as my mom drove me to malden catholic high school (go lancers!) on the morning of wednesday, april 12, 1995, we were discussing our upcoming trip to the oregon shakespeare festival with my teenage theatre program. she was to be one of the adult chaperones. we both agreed that if we came back in 1 week to find our home burned to the ground, we would not be surprised.
“we’ll come home and find dad out on the back porch, drinking a martini with his feet up in the lounge chair,” i said. “we’ll ask him what happened to the house?! and he’ll answer it got in my way!”
that cracked her up. after she dropped me off at school she drove home, had coffee in the kitchen with him, and told him what i’d said. they had a good laugh about it.
a few minutes later, while he was upstairs getting ready for work, he suffered a massive coronary and (we believe) died instantaneously.
someone asked me if i had said “goodbye” to him that morning and i couldn’t remember. but i know that i made a wisecrack and that wisecrack travelled back to him and he laughed. and frankly, that’s good enough for me. because that’s how we communicated: we mocked each other mercilessly. him for being bald, me for being short, him for being bald, me for being an alien they’d adopted as a baby, him for being bald. (the irony is that i’m now balder than he ever was.)
over the years i have had to come to terms with how flawed he was and that hasn’t been easy. mostly (and most obviously) in the health and taking-care-of-himself department. when he died he was 52 and overweight and prone to great stress and somehow we were shocked that he died suddenly from a heart attack. he had a wicked temper which he violently exerted on inanimate objects. he never took me to fenway park.
(that last one hurts the most.)
but he was the funniest, smartest, kindest, most insightful man i’ve ever known. everybody — everybody– liked him. and it wasn’t because he was extremely outgoing or boisterous and he wasn’t trying to make friends with everyone in the room. it was because he was genuine and honest, he was interested in people, and he was always quick with a joke — never at anyone’s expense (well, maybe mine, but by the ripe age of 8, i could take it as well as i could dish it out) — but just for the sake of making someone smile. he had a quick wit, razor-sharp, and his humor ranged from the highest brow to the lowest schmaltz.
i have spent over 2 years trying to become a healthier person and for the most part, i’ve succeeded. i’m now a healthy, average weight for my height. i don’t eat meat (though i do eat fish). i exercise on a regular basis. i want to live long enough to see my children (assuming and hoping they will someday exist) graduate high school, college, and become flourishing adults. i yearn for the day when i will take them to fenway for the first time.
i haven’t worked out the stress thing, not quite, not exactly. and i confess that i have the same violent temper and to prove it, the doors have scuff marks from angry kicks and my past is littered with broken tchotchkies.
in many ways, i am trying to be less like my father. that’s a very difficult yet also a very good thing.
but my dad taught me how to laugh and he taught me how to make other people laugh, especially in life’s most difficult moments.
and for that i’ll always love him.
he called us "little monsters." when we were bad he threatened to "bang our heads together." we wrestled with him. we watched "the simpsons" together. we brought our mom slimy reptiles we found in the backyard (which made her scream in terror) because he shouted with delight "mom loves that stuff!"
my bar mitzvah at the end of the night. thank goodness one of us was sober enough to drive home.
my mom's father: grandpa. his name was ben but nobody called him that. to everyone he was "jessel," a nickname i never understood until well after he was gone.
me and my dad just before i moved to l.a. in 2008. this was the first time i had visited him since 1995 but he was kind enough to not give me a hard time about it.
