One Year
Everyone who's commented on the subject to me said that the first year would be the worst. The first Father's Day, the first birthday, the first Thanksgiving, the first Holiday Season. The first yahrzeit.
I'm an incredibly sentimental person; I remember anniversaries for a lot of personal things. He was diagnosed on August 15th. The last day he spent at home was September 9th. October 3rd, a Friday, was the first day we all seriously thought he was going to die. My mom's birthday was that weekend. That Monday was the worst single day of the whole experience for me--the day I spent large swathes of time in the bathroom at work, on the idea that crying alone there would be marginally better than crying at my desk--and the last day I dared go to the hospital alone. On my birthday a group of doctors got together to express the pointlessness of various resuscitation techniques in the most condescending way possible. December 6th was the last time he spoke aloud, croaking as best he could through the trach to tell me for the first time that he loved me. And the second. January 2nd was the last time I saw him, already in his final coma. It can be difficult to avoid getting in a funk around some of these anniversaries, lost under the weight of memory.
When we had the yahrzeit service on Christmas Eve, the rabbi asked me if I could say a few words. One of my regrets from last January was that I said nothing when the rabbi opened the floor at the end of the first shiva service--I knew I was barely keeping my composure as it was--so at least I got an opportunity to make up for that. (At that service in January, one of his former coworkers from the bus company talked about how chipper he always seemed on the inter-bus radio and how respectful he was toward women. Nobody else said anything. It was horribly awkward.) I said:
I know my father wasn't exactly the most social person in the world, so there aren't very many people who were close to him. He was a man who took himself very seriously, who took his role very seriously. He was someone who thought less of himself when he felt that he couldn't fulfill his role, whether that was taking care of his family, getting his job done or whatever he had set out to do. And that is what I remember when I think of him, his absolute devotion and love for my mother, and my brother, and myself. We should all be so lucky as to feel the same.
I wrote a year ago that I didn't want to mythologize him, that I'd remember his faults alongside his virtues...but as time goes on I find that the bad times, plentiful though they were, matter less and less. What I find myself remembering are the best times and the things I found to admire.
I remember watching cartoons with him years ago. I can't have been older than five or six. After dinner we'd watch Tom & Jerry; during the commercials his hands would slowly creep over to my knees and he'd tickle me silly until the show came back on.
I remember the story about the time he accidentally put a nail through one of his fingers on a job site. He grabbed a small towel, wrapped it around his hand and went back to work--he had things to get done that day, dammit.
I remember us sticking a 2x4 on top of two saw-horses, grabbing some cold water, sitting down and talking for a while to settle down from a long day spent working together on one outdoor project or another on more hot summer days than I can count.
I remember him spending hours peeling onions, layer by layer, so that my mom could occasionally have meals cooked with them despite her diverticulitis. Peeling tomatoes was easy-peasy in comparison. I remember him relishing, in a way, my mom's convalescence from her rotator cuff surgery in 2003, when she needed him to take care of her more than usual--he was so proud of a little setup he concocted to make her a more comfortable arm pillow that I almost thought he'd start giggling.
I remember his wry little smile, which I appreciated more and more as I got old enough to talk with him adult-to-adult. I remember the way he'd totally commit to his laughter when he really found something funny. You could hear him laughing from across the house--hell, from across the street.
I also remember the time I wasted being afraid of him. Or the time he wasted being petty and short-tempered when I was too young to understand that it wasn't my fault. Whatever you want to call it.
Current Mood: numb 
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