in tears at the idea of my first California cat, Hollywood, being left to fend for himself after years of being pampered. We found him in a bush about half way down the block terrified of the outdoors he had rushed to join and found wanting of safety. But with Bleu apparently disappeared, while I was worried, I was not frantic. I wonder why even now. Maybe I knew that he was smart enough that if he wanted to come back he would. Maybe I held out hope he was in this little apartment somewhere. I have seen them come out of impossible spaces that reminded me of how flexible the cat body is. Maybe it was that having lost pets by death before, and most recently a second parent, the fact that things don't always end well was a tiny bit less terrifying. If this was what was to be, though at some level my own fault, then it was. I did not losing this particular connection to my father, the creature who lived with him for the last two or so years, my father did think him to be the smartest cat he'd ever seen. I was depending on that smartness. I also decided, somewhat amused at myself for considering it, more for doing it, to pray for the intercession of St. Anthony, the finder of lost things. I figured that there was no limitation on the nature of the item lost, person, plant, thing, cat. Amused I may have been at myself, but it felt right. And I think I felt my father was involved too, although I did not articulate that to myself overtly.  It was dark, whenI called my uncle and aunt who live in the same block and said that Bleu had probably gone missing, and if they saw a big white cat, the next day, or any day, yes, he was mine. They were getting all worked up, when I decided to take a probably not final look outside my back window. And there he was. Returned from who knows where, the only clue being that his four usually sparkling white paws were quite filthy. He offered no explanation. He came in and went to his dish as if he had not been anywhere at all.  Thank you, St. Anthony. Thank you, Dad.  I think.

Then today. I decided to go to the 12 mass at my parish, both for the extra spiritual refueling I need to face a week without losing my temper, and because it was Memorial Day. I planned on visiting the cemetery, it would be the first time in nearly a month since Dad was interred on April 28, but today seemed a perfect day for it, one way or the other. Not that I think he is there, behind the niche in that little wooden column like box. But it is the last tangible part of him, his body, and so it feels closer. I really talk to him these days whereever I am, as I talk to another friend, and even occasionally my mother who has been gone so very long. But that was the plan. After Church I went to Jan's the diner on Beverly Boulevard I used to coerce my father to eat breakfast with me on a Sunday, after Mass as it happened. He would always lament that he could make eggs better. It was true of course, but I like being out and about, and as he always complained, I was always antsy at his house, just the two of us. But I sat at one table that I recalled us sitting at, getting coffee, and he talking about the politics of the day (he'd really would have opined on the recent Hilary guffaw, and though he was no Hilary fan, he would have taken her side, I am thinking), and then we'd be off to Ralph's, or Jon's or the 99 cents store. Then I was off down La Cienega, which was packed because of a failed light, and it being a holiday, no one was going to be coming to fix it. When I broke free at that part of the drive where the oil rigs still pump, I was enjoying the fresh air, and the few cars now we had passed the jam. In the distance I saw two young men sort of waving, and I thought they were trying to interfere with the now few oncoming cars. Watching them, distrustfully, I did not see what they were actually trying to draw attention to a van, their van, I presume, no hazard lights, no lightsof any kind, and I was about to hit it going at the maximum speed limit, there about 55. I would be dead if I hit it. And maybe them too if it came to that, when I look back at the sequence. I now realized what they were doing, almost too late, and I swerved, there was no time to look left, and see if any other cars were coming, to avoid the van. There was only one choice, and I made it, and I had the thought as I did, oh, I hope there is no one behind me. Split second. And I was past the van. Luck? I don't think so. Providence. It wasn't my time. Or theirs. Thank God. Thank you Dad, cause I am pretty sure you were there too. That whole maneuver did not happen through me or by me. I was saved. Not to say that I expect that one day my time won't come, for I know it will, but it was not today. I thought about that when I got to the cemetery, and talked to Dad about it, pleased to see that the placque with his name is attached now. I prayed a little as I walked the hallway next to the greenery, and breathed deep and grateful. There must be something I have to do. I don't kid myself that it is anything big, but in the tapestry that is our lives, one small thing could have critical reverberation. I have to listen carefully to know what that might be, and do it willingly.

I pray that I am listening, that I will listen, and act when asked.

