So Long, Dad

And so Dad is gone, having picked his last day

I am a carrot!

I am a cucumber!

So shouted Dad from a partially catatonic state. This unfortunate delirium — teetering at the edge of cute and curious — served as a good reminder of the long strange trip that surely exists at the threshold of death’s door.

Until, later, a riddle answered: Dad was trying to express that he felt like a vegetable.

Shortly after, Dad fantastically called the day he would die.

No, really, even from this state of befuddlement, he pulled a Babe Ruth, who pointed to center field before smashing a home run in the 1932 world series. After more than five weeks in three different hospitals — as calendars and clocks turned inconsequential and days and nights blurred into the colored sweep of highway lights — Dad exclaimed that Monday would be his last full day alive. This the Wednesday before, as if a doomsday clock were wound at his behest.

Dad died at 9:44 AM on Rosh Hashanah.

We huddled at the funeral, in a magnificent lot of greens and gravel paths comprising a star of David, and the Rabbi was asked if this day of death had any significance. A mini sermon was launched, explaining that Jewish Tradition would indicate death on the Jewish New Year was a sign of righteousness; it made the person a tzaddik.

It conferred special status — and it simplified their path to whatever might be next.

Hell yeah.

We were proud.

And a hawk called overhead, implying in signs and symbols that Dad saw us, just as we were seeing him.

That is, until, after a pregnant pause, the Rabbi broke the spell: “Do I believe in that tradition, no, not really,” he admitted, chuckling, as if a well-practiced punchline to the long setup of a joke.

Righteous or not, Dad seemed mystically aware of things. A day before he fell, he offered me his golf clubs, murmuring sneakily in a nondescript parking lot in between cars, in as if we were palming cash for handshake drugs. But I don’t want them, I complained, I hardly even golf.

No matter, he pushed, I won’t be needing them anymore.

Unbeknownst to anyone, that same day he downloaded all of the contacts from his phone and sent them to his email as if to say, I know — and here’s a breadcrumb for you to follow once I’m gone.

Dad had vertigo and claustrophobia, so much so that he was known to roll out of MRI machines mid-motion, which made his choice of being cremated logical.

In hospice, his eyes half-closed, Dad cried out that he didn’t want to be buried in Baltimore. A strange utterance — given he had no business in Baltimore and seemingly had never visited. His connection to the circle of time became evident when we arrived at the most Baltimore-sounding of cemeteries: Beit Olam.

There, the burial site offered a 2' x 2' x 2' cold gray metal box as a container for cremated remains. Seeing our distress, the deal-making Rabbi sweet talked the gravedigger into putting Dad on top of the metal box instead of in it (all while assuring that that the box wasn’t tradition, but rather structure intended to prevent an ankle-break lawsuit from concave ground).

On the Sunday of Dad’s Shiva we woke at six AM to drive the two hours to Boston from Vermont. Unguarded by the early hours and distracted by dawn’s breaking light, I raced up on an unmarked Statie crawling at the speed limit in the left lane. On the side of the road he approached, walking with the stilt of an urban cowboy, barrel-chested, and authoritative in his Trooper hat.

With the window rolled down he offered silence then, almost piously, “is there any reason you would need to be going 88 MPH?”

Well, remarkably, my Dad died at 88, and today is his memorial, I pleaded, noting the significance and establishing what would hopefully be a moment of grace.

The Trooper played along, reflecting on the death of his own father.

We shared the bond of Son to Father — of loss, regardless of uniform or responsibility.

Picking this time, this moment, this act, to remind me yet again that he often said I drove too fast.

Slow down, he’d advise, adding a crude remark to make it his own.

I waited for the Trooper’s return, thinking on Dad, and chuckling at the moment. Thanking him for always showing up, for reminding me he is now part of everything, and will be ever-present.

And just like that the Trooper returned, a ticket in his hand, served with a slight discount to just 85 MPH, saving me $135.

It would seem, one last nod from Dad, who was always willing to save me a few bucks along the way.