The morning I was born you held my hand. The morning you died
I held your hand. What’s left to forgive? – Peggy Shumaker
You went into hospice nine days after your 64th birthday. We didn’t know that day, eating chocolate mousse in celebration. But you knew. When you called me close with a crook of your finger, whispered in my ear that you wanted to give me a kiss on the cheek for the camera. A kiss goodbye, framed on my desk, so I can look into that moment forever.
I don’t believe in regret. But as I was returning to New York, you asked me to stay a little while longer to sing with you. I am sorry that I didn’t stay. It is the only thing I would change.
I returned to you 10 days later. Sat at your bedside in hospice. Paced the backyard labyrinth. Slept alongside you at night, holding your hand. Prayed for you to die.
Your death used to be my greatest fear. There has never been a daughter who loved her father as much as I love you. Of course it was inevitable — we all go sooner or later — but I did not know how to bear a life without you.
But I am thankful that you died. Grateful. For your death was not the great tragedy; your illness was. It is the only thing I would change.
You waited until we were alone together to go. We both wanted the same thing: for me to love you on your way out of this world in the same way you had loved me on my way in.
* * *
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song.
I just can’t remember who to send it to. – James Taylor
It has been a year-and-a-half since you died. I think about you every day, talk to you every day. I see you in everything that glitters and sparkles, hear you in so much music. Now I am living in Israel, the land of our births. I see you on the balcony of your favorite hotel, think of you during every breakfast, see you in the faces of everyone you loved.
I have written very little about you since you’ve gone. A few poems, some notes. How can you contain all the grains of sand on all the beaches and every star in the sky within a single bottle? Words have never failed so perfectly as they fail in this.
I have handled your death with the grace of the princess you raised me to be. I have gone on in the only way you would have me do: in joy. For this my grief has been mistaken. Underestimated. As if I never cry for you. As if your loss was anything other than the astronomical chasm that has left a well within me. A well I both grieve into and draw life from. One should never underestimate me. I contain multitudes.
I would describe my grief as a poet once did, as a panic that suddenly comes upon me. When I hear a certain song, when I read a certain poem, when I walk down a certain street, my resolve to remember you in laughter gives way to salt.
Sooner or later, we all look back.
* * *
My father taught me that immortality isn’t about how long you live
but about how well you love. – Cory Booker
Yes, you are immortal. You taught me to love. Well. Myself and my fellow man. That people have the capacity for good. That love knows no bounds. That caring for one another is imperative. That money is a false god. That kindness is a kind of currency. That in being good we are as rich as sultans.
You were the defender of the voiceless. You got kicked out of Lunardi’s grocery store for defending poor Mexican children. You hired a homeless man to clean the windows of your office. You rented out your properties to the down-and-out, no matter how many times you were burned by them. You were good. Truly good. A good that is lost on corporate America, but that makes you a god among men.
Like a god, you live among the stars. You are Orion. Having become one again with the earth, you live on in every flower. And you live on in me. In my future children. In music and dreams, in earth and light, in miracles.
* * *
Oh mirror in the sky, what is love? – Stevie Nicks
What I have learned from your death is that there is no death. That we go on. In joy. In song. In laughter. In light. In memories and stories and photographs. In the life of the heart. That is where you reside now, in the life of my heart. I carry you with me every day. I feel your presence unequivocally. Whether it is because you are watching over me through a cosmic window or because the energy that comprises us does not die when our bodies do — but, rather, becomes something new — I do not know. Nor does it matter. What matters is that you were good and kind, that you were full of love, and that you made me in your image. What matters is that I was loved by you. That I will always be loved by you. That because of this we are both immortal. What’s left to say?