 

 

 

Irena Sendler

 

Her name should have been so much more well known before now. It should be far more well known than likely it will be now that she has died. IRENA SENDLER. "Save a life, save a world" is, I think, a saying from the Talamud. Oskar Schindler saved about 1100 to 1200 people  from the holocaust and rightly is lauded in memorials and movies. Irene Sendler, who just died at 98, saved about 2,500 many of them children, from the Warsaw Ghetto, as it and its people were being destroyed by the Nazis and so many were sent to their deaths by gun or gas chamber.

Schindler was what is described as an "indifferent" Catholic, and an unlikely hero because of his lifestyle. Sendler was, so far as I can tell, a quiet believer. She was acknowledged by a grateful Jewish community in 1965 as a Righteous Gentile. But mostly she had been obscure. Why would that be? Anyone who does what Schindler did, what she did, should have his and her name repeated, shouted and repeated. And  she did not do it alone. She had the help of 30 people, even more anonymous than she has been since the Second World War.

I feel as if it is a duty to put her name out there, one more time, as if this little blog could make any difference at all. But then, who knows what makes a difference? She deserves our honor. She is a saint, really, in the truest sense, an ordinary person who did the extraordinary and felt satisfaction in the doing of it and the saving of people she did not even know. You see, she was captured, and she was tortured, but she too, in another extraordinary moment, escaped to live to a ripe old age and stand as a model for all of us.    

The light of holiness emanated from her face, then, and only recently.

The Sisters, Servants of Mary, Need Our Help to Help

  We see a picture like this, her name is, by the way, Mother Maria Soledad Torres Acosta, Saint Maria Soledad Torres Acosta, canonized in our own time, 1970 and we think of quaint times, but what does this nun have to do with me?

A great deal because just as in her time, the 19th century, people now, and in the future, are and will be alone. They have and will have little and they need and will need care when they are sick and dying, and afraid. They do it, for free, loving nurse-nuns, that so few know about despite the most magnificent of callings. But once you know about them, and what they do, ministering to the ill, in their homes, not in the sterile and the cold of hospital, for free, how can any of us not take whatever small action to keep them afloat financially, to support their work? Surprisingly, it has been hard to do, to keep them going, because who wants to hear about taking care of the sick, and worse, the dying? "Death? I don't want to think about death," we say to ourselves as if we can put some kind of magic wall between us and our mortality. These women are around death all the time, and yet, meet one of them and what you see only is life! They are happier than most of us with all the illusions that surround us. 

Every year there is a luncheon to benefit them. It helps. Keeps them somewhat solvent. But never nearly enough to help all that need help. So many invitations are sent out, and so few respond. There are bigger, more glamorous causes. But this cause, it is basic, it is foundational, but it is certainly not inherently glamorous.

I am sending this entry as a link to friends. Send it, would you, to your friends, our friends, to caring strangers. There is going to be another benefit luncheon on Saturday, June 28, 2008 at Bullock's Wilshire, 3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, beginning with a reception at 11 a.m. with lunch served at 12:15. It is $85.00 for the luncheon, that's more than their usual luncheon, yes, it's a bit,  but the location changed from last year, in the admittedly worldly hope that a touch of glamor might throw a light on something and someones indispensable that are too little known. If you can go, those who live in Los Angeles, RSVP to El Rita Henneberry, 4214 Holly Knoll Drive, Los Angeles, Ca. 90027. Assuming most people can't come, they are not here in town,  send a donation, any donation--become a sustaining member--there is a small group for now, more, with His Grace, for all indeed is possible with Him and with our cooperation.

Those quaint little nuns. . . they are not quaint at all, they are giants of charity, their ministry and their prayers are gifts of Providence. . ..and your involvement will bring more to you than anything you give. Ask anyone who has been a devotee of the Sisters, Servants of Mary and their work.

It is said we each have a purpose. Maybe this is mine. Maybe it is yours. One small, repeated act of giving to these quiet, humble sisters who love the sick and the dying on their way to Paradise.

By the Power Vested in Me by the Mightiest of the Mighty

Yesterday, I went to a wedding in a dry bed of the Ventura River. Not far away there was a portion of the river, I guess it was part of the river, where water still flowed, not much unlike the picture above. After the ceremony, as the gathered guests clambered over the rocks to the level ground above, I sat on rocks like these and watched the water flow, amazed at this ordinary moment in someone else's life that now was part of the fabric of my own. But, as usual, I get ahead of myself.

My upstairs neighbor, here in the heart of urban Los Angeles, is a bohemian young woman, a burgeoning success at her floral arrangment business. Her apartment is less decorated than populated with every form of plant and flower in transit to somewhere else. In the last year or so, I have noticed a steadily appearing young man, whose sunny disposition is welcoming and catching.

