They're taking my ex-father-in-law from Florida to New York today to place him in hospice care. I have missed him and will miss him. He treated me with respect and seemed to like me, but after the split there was a percipitous end of contact, and no good bye. I sent him a card on the following Pesach and thanked him for his generosity through out our marriage, intuitively staying away from any explicit reference to the divorce. I was told that he had read the card and later handed it back to my ex wife without comment. I guess I've fallen off the edge of the earth.
I'll remember him for the fact that he taught me something about a piece of Jewish life. As I had developed my own perspectives on Judaism, I was occasionally surprised and even disappointed at how lacking in "understanding" his religious practice seemed. The imperatives of the faith framed his life, and beyond that, there seemed to be nothing more to say. I know that in some homes great theological and ethical debates may have carried the day, but in his family, the practices were as straight forward and uncommented on as a fork and a knife. I was typical of the enthusiastic novice, striving for intellectual understanding and stopped cold when confronted with an unvarnished immutable fact. The bottom line was that he always showed up; without fanfare, without comment. He never failed to light a yartzheit candle, he always fasted on Yom Kippur, and at Passover seders he always sat at the head of the table and always passed the horse radish.
He was equally steadfast in the practice of his day to day rituals: catching the same train into work each morning; going to the Y on Sunday to play racket ball and schvitz with old friends; driving to the corner store to pick up the Sunday Times; working on tax returns in his home office with just pencil, typewriter and an antiquated adding machine; watching British comedy shows on public television. He loved to attend cultural events and was commited to keeping an eye open for something new and different to do. I remember going with him to a concert featuring the songs of Yip Harburg. In the last years of his life he traveled alone to Israel, over family objections, to spend a month doing laundry as part of a volunteer adjunct of the Israeli army.
He would frequently take me aside to tell me a story. It was never a story from his distant past, but rather a recalling of a conversation he'd had recently with a friend or business associate or "the young lady in my office who manages the billing". It always began with that person being initially taken aback by a confusing remark he'd made; a non-sequiter spoken at a cash register or a counter intuitive directive in the accounting office. Then he'd let the texture of their perplexity simmer, lingering on their uncertainity as to whether he was playing with them or was losing his faculties. Taking his time, he'd then tell how he had guided them through their bewilderment, wringing every last drop out of the journey. And finally, with just a few words, he'd offer a subtle but critical shift in perspective and thereby deliver them to clarity and an understanding of what he's meant. But that epiphany never seemed to be the ultimate point of the story, rather it was his listener's laugh. The final cadence was always, "and he laaaughed!" I can still hear him, leaning on that word, cracking himself up with delight at the memory. I'd like to think that in sharing this with me, he'd brought me, in some small way, into a circle which stretched back to Eastern Europe and beyond, swirling through Jewish life, from Talmudic studies, to Catskills stand-up, to nuclear physics. But I'm sure he would have none of that.
They're taking him from Florida today, where you can go blind in the condo parking lots from the reflected sun light glare off late model Honda's and Volvo's. Away from early bird specials, and bingo, and concerts in Palm Beach. Away from his condominium with it's glass table tops and untouchable living room furniture; its screened porch looking down two stories onto the lagoon where I once tantalized Anna with the possibility that we'd see an alligator sunning on the tuberous Florida grass.
I've fallen off the edge of the earth, but in some sense have always stood outside the place in his family where the most closely held currents churned. But still, I have missed him and will miss him.
