My father was six weeks away from turning 68 when he had a massive heart attack and died while taking a shortcut through a sporting goods store.
He was not one to take things slowly. He walked lightly, his mind was fast-moving, and in the end, he died quickly.
December 28 is a special day for me.
I called my mother.
“Do you know what day it is? It’s Dad’s birthday.”
“January. 4?”
“No, this is Fritz’s birthday. Today is my father’s birthday. He was 102 years old.”
She presses the non-existent volume button on her phone, and I hear clicking sounds for a while.
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“He was lucky,” she says.
“I don’t think dying at 67 is very lucky. He only recently retired.
“Well, he should avoid everything I’m going through. I wish I died sooner.”
My mother launches into one of her monologues about how terrible everything and everyone in the world is, and how she’s lived for too long.
I’ve argued with her before and told her that there is no end date to life. We don’t live in a “Logan’s Run” society where people over 40 are murdered, but I see her point.
It’s not easy for her, and it’s part of her personality that makes everything ten times harder than it has to be.
Less than a year ago, before my mother needed 24-hour care, she was doing much better. She could walk, see, hear, and still feel cheerful from time to time.
She was narcissistic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and mean, but she still had an iron will and some cognitive ability.
She can’t get out of bed and spends her time reliving painful memories, like the time when instead of taking our cat Ron to be fixed by our regular vet, she took him to a cheaper doctor who botched the job. Ron died the next day.
My mother didn’t go to her son’s memorial service or her grandson’s wedding, but she cries every day over a cat that died 40 years ago.
The good news is that at least when she cries for Ron, she’s not screaming about the flood coming just to her side from the dam, the twisted country, aka Ukraine, and how her family has rejected her for most of our lives doesn’t move. Enough for her.
My parents are dressed in blue and look unhappy
What if it was the opposite?
I can’t help but think what it would have been like if she had died before my father. Does this make me a monster?
My father loved living in a retirement community and I’m sure all the ladies were impressed. As long as he could take the bus to the deli, watch discount movies, and the occasional opera, he would be happy.
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Like my mother, he could be as independent as possible, but he would not have terrorized those who helped him. He would not insult the people he cared for by calling them knowledgeable or criticizing their English skills.
My father has always been supportive and always will be. He wouldn’t have wanted me to lose my house so I’d have to live with him, and he wouldn’t have called me a bad writer or hated Andy for standing up for me.
I’m pretty sure we were still talking on Sunday, and he was insisting that I call once and hang up, so he could call me back and pay for the call even though it wouldn’t be necessary.
When he couldn’t cook anymore, I would make him schnitzel, chicken paprikash, and pie. I promise to eat slower, learn to write, and eat butter.
The holidays would be about family and happiness, and he wasn’t going to make it all about himself.
The main difference if it had been my mother who had died, and not my father, is that my father would not have rewritten history and spoken sarcastically about my mother, even though they were divorced.