Just after my father died, I received an invitation to their wedding. My first reaction was a reclusive one, plus I don't know her well (ours is more than an acquaintaince but less than a friendship I would say) and I would know hardly anyone there, having met her mother only once. And more than that, the site of the wedding was more than an hour and a half from here, in Ojai.  On the other hand, I had promised myself I would accept invitations without my usual excessive reservation, and this wasn't going to be any typical wedding. It was going to be held at the Mulberry Farm (yes, Virginia, Mulberries do really exist) on which the bride's mother bought a couple of years ago and on which she now resides. Then there was this tantalizing statement on the invitation, "For this outdoor celebration please wear attire that won't shy from much and mire, wear shoes appropriate for a short walk over mildly rocky terrain. . ." One night, when three of her neighbors and her intended were out in the back, in a moment of impulse, I said, "Tell Holly I'll be there". I was committed to attendance now.

Ojai is maybe thirteen miles outside of the developing urbanity that is Ventura, but it might as well be Oz for how different it is from any city dweller's existence. It is horse country for one. I heard them neighing as I exited my car and walked toward the farm. The homes are rustic. One family at one of the homes I passed was outside in its trailer, which I assume they use for vacation travel, making nachos. Some bird cawed. "You're not in the Fairfax District anymore," I said to myself. Well, I did not actually say that, but heck, couldn't miss the distinct change in locale.

The farm was dusty. There was no grass. There were rocks. And mulberry trees shorn of their mulberries, which were passed around in large bowls. I am now a convert to mulberries as a snack, but I have never seen them in any store, have you?  Mostly there were people there, family of the bride and groom, and friends of friends of friends, and me, and one of my neighbors, also invited. They were either much younger than me or significantly older. My neighbor, closer to be much younger than me, was chatting up the pretty girls, and I senses he preferred I not hang about him merely because I did not know anybody. So I didn't. I introduced myself to some people. Some were reasonably friendly. Others seemed uncomfortable, either because of their own internal social anxieties or because I was by myself when virtually everyone else was coupled up.

I decided to make my way to the site of the ceremony, which as I have already said, was a portion of dry river bed connected in some way to the Ventura River. Pretty good walk downward, over rocks and dust and weeds. There is something about sitting on a long bench with others in what was once the middle of water, hills in front, hills in back, green and shadowed with the setting sun. I relinquished my claim to bench, after a long conversation with Irv, seven years a resident of Ojai, born in Philly, his thumb, forefinger and middle finger stained with what I later realized was mulberry juice. Touch em. Eat em and your finger is stained. Maybe that's why I don't see em at the supermarket. Irv and I had found common ground in our love for animals.

I stood on two largish stones to observe the ceremony, as the sun went down and the moon began its full show. There were fiddlers providing music prior to the exchange of vows, mostly Sons of the Pioneer songs, and one definite Roy Rogers, "Happy Trails". Here I am Djinn from the Bronx in the middle of a river bed watching a couple of thirty year olds pledge their love amid the rocks, the birds and the mulberries, and the odd chirping bird, and a bevy of fairly sanguine bees. Who'd a thunk it? Not me for sure. Life is full of surprises if you let it be. I was glad to be here, even if I felt a little bit the outsider.

I am guessing the "minister", a friend of theirs for sure, was only recently ordained by internet correspondence course. Dad, who I learned is a well respected professor at UC Santa Cruz was among the fiddlers.

I stood on two fairly large stones so I could see over the heads of some of the guests and watch the faces on the to be marrieds. They spoke to each other with prepared words. I saw what it was that brought them together, lovers of nature and the simple. To call them Pagan is not to offer insult, for its basic definition speaks to country dweller and the rustic. You could not immerse yourself in the rustic more than here.

Although some of the traditional words of marriage were spoken, like, "Holly, do you take this man, to love, to cherish. . . ", there was not one mention of God in either vows or words spoken over the couple. That is, until the oblique, "By the power vested in me by the Mightiest of the Mighty, I now pronounce you man and wife." Was he talking about God? I don't know. That might suggest He was one among many gods.

Still for me, and I can only speak to my experience here, God, the Almighty, permeated the river bed, the people, the ceremony, even if they did not specifically invite Him. He was there. And I was glad in the Embrace.

