Remembrance

My father passed away yesterday afternoon.   Last night was the first time I had seen him face to face since February because of Covid-19.  He was safely tucked away in an Assisted Living Facility but due to the virus, he was in lock down and we couldn’t see him in person. 

My father was born in November of 1931.  He’s been alone since my mom passed in January 2019 after 60 plus years of marriage.  He had become frail in his old age, suffering with dementia and a slowly failing body that kept him from walking more than a few steps at a time without a wheelchair.  He was lonely and didn’t fully understand a lot of the things going on around him.  We were all fortunate he had some great people taking care of him, helping him keep in touch with his family when possible by phone and the occasional FaceTime video conference, but I know his inability to use his cell phone on his own frustrated him as well us.  I tried to talk to him every day, but in the end it was more like once or twice a week at the most.

He grew up in Brooklyn and saw New York City go through many shifts in his life.  From a place of true cultural significance, to a cesspool of crime and dirt and back to a place of prominence before he and my mother moved to Southern California to be with me and my family in the mid-two thousands.

He came from Russian immigrants who achieved their American dream by owning a restaurant.  It wasn’t an easy life.  He first wanted to be a crooner, studying music on his own and developing a pretty good voice, but the times weren’t right for him and his parents insisted that he come work to help support the family business with his older brother.  His father died of a heart attack in his mid-fifties and instead of passing the business to his children, his mother sold it so she could have her life, leaving them to figure out what to do next.

Dreams of an education and becoming an airline mechanic were never fulfilled because he was now older with a wife and first child and there wasn’t any way to pay for it, so he went to work as a waiter at a fine dining establishment for many years.

He supported his family pretty well all things considered.  We had a good co-op apartment in Sheepshead Bay, a nice middle class neighborhood in Brooklyn.  There was always food on the table and clothes on our backs.  My mom also worked and we were lucky to have her family down the street to keep an eye on us kids as my parents worked and we went to school.

I didn’t see him much growing up, as his work had him out from late morning till midnight except for two mid-week days.  (When you live by tips, the real money always came in on the weekends!)   Summer was when I’d get to spend time with him because I was out of school during the week, so we would occasionally go fishing off the piers, anything we caught would be thrown back because the waters weren’t clean enough to do anything else.  

Growing up, he enjoyed Baseball and would bring me and my sister to see the New York Mets play at Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens.  We’d take the “D” train to Times Square and switch for the “7” to the ballpark a few times each season, a multi-hour trip that was worth every minute and left me a fan of the game to this day.  For him, Football came later in life so I never picked up the taste for it.

He sparked my geekiness by introducing me to Science Fiction through the original Star Trek on TV and the original Star Wars in the movies.   The latter would ultimately set me on a course to be involved in movies.  Seeing it in a large theatre with perfect sound and picture in the summer of 1977 was magic and something I needed to figure out how to be a part of.   As an adult, I was lucky to get the chance to work for Disney and put a love for Tech and movies together in animation and visual effects.

When I think about it, he taught me a lot about how to reason because as a kid, our conversations were often more like debates as we discussed the various issues in the world in sometimes heated tones.  I learned how to stand my ground and have as much information as possible going into the discussion.  That has manifested for me in a curiosity for everything that carries with me to this day.

He was never a happy man.  He worked hard, physical labor every day and never had enough left over to have the things he wanted.  He enjoyed betting on the horses, partly because of his appreciation for the sport and partly in the hopes of making the “big score” someday.  A regular feature of our lives was a week visiting the backstretch at Belmont Park for our annual vacation.   I remember one year, he scored tickets for the Belmont Stakes from one of his regular customers and the whole family dressed up to spend the day at the capstone of The Triple Crown, surrounded by trainers and owners of the horses running.   Gambling would become a problem for him, always trying to quench the thirst and it led to many ugly moments at home.  It was hard as a kid to understand compulsion.

When the restaurant closed, he had a shot at managing another in Manhattan.  A place called ‘The Puffing Billy’ where after about a year, the restaurant union in the city declared a strike that would ultimately put the place out of business.  (We had butter pats in our fridge for months when they cleaned out the kitchens and let him take food home.)

Too old for continuing in the food service world, he took a job as a messenger down on Wall Street.  He would deliver stock certificates and other papers between brokerage houses and the stock exchange every day.  It was very close to being a normal job, and while exhausting, I think he really enjoyed it because it allowed him a certain degree of freedom and allowed him to be social throughout the day.  Everyone knew him and liked him.    He finally retired, purely by luck on the Friday before the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center where he would often visit for work.  For a time after, you could sense a survivors guilt having not been down at the center of things when the shit hit the fan.  I for one am glad he wasn’t there!

When my mom was finally done working, having decided the winters were getting to be too much, they came out to Redondo Beach, where I was living with my wife, son and daughter, so they could enjoy time in the Southern California warmth.   I had moved to L.A. in the  late 1980’s to pursue an acting career. Of course I made my living working with computers which would eventually land me in movie production at some big studios.  This was   something I was able to do because my folks worked hard and always pushed me to follow my dreams. (Just be sure you can make a living!)

Life out here wasn’t a bowl of cherries for him either.  He and my mom had some medical issues and eventually that would take away his driver’s rights, making life in L.A. much restricted and less fun.   He would eventually be diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder after some painful family problems and a re-location of my parents to three different living facilities in four years.   

My sister moved out here as well with her kids in the mid-2000’s so at least the whole family could get together on weekends and spend time.  He and my mom could watch their grandkids grow up.  He lived to see my sisters daughter and son thru High School and College.  He saw the same for my son and would have been here for my daughter’s High School graduation had Covid not prevented that party.

After my mom passed, he was left alone at the Assisted Living.  We would see him at least every other week and take him out for movies and lunches.  I was thrilled to be able to take him to see “The Force Awakens” since one of my most revered memories was him taking me to see the original “Star Wars” at the Lowes Astor Plaza in Manhattan when I was twelve.

We didn’t always get along.  I know that fathers and sons go through that dance in life, I believe it is actually important to developing into an independent man, but from his example I learned that although work was often a burden, it was important and responsibilities needed to be met and taken seriously!   

I will always feel a guilt that I wasn’t able to do enough to make my parents truly happy in their old age, it’s something that was an important goal for me, but I also believe my father and I had settled our differences and made our peace.  I certainly have no doubt that he was proud of me, as I saw it in the way he would introduce me and my family to new people in his life.

The last several months have been hard for all of us.  I have found that making future plans is cathartic in a time of pandemic and home quarantine and I was planning a great steak dinner for him when we next had the chance to get outside again.  That is now a plan that I won’t be able to fulfill.

Not having to worry about his well being anymore lifts a heavy burden on all of his family.  I’d be concerned when I didn’t get to talk to him every few days and I’d be afraid of what we would have to go through if he got sick and we needed to take him out into these unsettled times.  We no longer have to worry about him getting sick and winding up in a hospital, alone and spending his last moments on a device keeping him breathing.   I guess in a way, going quietly while watching a baseball game on a warm August Saturday was a big score after all.

As I learned from my mothers passing, I will think about him every day and regret not being able to spend time with him and comforting him in his last days.  We may not have had those deep conversations like we did when I was a kid in a long time, but I will think about just being able to tell him I love him every day for the rest of my life.

Godspeed Joseph W…