Orphanhood

It’s been six weeks since my father died. Like a lot of people faced with a grievous event, those first weeks were consumed by settling estate issues, dealing with creditors, assembling tax information and consulting experts about my family and our changing financial world.

I then went to work for a week, a welcome diversion in which I shot, directed and edited two political commercials.

When I finished, and returned to my parent’s home, feelings of loss and grief reintroduced themselves. Mom and Dad really were gone - for good. And I found what I missed most was the moment of sharing a revelation, being able to recount an experience or epiphany that my parents would have enjoyed: “Dad, I was working on a test yesterday, Michael Mann is going to do a movie based on his TV show, ‘Miami Vice’. We were testing three different high-definition video cameras against a single 35 mm camera. And we shot on the water in Long Beach harbor at sunset. And right after the sun went down, I saw Orion in the southern sky. And there at Orion’s shoulder was the star, ‘BeatleJuice’ as fat and red and present as it was in 1964 when you introduced me to it, in the back yard, with that great 4 inch reflecting telescope. What ever happened to that telescope?....”

“Mom, Michele and I saw Bill Clinton speak at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last night. He was enlightening, brilliant, optimistic about the future, and at the end urged the highly partisan audience to work toward putting aside their elitist, narrow-minded ‘blue state / red state’ think and work toward understanding and communicating with Americans who elected Bush to a second term. Of course you saw politicians all the time when you lived in D.C. during the war didn’t you? Who did you see?....”

Those questions that won’t get answered. Those conversations I might have had, but didn’t for whatever reason.

 So, anyhow, this weekend I finally began to confront the emotionally complex process of dissecting my parent’s belongings.

 Going through their stuff.

I grew up without siblings, so going through my parents stuff, alone, in an empty house, or free from adult supervision was something I enjoyed as a kid. It was fascinating, kind of like museums are now.  It’s important to understand that my parents rarely threw anything away. For whatever reason (children of the Great Depression, emotional security of holding on, etc.) both of them saved every paper clip, rubber band, knife, utensil, container (“you never know what ya might be able to stick in this”), bag, book, appliance and electronic device (even when they stopped working), stick of furniture, photographic tool or accessory, paint brush, gardening tool, blood / sugar meter (I shit you not, I’ve found five of them!), blood pressure checker, pen, pencil, erasure, coin, bottle (remember the Spanada bottle with the embossed fruit motif? They’re everywhere.), jar, lamp, thermometer, electric fan (at least six of them), and cloth rag (neatly folded, in bags).

Then there is paper, including photographic and audio recordings. Virtually every letter, playbill, menu, cocktail napkin, matchbook, pamphlet, brochure, birthday card, valentine card, health tip newsletter, and receipt was saved by my mother. There are canceled checks going back to the 1940’s, and tax returns with accompanying documentation going back to the 70’s. Mom was a copious note taker; there are notebooks with the description of every attendee and dish served at social gatherings spanning some 40 years.  She kept track of her weight and blood pressure daily, for years. Meanwhile, Dad was cranking out photographs for 40 years. There are thousands of slides, negatives and prints to be dealt with. And lastly, there are hundreds of phonograph records; VHS and Beta videos; reel to reel and audio cassette tapes, many of them containing the voices of parents and loved ones immortalized over the last 5 decades. These audio artifacts await extended life in the digital world or ignominy at the bottom of a trash bin. But some schmuck has to make those decisions, and that schmuck is I.

So, this weekend began the sorting phase. Open that drawer or closet and lay out all that comprised my parent’s possessions. Having done that, decisions had to be made: to trash without mercy; or pause and reflect on, then trash without mercy; or decide to keep for the moment and in the future reflect on; sell; donate; give away to a friend or relative; record digitally with a camera or audio device in the event that I or some future offspring finds meaning there. And in all these decisions I struggled to remain clear on the real value of an object. Tried to be 100% present at the moment; to experience an object or sound for the last time perhaps, and let it go. Unfortunately, the fact is that I carry my parent’s DNA, and a part of me wants desperately to cling to everything.

 Yesterday, the process became overwhelming. I had pulled out so much, that the house had become chaos.  I felt mired in a hopeless, never-ending task. A ten count was followed by a big sweep, much of it going into trash bags. Peace returned to my aesthetic world.

 But one object remained. It had to go, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy.

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 Those of you who knew my dad can picture him in his recliner chair. It was where he read, conversed, drank, entertained, watched television and controlled his hi-fi; occasionally, with remarkable gusto, he’d orchestrate all six activities at once.  Over the years, he went through three or four of these recliners, all of them with a levered foot rest pivoting out and up, locking him in space, 280 lbs in commanding repose. In his heyday, it was a memorable demonstration of mass and grace when he’d pull up on the lever to release the foot rest. The chair would rock him forward, and in one singularly graceful motion, he’d merge becoming upright with walking, briskly on course toward his destination which was often the kitchen and in the really good old days, the bar.

The last of these recliners was a cloth-covered, Nixonian brown thing that had become tattered and stained in the way that only an elderly and infirm person can tatter and stain. When Dad had become so weak he had trouble standing up onto his walker, I had crudely built an additional six inches onto the base, so his ass sat higher than his knees.

So as the smoke cleared on my anxiety attack, there it was, in the middle of the room, the throne of the deposed king. No one was going to want that butchered and beat up chair. As I lifted it into the air, the weight and imbalance, the texture, the odors warmth and softness against my skin gave me another farewell moment. Ever the dutiful son, I was taking him out of the house. I said a silent “goodbye” as I muscled it down the driveway, placed it in the bin and went back in the house to cry.