Burying a father

We buried Jeff's father, Gary, on Sunday. He died after an acute illness; a combination of emphysema and newly diagnosed lung cancer. At the end of the day, his body was simply too tired to do battle with the multiple issues and we couldn't get him back. I would tell you that I was as unprepared to lose Gary as Jeff, his brothers, his wife and his family. It was simply devastating. I knew what was happening but I lost my father that day, too.

The funny thing is, as I've been participating and watching the mourning traditions of the Jewish faith, I realize that one of the most special things about Gary was his father-figure role to a host of kids of all ages around their community. The official week of mourning constitutes a week-long "open-house" where family, friends, and acquaintances call on the mourners at their home, bringing food in, and talking of the decedent and everyone who has come through the house talks of Gary as their father. Everyone who comes to the house recounts similar tales: they grew up in Gary’s house, played with the kids, saw him at the community pool in the summers, had him as a leader in the community center for several decades and all the while, treated everyone like they were his own kids. You can read Jeff’s eulogy of his father at the family website but you only have to read the comments left by so many to understand the profound and pervasive effect Gary had on everyone.

It should not be a surprise (and in retrospect, not have surprised us) that the 800 people at Gary’s funeral all felt what made Gary so special: he treated everyone like they were number one in his life and he never bullshitted them. In the many people who spoke at the funeral, everyone recounted similar qualities: truthfulness, irreverentness, salt-of-the-earth, first to lend a hand, first to give you the shirt off his back if you asked, a man of the people, respected, trusted, a friend. If you read Jeff’s eulogy, you have to understand that Jeff stood on the alter of a very old, VERY orthodox temple and perfectly captured his father in saying things like he used to love to scratch his balls and loved a good fart. The Rabbi and Cantor were practically apoplectic and one Rabbi at the temple actually pulled Jeff aside later that night at evening prayers and tried to reprimand him for disgracing and disrespecting his father’s memory with the eulogy. The rebuttal to such a selfish, inappropriate critique (imagine accosting someone over a eulogy on the day that person’s father was buried) was fast and furious. There isn’t anyone who could deny that Jeff summed up and presented exactly who his father was, warts and all, and appreciated Jeff for keeping him alive in that eulogy. It was the very, very best kind of eulogy because unlike so many instances when someone passes and people write flowery, Hallmark-y things about the person that leaving you wondering who they were talking about, everyone knew and appreciated that the best part of Gary was his warts and to have eulogized him any other way would have been an insult to his memory.

I am one of a host of people who Gary was a father to. I’m lucky in that as a son-in-law, I pulled some extra weight and got some extra attention. He and I were solid and when the time came, I was glad that he called for me, and I was able to take his hand. I’d like to think it made his journey a little bit easier having his family around him, including me.

Jeff and I lament many, many things about the untimely passing of his father. Like everyone else, we had plans and living left for him to do. He was to retire this month and in an effort to keep his parents married during the post-retirement period, we were expecting him to be up at our house a lot. Our home for him was a place he loved and a place we loved to work on to keep him in love with it. I miss him much the way I miss my Mom, in the little everyday moments of my day when I want to just call and harass him or when I need him to bust my balls a little bit. It’s not any different than anyone else who has lost a parent, but it still strikes hard and fast in the middle of my chest, leaving a ebbing, lingering hole.