Three of us, a father, a little boy, and me walked over to the remaining flowing water, since there were so many people going back "up top" to the farm itself for the dinner buffet. It would take time for the line to thin. I could have sat there for hours, and only my anxiety about being there in the pitch dark that would soon descend made me move from the water skipping over the stones and the swooshing of the movement, and the peace. The little boy, whose name was also Josh, was enamored of the place. He saw it. He saw Him. How could you miss Him. Even if you couldn't name Him.

 

 

 

Back to Normal?

That's kind of what I look like, in between the anxiety and the rage, a fixed smile and far away gaze. Everything's great. Everything's ok. Everything's normal.

I am trying to care about the work I have done for 22 years. I even have been very focused about it, out of habit, it seems. Because I really don't care about it, right now. I could take time off and just sit at the ocean side. But that wouldn't change the experience of what is now normal, another loss. Another big loss. We all have them. That's well, normal.

I have even enjoyed myself a couple of times this last week or two. Normal. Except it seems, wrong, or not normal.

We all go through this at one time or another. We all go through it, a normalcy of loss and maybe a finding of a normalcy of meaning again. Getting closer. Ever closer. Am I making any sense?

 

A Gift

 

My father used to go to a writing class. He had gone for many years. I think he was loved by the people of that class. I know he was. I know because I received a poem, written by one of them, and a contribution of all of them, to the memory of my father. It has life, and loss in it. It made me cry.

Small drips whisper in leaves,

Everywhere water murmurs on slopes-

That’s a song of fall-rain,

Other sounds in the morn, we not hear.

Indian summer leaves

This still space, and the music of drops

Seems ceaseless is the main—

Only autumn today holds sway here.

 

We won’t come to this place,

We’ll just never come hither again.

A familiar retreat

Of our love will be empty and sad.

Now the sky wholly grays

Overhangs glum hills and a calm plane,

Like it says, ‘You won’t meet—

This time went was so happy and glad.’

 

Perhaps someone of us

Will return to the known heights one day

To see this world so nice

Where spring flowers and grasses have grown,

To forget the void fuss

Of a life, and to relish bright May

With its rosy sunrise.

Grieving for something—only one’s own.

 

Copyright Leonid Vaysman

 

At the end of the typed page is a handwritten note. "We will always remember Constantine. His chair remains empty."  The Wednesday Writing Class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's Just Coffee

 

My dad comes to mind in ordinary moments. This morning, for example. I decided to make coffee and reached for the big can that he surely got on sale I brought to my place from his apartment. I was scooping the teaspoons into the filter, and I felt my heart go heavy. It had been an ordinary moment when he bought this can. He had used it several times, made his first cup of the morning, a life long ritual. There will be no more ordinary moments for him. And in my shadowing his movements this morning with that particular can, my ordinary moment paralleled his, and it was suddenly, and passingly, sad.

These ordinary moments remind me of the nano space between his having been here and now not. And of the same for me, for us. It is not a morbid observation. Really, more, it is that I am trying to grasp it, make sense of it, here, now. I believe in a life to come. But in the here and now, when I cannot see that eternal life, in which I believe, maybe more it is hope, fervently, it seems incongruous to go on day after day amid ordinary actions and interactions and then you stop. You just stop. It's hard to get your head around that. I think it is pretty clear you are, I am, not supposed to, or I would not function. It's better that the moment passes, and it just coffee again. And I go to Church and remember the More.

 

 

The Same, But Not

Last week, I went to work. I did what I absolutely had to do. It seemed though that I was wading through sludge. I guess it was emotional sludge. The sludge of loss. Getting to the end of the week was as if I was finally able to let out a long held breath.

This week, after the interment, I went to work. I did what I had to do, and I found myself complaining about the ordinary things of the average day there. I even laughed, loudly once or twice. Things were going back to "normal", but they weren't, were they? Or maybe "normal" is different now.

I passed the Rock and Roll Ralph's on Sunset. I could see my father wheeling his cart toward the Sara Lee frankfurter rolls for his Hebrew National franks. I have called his home phone a couple of times to hear his outgoing voice mail. I have left a message as if he just might be there. Just might be there. But of course, he'll never be. I have been hoping for some sign, some message, that he's ok. I maybe had one. I lost a piece of his wallet that had some information in it. I looked all over the house. I looked in my car. This morning, on my way to work, I asked Dad to help me find it. I went into my office, and there it was straight a way. Coincidence? I don't think so, but one never knows in such things.

So, here I am living my life, going to work, seeing friends, coming home, watching TV, making entries in my blog. Everything's the same. But not. A big big not.