Doesn’t all our greatest art address the subject of death—its cruelty, its inevitability? The shadow it casts on our all too brief lives? “What does it all mean?” we ask ourselves.
Allow me to tell you: death means that the dinner reservation you made for a party of seven needs to be upped to ten, then lowered to nine, and then upped again, this time to fourteen. Eighteen will ultimately show up, so you will have to sit with people you just vaguely remember at a four-top on the other side of the room, listening as the fun table, the one with your sparkling sister at it, laughs and laughs. Or perhaps you’re all together but not getting your main courses because the chef, who should be in the kitchen, cooking, is getting dressed down by your brother-in-law, who did not care for the soup. Or maybe your party has been split into six groups of three, or three groups of six. While the specifics blur together, there will remain one constant, which is you, having to hear things like “Well, I know that your father did his best.”
People love saying this when a parent dies. It’s the first thing they reach for. A man can beat his wife with car antennas, can trade his children for drugs or motorcycles, but still, when he finally, mercifully dies, his survivors will have to hear from some know-nothing at the post-funeral dinner that he did his best. This, I’m guessing, is based on the premise that we all give a hundred and ten per cent all the time, in regard to everything: our careers, our relationships, the attention we pay to our appearance, etc.
“Look around,” I want to say. “Very few people are actually doing the best that they can. That’s why they get fired from their jobs. That’s why they get arrested and divorced. It’s why their teeth fall out. Do you think the ‘chef’ responsible for this waterlogged spanakopita is giving it his all? Is sitting across from me, spouting clichés and platitudes, honestly the best that you can do?”
Also, don’t use the word “passed” at this table unless it’s as in “Tula passed me the salt so I could flavor my tasteless tzatziki sauce,” or “I knew we were driving too slowly on our way to the funeral when the hearse passed us and the man driving it gave me the finger.”
My father did not “pass.” Neither did he “depart.” He died.
Why the euphemisms? Whom are they honestly helping? I remember hearing a woman on the radio a few years back reflecting on where she was the moment that Prince “transitioned.”
Really? I thought. And when did he become a woman? Days before his fatal drug overdose?
Also, can we give the whole “looking down from Heaven” bit a rest? This as in “I’m sure your mother is looking down right now at you and your family. . . . ”
Sure about that, are you? Sure that there’s a Heaven right above the cloud cover, one that no satellite or spacecraft has ever picked up on, and that my long-dead mother can peer down from it and spot my brother, my sisters, and me indoors, some of us with hats on, out of the eight billion other people on Earth, and without her glasses, because they weren’t with her in the box she was burned to ashes in? Because, if that were possible, she wouldn’t be thinking, I’m so proud of my son, but What’s he listening to that asshole for?
As for my father, if anything, he’s looking up at me, not down. He was ninety-eight. “A blessing,” you keep saying. “He must have been a wonderful man to have been rewarded with such a long life.” As if it worked that way, and extra years were tacked on for good behavior. All kinds of good people die young. You know who’s living a “good long life”? Dick Cheney. Henry Kissinger. Rupert Murdoch.
“He’ll always be with you” is another tiresome chestnut that I’ll be happy never to hear again. In response to it, I say, “What if I don’t want him with me? What if sixty-four years of constant criticism and belittlement was enough, and I’m actually fine with my father and me going our separate ways, him in a cooler at the funeral home and me here at the kids’ table.” He won’t be in his grave for another few days. Is that the “better place” you’ve been assuring me he’s headed to? The cemetery that people pass on their way to the airport? Perhaps a plot with a view of the Roy Rogers or that car wash that went out of business? And what, exactly, is it better than? This restaurant, clearly, but what else? This state? This country? This Earth?
No offense, but how can you be so sure of his whereabouts? You didn’t even know where the men’s room was until I told you, so why should I suddenly believe that you’re omniscient? The best you can say with any degree of certainty is that my father’s in another place, meaning not the one restaurant in town that could accommodate a party of eighteen with five hours’ notice, which, hint, it could do only because nobody else wants to eat here, especially me, only I need to keep my strength up. Because I’m grieving.