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TOPICS My blog e-mail me | My family & its history Dad's memorial service: Mother's eulogy Back to My father's death page Back to My family & its history page My mother wrote the following the night before we had a memorial service for Dad, 9 days after he died. |
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Ed had the unfortunate quality of being brutally honest, even when a simple white lie would have sufficed; so when I speak of him I owe him no less. Let me quote from his memoirs because he said it best: “Some of the first year of
marriage was fun, perhaps ecstacy, but I was a tough sunuvabitch to get along
with. (WAS?)” That’s true. And that’s
one part of who he was. Going through some papers, I
came across a printout of an e-mail Jeff Jamieson, the son of a good friend of
ours, sent me about Ed: “I’m sorry to hear about
Ed. He lives in my memory as the sharp,
funny, curious, rough-and-tumble yet gentle anomaly of a man that he was. He was certainly a great lesson in vibrant
living. I didn’t know anyone could
actively pursue so many diverse interests (marine biology, electronics, acting,
tennis…) and not explode.” And that’s
also a part of who he was. His interests were
legion. There was nature, as in Van
Curtlandt Park, for starters. And in his
young years he worked in a dog & cat hospital and on a poultry farm in
Mass., and later on his own farm in New Jersey. And he acquired a walking tractor and cultivated an acre of land. Even in Clearbrook with land and its use
severely limited, he raised tomatoes for a while. The house was filled with
tropical fish tanks which he was constantly cleaning, rearranging and
replenishing. There was, of course, a
succession of dogs and, on the farm, a proliferation of cats. He spotted a skunk in the
coops one day, said it was probably eating eggs, bought a shotgun*, and went
out with it that night. A little while
later he returned, looking sheepish, to tell me that the skunk looked very cute
curled up in a nest and he doubted it was eating eggs. He did shoot at a stray dog to scare it away
and accidentally hit it. That haunted
him for a long time. He also loved learning and
felt seriously deficient because he had not graduated high school. So, he went to night school. Using a board across the arms of a chair for
a desk, he would sit down to study every night. That was Ricky’s preschool.
He would creep in under the board with his ABC book, settle himself in
Ed’s lap, and study too. But Ed was
called before the draft board the day his finals were scheduled, and nobody
would give an inch. No diploma. After discharge he took the GED, and, using
the GI Bill, went on to earn a BA, and later, an MA.** He loved school, not always the instructors,
but the learning. At the end, watching
television, he would ask me, “what am I supposed to learn from that?” He loved to read. He enjoyed equally reading a modern novel
and a math book. He had the habit of
reading several books at a time. Books
open, face down, littered the apartment.
He would spend hours browsing the used bookstores on Fourth Avenue. He found a dictionary with a broken spine,
marked down to a price we could afford—the first book we owned. But he dog-eared the pages of books, and I
never got him to stop. A couple a years
back when Ricky asked him how he was, he said as long as he could read he’d be
OK. That was heart-wrenching. He loved to write, churning
out poems, short stories, skits, opinion articles, seder passages, culminating
in his much-beloved memoirs. But he
never developed artistic distance so he couldn’t proof and polish. Whenever he set to it, he would write a new
version instead. He liked to teach, but was
reduced to keeping order in the inner-city school system of New Brunswick. He hated it. Still, he wouldn’t transfer because he felt it was important to
be there. And he wouldn’t quit because
he felt an obligation to earn a living.
During the school riots, when several teachers wound up in the hospital,
he was mercifully spared because, to his surprise, the kids seemed to like
him. He loved to act—comedy,
tragedy, drama—as long as it was a meaty role.
And though it was a hobby, he
took it very seriously, running lines daily, searching speeches for clues to
invention. He had no patience for
dilettantes. At the end, he would ask
me the same question over and over, forgetting an answer as soon as I gave it,
but in his prime he could memorize the lead in a week. He enjoyed the timing that brought a laugh
and the passion he could tear to tatters.
