My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents by Jonathan Silin (free novels .txt) 📗

My father is demanding of others but no less critical of himself.

While he can forgive others, he has never learned to forgive himself.

I wonder if he has himself ever been forgiven? He says he went to see Dr. M because he was not living up to his potential. His disappointments are legion, and I can’t help but wonder if I am counted among them.

142 n jonathan g. silin

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Several weeks after the initial visit to Dr. R, my father’s eldest sister dies at the age of ninety-two. Notified by the nursing home that she is in her last hours, he manages, with the help of Marlene, his health aide, to arrive at her beside seconds before she expires. Later that same day he insists on going to the funeral home to make arrangements for the burial. Exhausted, he has done everything that he possibly can.

For the rest, it is up to me to shoulder a full load of filial responsibilities. As a favorite nephew, I am also a stand-in child of my aunt, who might best be described, in the language of her time, as childless rather than with the more positive, contemporary phrase “child-free.”

Her husband had been dead for many years.

The day of the funeral is long and trying for everyone. At the cemetery it is cold and blustery, and Marlene can’t push my father’s wheelchair over the astroturf mats that hide the irregular mounds of freshly shoveled earth. Bob and I must lift the wheelchair with my father in it and carry him close to the graveside. The dozen family members and friends, almost all well over eighty themselves, are huddled together for warmth. Just as the rabbi is about to start the services, my father announces that he wants to look in the coffin.

Seeking more than confirmation of his sister’s death or an emotional farewell, my father wishes to assure himself that it is indeed her body and not someone else’s being placed in the grave. He trusts no one, especially the undertaker.

My father’s request unnerves the cemetery employees. They confide in hushed tones that it might upset other family members to see the body. My father is insistent, and my attempts to dissuade him useless. Finally, realizing the passion and compulsion behind my father’s demand, I tell the cemetery people that there will be no funeral unless they do his bidding. Reluctantly, they lift the cover, and my father strains forward to satisfy his desire. Suddenly I see that, if he leans farther forward, he will fall out of his chair and into the grave. I quickly step in front of the two people next to me and place my hands on his shoulders to restrain him. Fortunately, he needs only a brief m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 143

look before making his pronouncement, “Yup, that’s her.” Against my will I too look at the waxy, masklike face and catch a glimpse of the body wrapped in its white linen shroud. At first I do not recognize my aunt, but, when I find the familiar shape of her jaw, the other features begin to make more sense.

Later that afternoon, when everyone has left, my father is lying on his bed, fully clothed and covered with a blanket. The room is dark, but he is not asleep. I sit by his side as we review the events of the day.

My father, no longer tense and on edge, is philosophical. I am surprised to realize that he wants to talk about his own life, not my aunt’s.

Once again, he reviews his sense of failure as a businessman and family provider. I remind him that my brother and I had excellent educa-tions, traveled extensively, and never lacked for anything. I remind him too that he has always acted ethically and lovingly, shouldering much of the emotional and physical burden of caring for three of his own siblings. My reminders seem to go unheeded. Then, wistfully and nostalgically, as if out of nowhere, I hear him say, “I had such high hopes for myself, for you boys . . .”

Now I am lying by my father’s side in the darkened room. I am moved to picture him as a young father, dreaming and planning for his

“boys.” I wonder if Dr. M heard the same innocence and sadness in his voice during the very years that these hopes first came to life. I am also moved to wonder how my father can see my brother and me as disappointments. I recall his injunction weeks before not to be afraid and to ask anything I need to know. I summon all my courage to ask the riskiest question of my life: “And did we, Dad? Did we at least fulfill some of your expectations?” He pauses momentarily, then murmurs softly and sweetly, “Oh yes, oh yes.”

For the moment, my father has forgotten, if not forgiven, himself, and he is ready to rest, if not sleep. I slip away from his side, grateful for his ultimate words of approval.

Coda

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am not for others, what am I?

If not now, when?

h i l l e l

I first began to write the bits and pieces of narrative that were to become this book as a way to keep my head above water. I was swamped by the needs of my two fiercely independent parents who were no longer able to manage on their own. Frustrated and impatient, I often felt myself hurled back to a past that I had worked so diligently to escape from. There were also moments when, with a cooler eye, I was intrigued by this new stage in my parents’ lives and my own. I started asking unsettling and ultimately unanswerable questions about how well I knew my parents and understood my childhood. Seeing them from the vantage point of fifty, now sixty, I learned to read