death

I thought if anyone could Joan Didion could write about death.

I've always suspected that I don't like Joan Didion. I feel like I should like her writing but there is a disconnect there. It's the same thing as reading Michael Chabon. I can recognize the quality of the writing without being drawn to it. I feel that way when I hear Barack Obama speak. The words themselves are stirring but they do nothing for my emotions. Still, I'm disappointed that Ms. Didion couldn't stir me with her story of death.

It seems like almost a too easy thing to write about. All you have to know is the end of the story, the persons great love died. You have the readers sympathy immediately, they are looking to cry with you. The reason they bought the book is to sympathize with you, to relate, to feel what you feel. They are probably reading it to come to terms with a death in their life. So make me cry dammit! I am ready.

So here goes:

The phone rang in the middle of the night. I was up. I was always up in those days. Once Mira woke up for her first feeding of the night that was it for me. I tried to go back to sleep but my body and my mind were not working well together. Exhaustion had become a part of me. I could feel it, touch it, I lived in it. But still I couldn't sleep. I tried to make my voice sound groggy when I answered the phone. Fran's voice was on the line, "Hadara they are giving your father constant morphine drips" she shrilled. "What?" "this is it sweetie". "It's Amy not Hadara". "Amy, so rry sweetie, I called the wrong number, all I know is that they are giving your father constant morphine you can go back to sleep now". Click.

Now what? What was that? Was this really how I was getting the news that my dad was dying? Fran never really got that my dad had a family before Jean, Hadara and Eytan. No one in Jean's family did. Unlike my mom's family they seemed to like him. And they were always nice to us but they didn't connect us to him in any significant way. Jean didn't do this. She treated us like family. She knew how important we were to my dad, how much he loved us. He was no less changed by the fact of us than I have been by the presence of Mira and Eli. He was our dad and his attachment to us came with whatever he brought to Jean. But her family was able to ignore this in a way that Jean never could. Still, she was tending to him. She needed her family to be speak for her. The fact that Fran had my phone number was strange. That she mixed it up with Hadara's was strange too.

Fran had given me an out on the phone. It was Hadara who was supposed to know that "this was it" not me. Why? Was it because I was on the West Coast and shouldn't have been up yet? Was it because I had a new baby and shouldn't have this grief? Or was it as I suspected because I was not really important enough to tell? Because in Fran's mind it wasn't my dad who was dying but Hadara's? This is the option I chose. I clung to it. The phone rang an hour later at 5:00. It was Phil calling from the East Coast. This was it, he was headed to Chicago and so were Beth and Jon. Still, her urged me not to come. Because of Mira I told myself. Because of Mira.

Mira saved me from going. If I hadn't had Mira I would have gone. I'm sure of it. But it was fitting for me to not be there. As much as he wanted to be he wasn't my father. As much as I wanted him to be. Fran was right about me. Our relationship was significant but I wasn't Hadara. Or Eytan. Or Beth, Phil and Jon. I was loved by him. It was a great love, a hugely important significant love in my life that was surely at that moment dying.

The next day of course was September 11th. If I had wanted to change my mind and fly off to Chicago I no longer could. There were no choices left to make. I would sit and wait. I would hold Mira and wait for the phone to ring. We went to costco and stocked up on emergency products and watched tv and waited for planes to fall from the sky. Beth called with updates. She talked about the surealness of watching the world fall apart on a a hospital tv. Eytan somehow made it home from Israel. I waited.

The call came at 5:00 am on September 13th. It was Phil and he told me with very little emotion in his voice. "Dad died this morning". I hung up the phone and cried. I cried in bed for my dad. The one who loved me but somehow forgot to be a dad to me. I would miss him terribly. I cried until Mira woke up, I fed her and cried with her on me. She would not know him. He had missed his chance with both of us. I cancelled my doctor's appointment scheduled for that day. I looked at pictures of him. Later Beth called and I spoke to Hadara.

Hadara told me the story of the nurse named Amy. On that last day he had been asking for me. They told him that I was home with Mira but that I was thinking about him. Still he asked for me. Later that day he had a new nurse, a nurse called Amy. Beth and Hadara both thought that hearing her name made him think that I was there too. Once all six of his children were around him he could let go and die. Six of his children, all six. In the end he knew he had six.

This is a messy death. All relationships, every single one has the same ending in store. Still this death refuses to die. Just as the relationship in life never reached its full potential so is this death doomed. I don't know how to let this one end. I never knew how to let it live.