by Renee Rodin
And he is on a trip. Levitating above his bed he chases after the crimson roses soaring around the room. Reaches up for crisp French fries dangling from the ceiling, giggles at clips from Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, raves to our mother about the pot roast she’s just cooked, discusses the details of his mandolin recital with his Auntie Essie and Uncle Alec, both of whom were actually stone deaf. Words are flowing, pouring out of him, in English, French and Yiddish. Tsvishn meysim; amongst the ghosts.
When Noah phones while on a trip to Turkey Abe pulls himself out of his hallucinations to tell him his Turkish neighbours call him dede, their term for grandfather.
Slips back into his reveries. Rallies with each phone call to tell everyone, “I’m fine, just fine, I’m getting better.”
Late into the night he sits up in bed, like a little boy in his striped pajamas, beaming his flashlight onto surfaces. Enchanted by the shapes and shadows, the light show he’s creating.
Soon he no longer sits. Perched on the side of his bed, we sing to him “Bye Bye Blackbird,” an old favourite. He tries to sing along, but the lyrics are too complicated. Falters on “Alouette, Gentille Alouette,” chimes in on every “shine” in “You Are My Sunshine.”
By the hour he is transforming. When he next hears his grandchildren’s voices he purrs like a kitten, when we show him family photographs his eyes widen. “Ohhhhhh,” he coos in pleasure.
Now he lies wide-eyed and silent, frantically plucking at his bedclothes as if they are on fire, burning his skin. We’re told this awful agitation, this compulsive behaviour, is a classic sign of impending death. Pluck, pluck, pluck. It continues for two days and two nights.
Simone says, “He can go on and on, but you can’t.” We give her permission to give him a sedative. He stares at us glassy-eyed, as we, the invisible, watch him drift into a deep sleep. To begin his orbit around the universe.
“Don’t be afraid that you’re overmedicating him. Give him as much as you think he needs,” the doctor encourages us. “Hearing begins in utero at around twenty weeks and it might be the last sense to go. Talk to him.” Sandy tells him, “Your work is done, you’ve taken care of everything, you can let go.” At the slightest sign of pain we inject him. Day and night, we pump our father full of drugs.
The nurses teach us how to wrap the sheet around him, he is suddenly so heavy, to roll him from one side to the other, to prevent bedsores, show us how to moisten his lips and mouth which have become sandpaper parched, Sahara dry. I dip my finger in water, slide into the roof of his mouth; his lips close reflexively around my finger, sucking like a baby.
His friend Mort, a fellow ex-taxi driver, also in his eighties, calls and we tell him Abe will soon be dead, that there will be no formal funeral, instead a party later at Le Jardin de Chine, where he’d had the last food he’d enjoyed. But Mort is so crestfallen at this prospect, we realize the older people in Abe’s life need the kind of formality they’re used to.
We phone the one Jewish burial service in Montreal, run for generations by the Paperman family, to see if Abe can have a non-religious funeral. Though we’ve heard of this place since we were kids, only now does it occur to us what an appropriate name it is for undertakers, “Paper Man”—transient and ephemeral.
Abe looks peaceful, but with every breath he makes a terrible gurgling sound as if he were drowning, and the doctor gives us yet another set of injections, these to dry up the râles. She says, “This isn’t for Abe who is absolutely okay but for the sake of those who have to hear him.”
A nurse looks at us, haggard with exhaustion, and he says, “Your father can go on for a week like this.” Every nerve in my body tells me differently. Tonight Sandy and I will stay together, one of us will sleep on the air mattress on the kitchen floor, the other on the sofa in the living room, take turns, using the alarm clock, to get up to check on Abe. By midnight neither of us can stay awake.
Three hours later Sandy softly calls my name, that’s all. I’m up immediately, say, “He’s dead, thank God,” rush in to see him.
Now he looks exhausted, his head lolled to one side, as if he’d run a race, as if he wanted to be done.
It is Friday, September 13, in Judaism and Buddhism a good luck number.
“We’re orphans,” Sandy and I kid each other. But we mean it. I’m flooded with relief. Anything after this has got to be a lark.
