RJP/RIP

 My father was eighty years old when he died of a heart attack. It was early morning, Oct. 7, 1981, he was sitting by the side of his bed, having just woke up, he was dressed, with one shoe on and one shoe off, when he fell over into his bed. All that week I had been in Manhattan,  staying at my sister's apartment, working for a friend on the renovation of an Upper East Side town house. At 5:am I woke up suddenly as if jolted by an electric shock, and sat bolt upright in bed. Without a thought in my head, I got up, walked to a window that looked south on 78th St. from the fifth floor and watched as across the street on the same floor a young attractive brunette woman stood in front of her bathroom mirror, her robe open, breasts exposed, and washed her face. 

After she dried her face with a towel she began, slowly, with the concentration of an artist working on a canvas, to put on her makeup. She rubbed a cream into her face with upward strokes and strained across the sink to look closely at herself. She could have been in her mid thirties or early forties. Carefully, she worked on her eyes, brushing her brows, drawing in eye liner and adding mascara. She sponged on a base and patted on powder, and lined her lips with a lip liner; then she filled in the drawn space with lipstick. She looked at herself with what could have been a seductive look and disappeared into the faded yellow background of the rest of her apartment. I went back to sleep.  

When the phone rang, at seven, it was my mother. "Hi, I'm not sure, I think Dad is dead," she said. She had had the presence of mind to call the police. A cop got on the line. "Hi Tony, It's officer Segelkin, your mother's a little confused. I'm sorry. Your father is dead. It looks like he's been dead for a couple of hours. I'm just waiting for the coroner." I knew, immediately, that I had been awakened by my father. I felt, before I had a chance to think about it, that the woman across the street had been involved with us in some kind of synchronicity. It was a comfort.

Still, I was in somewhat stunned state as I walked to the crosstown bus to be with my sister who was staying with her soon-to-be husband. She had unnerved me on the phone, going straight into a bawling fit of grief. I however remained numb and cool. Between Madison and Fifth I saw in slow motion a cinder lofting toward me on a breeze. It landed like a meteor on the globe of my eye. The pain kept me focused until my future brother-in-law could extract it with a Q-tip. My sister, hysterical when I got there, was distracted by my eye problem and began to rearrange furniture in anticipation of moving in.

Helping her move an antique high-boy in the hallway, I felt my back go out as I lifted my end. It felt like ripping flesh but didn't become paralyzing pain until my days chores were done; driving my sister out to the East End, and comforting her and my mother. 

                                                                                  

I was home alone when the Funeral Director called to say my father's ashes were ready; mother and sister were out shopping for groceries. I became too anxious to wait, and dragged my still spasming back off the couch, walked down the gravel driveway through the scrub oak woods to the highway and started walking into town. I was picked up by a guy I went to High School with, a stocky, bristle-cutted carpenter, who I'd never really gotten to know real well, and who turned out to be a soft spoken, nicely sympathetic man. I explained my mission, he dropped me off in front of the Funeral Home, and I was welcomed into the office of Mr. Yardley, the owner of the business, and given a small cardboard box, the size of a pet rock, the old man's ashes, and his Bulova watch, a new model, thin, with a blond leather strap. For a second, I felt lucky, like it was unexpectedly Christmas.  A watch.  I'd inherited something.  

   

Just to the South of Montauk light, at a fishing spot he loved called Caswell's, while my mother and sister stood on the shore weeping and throwing wild rose petals into the air, I stood in pain, on a slippery rock, and shook the old man's ashes from the little box into a tidal pool. The energy it took to cope with the pain in my back worked better than the strongest mental straight-jacket tranquilizer to keep me from feeling much emotion. I could only focus on my task at hand, and guess at what my feelings might be. I felt like a soldier. I felt like I was doing something heroic just being there.

    

The old man had been born in a seaside hamlet in Yugoslavia, to a Roman Catholic Croat father and an Orthodox mother. Though not religious, he considered himself a spiritual man who had been blessed with certain special dispensations because of his being an artist.
When I had gone off to college in my late teens, my mother called to say she had talked the old man into getting married in the church. (Catholic.) I was surprised by this sudden concern with religion, I expected it came mostly from my mother, who had intermitant bouts of religiosity, and I was doubtful that he would go through with it.

  

He did, but when the priest told him he would have to attend Confession and Communion, he said matter-of-factly that he had no sins, and the priest accepted his proclamation. He charmed his way straight to Communion and a quick ceremony and was back in his studio in a couple of hours.

From:  Hold Still, a memoir in progress, by me.