But most of all, he liked to reach into people and touch their
hearts. To be able to bring tears to a
spectator’s eyes was his consummate acting pleasure. He enjoyed photography; I
don’t know what I’ll do with all the negatives. He enjoyed developing. I
had a dark room built for him behind the garage in Clearbrook, but by then he
couldn’t remember the demanding sequences, the temperatures, the subtle mix of
colors, and finally abandoned it in frustration. He loved fishing, fresh and
salt water. One of the most miserable
days of my life was when I agreed to accompany him fresh-water fishing. We slogged endlessly through weeds and
brambles, and were devoured by biting things.
I couldn’t master the skill of the cast. It was a disaster.
Summers, for a while, he went salt-water fishing daily in his boat. To accompany him on that, too, was a
disaster. He could sit for hours in the
sun, catching nothing, moving rods and line back and forth across the boat. Haul anchor, chug a bit, try again. It was impossible to read, I never hooked
anything, and I just wanted to go home. He liked walking, driving,
tennis, pool, bowling, chess and cards.
He took up scuba diving but gave it up as the costs mounted. He liked to build and repair things—and was
good at it. He built the chicken coops
by himself. He succeeded in interfacing
the typewriter with the computer when the serviceman failed. He diagnosed the problem with the garage
door opener when the electrician couldn’t.
He figured out how to fix the Bendix washer when it stuck and showed me
how. He took a correspondence course in
electronics and built a television set.
It would get the color bands, but no picture. But he took chances. When
he was having trouble with the electricity in the coops, he stuck his finger in
a socket to test it. That he only felt
a tingle did not reassure me. Several
days later, I couldn’t find him around the farm and he didn’t answer when I
shouted around the house, so I phoned Hy, looking for him. I had visions of him lying
electrocuted. Hy suggested I check the
bedroom. Sure enough—sound asleep. He could sleep! I went shopping early once, leaving him still asleep with Ricky
in his crib. But I forgot my keys. I rang, I banged, I shouted. Finally, I got the super to let me into the
vacant apartment above ours. I was
frightened to climb down the fire escape, but more frightened of what might
have happened in the apartment. You
guessed it—sound asleep. Years later he
suffered from insomnia. He was offended by prejudice
and discrimination but he was a man of his times, too. Breadwinning was the man’s role;
housekeeping the woman’s. That I worked
meant that he had failed.. I rarely
disputed it because such discussions were counterproductive. But he taught himself to change and in his
latter years he became an ardent feminist—one of the first signs being that he
urged me to apply for our first credit card in my name. He was an anomaly—quick to
anger at small, unintentional things but stalwart when it was important. Teaching me to drive, he was impatient and
critical if I, for example, ground the gears.
But when I hooked the banister with the bumper and pulled the railing
off the back steps, he just repaired it and said nary a word. When I had a car accident, there was no word
of reproof, only support. He liked to
be waited on, but when I broke my ankle, he didn’t leave the house for the six
weeks it was in a cast, waiting on me hand and foot. To pass the time, he redid the kitchen. I’ve talked too much and left
out too much. Over the last years, I
watched him die. As long as he could,
he fought it. He still performed in
Clearbrook, he still for a while, painstakingly, memorized lines. He had—what irony!—no patience with those
who insisted they couldn’t memorize. He
would ask, of the dementia, “How can I lick this?” But he was fighting the midgard serpent. When he could no longer remember his
children’s names or that they were grownups, he still remembered them. Did they need to be picked up? Had they been fed? Were they put to bed? I
thought I had done my mourning, that I’d be happy for him that it’s over, that
it would be a relief. But all I can
think of is that I’ll never see him again, that he’ll never again walk this
earth, of his last struggle, simply to
breath. As Jeff says at the end of his note, “It’s not seemly that he should end his days deprived of that great, restless, seeking consciousness.” [My notes: *I remember this as a .22 rifle. **My memory is that he found the Masters' education classes trivial and stopped attending without formally withdrawing from school.] | |