Within minutes I’ll begin to torment myself that I slept through my father’s death. That I let my father die alone was my ultimate pay-back, for his leaving us alone when we needed him. I’ll hear many stories about how people stayed with someone they loved almost constantly and it was only in the brief moment they left that the person died. Begin to wonder if sometimes dying can be hard work, require concentration in order to let go, that it might need solitude. The remorse will lift. Later.
But for this part, Simone had prepared us: “When someone dies, the usual impulse of the family is to immediately call the authorities, an ambulance, the police. When Abe dies, you can stay with him for as long as you want.”
We light candles around him, have a schnapps and a smoke, after which I hurl my glass off the balcony. Normally I try so hard not to break things and at dawn I ruin this unusual gesture by running out barefoot, in my bathrobe, to sweep up my spontaneity, so my fellow bikers won’t puncture their tires.
Leafing through the pad of paper on Abe’s night-table in hopes he’d written down some of the words he’d seen on the walls, we find it’s totally blank except for a list of instructions about how to drive to the cemetery. And a full-page note to his grandchildren. It’s the longest piece of his writing we’ve ever seen.
Eventually we call the city inspectors to sign a death certificate and they give us another piece of paper, a long narrow strip, almost a scroll, with a flat-line on it. It’s the flattest line we’ve ever seen. Sandy and I each take an opposite end of the ECG, close our eyes, make a wish, pull it apart.
Simone comes by to sign another death certificate and she leaves too. But no one takes Abe. He’d donated his body so that science might learn more about his disease, “mesothelioma,” a particular form of lung cancer caused by asbestos. If it’s a suspicious death a body is taken to the morgue, but no one knows what to do with someone who’s volunteered for an autopsy and has to be brought back to the hospital.
For hours, we bounce from bureaucracy to bureaucracy, trapped in a macabre comedy, as Abe’s body begins to show more evidence that we are merely biology. Organic, changing, entities. Until the funeral director rescues us by agreeing to transport Abe to the hospital and then, after the autopsy, on to Paperman’s.
Sandy and I sit across the desk from Mr. Paperman, determined to write an obituary that is not formulaic. The only phrase we can come up with is “Abe was a cool guy.” For ten minutes we quibble over a point of grammar until Paperman refers to his computer program.
A nurse had told us just before death the body releases a chemical to shield the person from what they are about to experience. Possibly it induces the calm tunnel of white light often described in near-death experiences. In our sleepless state, it feels as if chemicals are surging through us too. We are altered. But when the computer tells us we’re right about the grammar, we wink at each other.
Discussing burial options is surreal, we knew our father was dying, yet his death was as surprising as the birth of a baby a second after its head has crowned. And, like a new-born baby, a mystery it will take a long time to understand.
We’d like Abe to be buried directly in the ground, as they do in Israel and in Muslim countries, so there is little intervention between the event and the process. But Mr. Paperman says, “Canadian health regulations insist on coffins. However ours are built without metal to not impede disintegration. Ours are Jewish coffins.” I begin to titter.
He’d described the special features of each from the plain pine box to the vault-like mahogany. Suddenly Sandy and I are left alone to wander the aisles of the starkly li
t coffin superstore.
We’re aghast at the prices, except for the pine box. Money, often an issue, becomes irrelevant. Though we can just hear Abe scoffing, “go for the el cheapo,” we want to do right by him, show him out in style, because despite his working class ethics, there was a part of Abe that liked to impress people. In response to a stranger’s question he might answer, “I’m in the transportation business.”
His daughters are not above wanting to make an impression either. We choose the lustrous cherry wood with the blue lining to match his eyes. Something had to help us pick the appropriate coffin. And, if a coffin could be considered “jaunty” this would be it, perfect for the dapper Abe.
Back at his office the funeral director assigns us our forty-five-minute time slot. Paperman’s is a busy business. The next day Abe’s phone starts ringing off the hook and we can’t leave his apartment without being stopped every few steps. Word has spread fast.
