This coming November 12 will mark the forty-eight anniversary of my father’s death.  My sister Marion and I decided to hold a family memorial in August while we are vacationing at Star Lake, Wisconsin.  Family and close friends (who are more like family) will attend.  I am thinking about what I want to say about this major event of my life and these words come out:

My father died of a stroke on a cold, stark almost winter day.  It was abrupt, shocking and obliterated any innocence that remained in my fifteen year old mind, body and spirit.  The whole illness-death-funeral process was hurtful, insulting, undignified, and life altering.  I become overwhelmed every time I think about what happened.  This process left me feeling like my father’s life and memory were never appropriately honored.  To para phrase Bob Dylan from the song Hurricane: “The funeral was a pig circus, he never had a chance.”

Joseph Livingstone died when he was only 56 years old.  I am now 63 and I remember the day that I was actually on earth longer than he was.  It was relieving and sad.  For years, I feared that I was destined to die before I turned 56 out of loyalty to my dad.  Abject fear led me to believe that the son shall follow the father.

He was driving on the highway and was pulled over by the police for driving erratically.  He was in some kind of unconscious state and they took him to the intensive care unit of St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ.  The supreme wisdom of the powers that be would not allow us to visit with him in the hospital.  Hell, they wouldn’t let my mother see him, she had to sneak in.

The thinking back then and this calcified belief system still remains, was that seeing a parent who was dying or very ill was harmful to the children.  Therefore we were “protected” from being anywhere near death or intense illness and that was for the best.

This was harmful because not seeing my father dying or dead led me to have great difficulty knowing that he was actually deceased. I had no memory of seeing him while he was fading away.  This phenomena really thwarted my ability to work through and accept his death.

Back to 1966-The summer before he died, he got fired from his job in the factory because he forgot to tell his boss that he was going on vacation.  He did other weird things like painting my bleached stained jeans black and holding his head a lot.  He also had no patience for me and my sister.  He was short tempered and mean.  One of my last memories is him aggressively moving towards me, ready to strike.  However, I stuck first, punching him in the stomach and watching him double over.

I remember waiting for the retaliation that never came.  He just looked through me, walked away and never spoke to me again.  Then he died.

My mother and sister picked me up in the middle of basketball practice.  I saw them standing towards the side of the gym door and wondered what they were doing there.  My mother had this expression on her face that said nothing would ever be the same again.  She said that my father had been in an accident.  I don’t think my sister and I ever met with his doctor.  We were told from the beginning by my mother that the situation was bleak; that my father had a stroke and would probably die soon.

For the next few days, we did a lot of sitting around the house waiting for any news to come over the telephone line from the hospital. No one could say anything to me that was comforting or that would help catapult me out of a state of numbness.  My friends tried to be helpful, but they really didn’t know how to.   My father’s failing health no doubt put the fear that their parents could also end up in the intensive care unit of the hospital.  Death was in the air and nobody wanted to inhale.

My sister and I went to school because there was no point in hanging around at home any longer.  Sometime in the early afternoon I was asked to go to the principal’s office; something that was not unheard of because I was not your most disciplined student.  The principle or one of his minions told me that I was wanted at home.  He couldn’t tell me why and of course he believed I was too stupid to figure it out on my own.

I saw my sister and starting walking her home, I remember putting my arm around her because I thought this was the right thing to do no matter how uncomfortable it felt.  We arrived at our house on South Fourth Avenue and my grandfather walked up to us and said, “Your father died today.”

I had begun to smoke cigarettes a few months before this tragic event and now I felt that I had a reason to ingest nicotine.  My father was dead-a fact that was impossible to get my head or heart around.  I was a lost, angry teenage boy from New Jersey.  I was fatherless and I had no idea what that meant or how I was supposed to act, feel or function.  Was I supposed to cry or not?  If I didn’t cry, would that mean that I didn’t love my father?  If I did cry, was that a supreme sign of weakness for a man to cry and after all now I was the man of the house?

I was a mess and kept all this stuff to myself.  I didn’t know if I was supposed to talk about it or not.  Later on I used the fact that my father died as a conversation starter with girls I was interested in.

I remember my mother, sister and I being in a state of shock; unable to comfort each other or ourselves.  The funeral was going to happen two days after his death.  I was not prepared for what was to come.

I was sitting on my bed the morning of my father’s funeral listening to my transistor radio. It was turned to WABC and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted by Jimmy Ruffin came on.  This is a song that takes the concept of hopelessness and puts it right in your face.  He was singing to me and this has been a major selection of my life’s playlist since then.

We went to the funeral in the back of this huge limo.   I had a suit on that didn’t fit right, but I didn’t care.  The first thing we did was meet with the Rabbi who we never set eyes on before. He was as comforting as sitting on a cactus.   He seemed perplexed that my father didn’t have a Jewish name.  To him, this was an outrageous act that he couldn’t possibly abide by and our family’s loss was beneath him.

At the service he spoke about how he didn’t know my father (than why in the hell was he up there speaking about him?)   I remember the Rabbi’s words, “Blah, blah, blah, and blah” and then repeat.  I couldn’t wait to get away from his ass.  If funerals were supposed to be comforting to the bereaved, that was the opposite of what I experiencing.

When we arrived at the grave yard in South Brunswick, the gravediggers were still digging a hole for my father’s casket.  Oh how warm I felt as we all sat around and watched the earth be shoveled out.  I noticed that my father’s grave was in a section where all the headstones were small.  Just over the hill were the larger headstones, another example of America’s class distinction.

The funeral ceremony was a blur except I seem to remember the casket finally being buried and covered with dirt.

So every American institution was abusive to my father and us.  His job fired him without inquiring what was really ailing him.  The medical system failed him-his doctor knew he had a life-threatening illness, but didn’t bother to tell him or my mother.  The hospital would not let my family see him during his final days.  Organized religion and the funeral industry were thoughtless and undignified in their approaches.

All of this made me angry and still causes me to become enraged.  Even back then, as overwhelmed as I was, I knew that I would never allow these injustices to happen again to anyone I loved.   I made a promise to myself to fight against these wrongs with every ounce of strength I had.

My father’s death really messed me up.  I had trouble with relationships because I couldn’t allow myself to get close to others out of fear they would leave.  I was self-destructive and was set on a path to ruin.  Out of the need to survive, I held on to the story line that my father always hated me.  I needed to maintain that story in order to protect myself from how much I really did love him.

But thanks to the love of my wife Gail, my family and friends, I am walking in sunshine.

It is now almost forty-eight years later and now I can now allow the experience of loving my father and him loving me.  This is all thanks to my sister Marion sharing photos of my dad and me together looking like I am enjoying his company and feeling safe.  He and I did share happy times until he became ill and short-tempered-right in the middle of my adolescence.

I am now listening to the new Leela James song Fall for You.  She sings about taking the huge risk of allowing herself to fall in love.  I’m with you Leela.

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