If Al Waxman was the King of Kensington then Abe was the Squire of Somerled, though most of his neighbours are bowled over to find out how old he actually was. What is eighty-eight supposed to look like?
When the coroner calls she says icily, “I was shocked by the amount of drugs I found when I performed the autopsy on your father.” Already I’m Nurse Necrophilia. Already I’m at the trial. Crankstone has never been more animated, gushes with embellishments as he testifies about how I “begged” him to kill Abe.
My heart’s pounding so loudly I can barely hear the coroner as she continues. “Your father was elderly and quite ill, dying soon probably. I’ll report ‘natural causes.’” I begin to breathe again.
We want to bury Abe in his latest good suit, the one he’d worn to the last ten years worth of weddings and bar mitzvahs. But according to Jewish ritual every man has to be wrapped in a tallis, a white ceremonial shawl, a woman in a shroud, to signify that if not in life, at least in death, everyone is equal.
Sandy, the kids and I are in a tizzy about what to wear for the funeral, all of us ending up in our best blacks, not knowing that Jewish people don’t wear black for mourning. It’s the first time my sister and I are the oldest, the “adults,” in the front line of this duty. Daniel cancels the limousine service. Instead he’ll drive us, “So Zayda’s car can come to the funeral too.” Into the trunk we pack four huge cardboard boxes.
The dead must never be left unattended, and a bleary-eyed elderly holy man sits beside the coffin in the anteroom of the chapel. As he gets up to leave he glares at us. Because we’re wearing black? Or maybe it’s the boxes we’re lugging in, found behind a daycare centre near where Abe lived, all boldly marked in day-glo colours, “Toys.”
Mr. Paperman arrives a moment later to open the coffin, for the immediate family to see Abe in privacy, with intimacy. Granted he had been through a lot, including an autopsy. But still he just doesn’t look like himself, he’s too small, too tanned, too unrecognizable. “This isn’t our father. You’ve put the wrong body in here,” I inform the funeral director and flap a recent photo of Abe in his face.
He agrees to check and comes back a few minutes later to assure us, it is indeed Abe. How many times does Mr. Paperman have to humour his customers in this way and what does he do when he’s out “checking”? Call his wife, have a nosh or a pee?
Once Abe’s identity is confirmed, we dip into our pockets to give him change for his journey. It’s Tuesday, a good day to travel. Sandy gives him an egg, one of his favourite foods, I the flashlight he used for his light shows. Daniel slips him a bottle of Bailey’s, Abe enjoyed a bit of its sweetness every evening before he went to sleep. The framed photograph Noah wants to include slipped out of his hands and though we tell him it’s good luck to break glass, he’s upset, “Zayda might be cut.” Joey puts in his portable radio and then worries, “I left it on, the battery will run down.” We are all in denial—denial is our friend.
It doesn’t take a hawk-eye to spot the boxes we’d smuggled in towering conspicuously in a corner of the small room. Three times Paperman asks about them, each time his voice a little higher. Until now he’s been so smooth, that’s his job, to keep it together while all around him are losing it. Now his feathers are ruffled too. Noah tells him. Paperman says, “This has never happened here before, but why not?”
After the coffin is sealed, we set up a bar and as others file into the room, hand everyone their choice of liquor. Then stand in a circle, to raise our glasses, to make a toast: “To Abe” and “l’Chaim.” To life.
The lapse in protocol, that we’ve personalized the event, is as fortifying as the good stiff drink even if it is early afternoon. The funeral consists only of a cantor singing Hebrew psalms in a full baritone voice, a few of us telling stories about Abe that make the rest of us laugh and cry. No one to officiate, no “boss.” As Abe wanted it.
Dahlia, his last great love, is absent on her doctor’s advice: “Soon, his memory will fade from her mind, so she should be spared the news of his death.” And her daughter won’t budge. It makes me wonder if people with Alzheimer’s, and other conditions where they lose their memory, eventually forget about death. What it would be like to live without the concept of dying? Would it take the edge off living?
The six pallbearers we’ve chosen represent various parts of Abe’s life, relatives from his family and our mother’s side, Dahlia’s daughter and his friend, Mort. All the women flock to one side, the men to the other. When it’s time to lift the coffin, though the women struggle valiantly to keep their side from sinking to the floor, it’s considerably lower than the men’s. Watching the totally lopsided coffin being slowly carried out of the chapel, I clap my hand over my mouth to stifle my giggles.
The next instant we’re at the gravesite, beside Florence, our mother, whose presence for once doesn’t overshadow Abe. Détente at last. Their war is finally over. Or maybe about to start all over again.
Sandy and I recite Kaddish, throw long-stemmed red roses on Abe’s coffin. Each of us takes a turn to shovel some earth into his grave, because everyone should have enough people in their lives to do this, no one should have to be buried by strangers.
At the sight of others shovelling I start to sob. There’s not a breeze, not a cloud, just an impossibly perfect fall day. We’re a huddle of mourners, with no shelter from either the bright sunlight or one another. I cover my face. Until Joey reassures me, “You’re allowed to cry, this is your father’s funeral.”
There is still more water. When we return home, we wash our hands in the bowl of water we had left outside our door, so as to not bring death into the place where we live.
Soon family and friends will be arriving to spend the afternoon with us. Company is coming. We have to start the coffee, cut up the tomatoes and the onions. Are there enough bagels? What plate to put the lox on?
Judgement
When I received notice in the mail to appear for jury selection I groaned, as did everyone else I mentioned it to. Even if survival isn’t at stake, we’re all constantly making judgements, but I’ve yet to hear anyone say they’d like to sit on a jury. Still, I had more faith in the process of twelve people determining someone’s innocence or guilt than a lone judge taking on that immense responsibility. I figured if I didn’t step up when I was called upon, who would or who should? Mainly I was curious.
It was like a cattle call for extras, there were about three hundred of us crammed into a provincial courtroom at Smithe and Hornby in downtown Vancouver. Juries were being selected for three different trials. I was a potential juror for the first one. Alone on a bench slumped a woman, her shoulders hunched. In a Hawthornian moment, when she was ordered to stand, to be named and shamed, I could see Madam X was about forty-five years old, tall and extremely buff. Beneath her flimsy jogging suit her body rippled with muscle.
She was charged with smuggling and possession of heroin for the purpose of trafficking, and looked scared, indignant and defiant as she pleaded “not guilty” and then slid down again to resume her comm
a shape. The judge asked, “Does anyone here have a problem with heroin?” I can’t say that I have since I’ve never tried it. Though I heard if you didn’t have to resort to stealing, prostitution and other dangerous activities in order to obtain it once you were addicted, heroin wouldn’t be so problematic.
After a friend’s teenage daughter died because the heroin she injected was too pure, I was convinced that legalizing and controlling drugs, to make them safely available rather than nefariously profitable, was the only solution. Our prisons are filled with users who couldn’t afford fancy lawyers to represent them. But the dealers, those who do harm to others, they need to be stopped—somehow.
As each of our names was called one by one we squirmed through the crowd to stand in the front docket. Close by on a high chair sat a petulant-looking judge wielding his gavel like a baby’s rattle. Appealing to him was our last chance to duck out of jury duty.
A woman said, “Your Honour, this building is making me sick, didn’t you hear me coughing?” There are buildings containing toxic materials that produce allergic reactions but she’d been at the back of a big hall and the judge couldn’t possibly have heard her. He had himself a good laugh and didn’t excuse her, or any of the other people who said in perfect English, “I can’t speak the language.” But he immediately dismissed the man who was close to tears as he said, “My wife is very sick.” Who would tempt fate with a lie like that?
Then the lawyers got to pick and choose whom they wanted as jurors. The young man who slouched over to the stand shrouded in a black hoodie was instantly rejected by the prosecutor; the woman who flounced to the front in a white bridal veil, by the defence.
“What do you do?” was the only question the rest of us were asked. A mayor, a doctor, the coach of a champion soccer team and other pillars of the community left the stand looking relieved but also slightly abashed when they were rejected. I’d answered “writer” and was the twelfth juror to be selected. Two alternates were chosen as stand-bys in the event one of us became ill.