by Marra B. Gad
“I’ll tell you what, Daddy,” I said. “When you get better, I will go salmon fishing with you. The helicopter kind. I’ll sleep outside. I’ll wear the horrible outfit. The rubber pants. All of it. I’ll do it. As soon as you’re better, we will go. I’ll go to the library tonight and get some books, and we can start researching our trip.”
I knew that “someday” probably would never come, but I thought it might take his mind off things to plan the trip. I’m guessing it was my willingness to wear the waders that brought a sleepy, stoned smile to his face. My father knew well how much I love a good outfit, and he knew that for me to offer to sleep outside and wear waders was a supreme act of love.
My mother, who had been sitting in the corner listening to our talk of fishing, was called out of the room to speak with his doctor, and so once again, I was left alone with my father. I wasn’t nearly as afraid this time. I mean, what could possibly happen now?
“I need some water, Marra.”
He was unable to lift his head, or even the glass, and since he did not want to use a straw, I was tasked with trying to pour the water into his mouth—without spilling it everywhere. And I failed. Miserably. I soaked his hospital gown and the pillow.
“Why can’t you pour it into my mouth like your mother does!” my father, soaked and now cold, yelled at me.
I don’t know what possessed me to do it … but I yelled back.
“Because I can’t!” I cried. “And you now have three choices. You can wait for Mom to do it, you can use the straw, or you can do it yourself. And that clearly isn’t an option!” When I realized I was yelling at my father, I became silent and sat down. Horrified.
And my father began to laugh. He laughed harder than he had in weeks. And he took my hand and said, “Oh, Marra. Only you would yell at a dying man … and get away with it.”
This was the only time during his illness that he actually acknowledged out loud that he was dying. Only my beloved father could have found humor in such a moment.
I was sent home, with kisses from both of my parents, to again be with my bubbie and my brother. This time, it was to wait.
“I’m going to stay here with your father until it’s all over, Marra,” my mother told me. “I’ll call you and tell you that I’m ready to be picked up. And when I do, you’ll know. So stay by the phone. And always answer the other line if you’re talking to someone else.”
The phone rang at least twenty-five times that night, and each time, my heart stopped. But I did as my mother asked. I was talking with my best friend, Harry, when the call came in.
“I don’t want to answer it,” I said.
“You have to,” he said, gently. “It could be your mother.”
And it was. Ready to be picked up from the hospital.
She had not left his side for those final hours, and when I arrived, she gave me time to say my goodbyes.
“Daddy, please … wake up,” I said. “Come back to us. We need you. I need you. Wake up, please …”
But he was gone. My beloved, hilarious, loving, hardworking father was gone. I tried so hard to wake him up, sitting in the room with his lifeless body for nearly an hour before my mother gently peeled me away to take me to a home that would never again be the same. He was gone, and with him, one of my greatest protectors from a world that was so often unkind.
I confess I have blocked most of this from my otherwise considerable memory. I could not conceive of a world without him there to love me, to teach me, to make me laugh. To protect me, as he did in every moment, even when we were not together.
My friends, utterly ill equipped to deal with my grief, nonetheless came from Champaign to Chicago to try to be of help. It is Jewish custom to bury the dead as quickly as possible, so there were only three days between his death and the funeral. One afternoon, after we made a strong pitcher of Long Island iced tea for my mother in an effort to force her to get some much-needed sleep, my friends managed to get me out of the house.
We went to what was then my nirvana: the mall. We had lunch and ice cream at the Claim Company, and I found myself smiling for the first time in what seemed like a year. Then we headed to the record store. FAO Schwarz, the toy store, was on the way, so I stopped in to see if there might be something to bring back for my brother. As I browsed, an older, white, and presumably Jewish saleswoman approached me.
“Why are you wearing that?” she said, gesturing toward my torn black ribbon. “That is a sign of mourning for Jewish people! You should not be wearing that!”
She was right. It is Jewish custom that we wear the ribbon over our heart for thirty days as a visible sign of mourning when an immediate family member, such as a father, has died. Orthodox Jews actually tear their clothing.
Instinctively, I looked around for my father. But he was not there to step in. There was only me. “I am Jewish, too,” I stammered, “and we recently lost my father. So I am in mourning.”
But she could not hear me. Or perhaps she would not.
My friends saw what was happening as they walked up and dragged me out of the store. Even during the worst time of my young life, I was apparently not going to get a respite from the hostile, public, and constant questioning of my very existence. And now, I had one less shield against it all.
We went to the record store, and my friends bought me my first Etta James album. “Etta James will cure what is ailing you, sweetie,” cooed Harry.
We returned to the house, finished what was left of the Long Island iced tea, and lay on the living room floor to listen to Miss Etta sing: “I want a Sunday kind of love … a love to last past Saturday night.”
She was singing bittersweet love songs on this album, but her voice went straight through to the core of my broken heart. And to this day, Etta James’s music offers a unique comfort whenever I am in need. I always found it more than a bit painful that we also lost her to leukemia some years later.
My mother elected to have my father’s memorial service at our house. This was a marked departure from a traditional Jewish funeral on a number of levels. First, my father had been cremated, which was something previously not done by Jews as a rule. Reform Jews, which we are, had just begun to embrace the practice. Second, a Jewish funeral would typically be held at a synagogue or in the chapel at a funeral home or cemetery. But my father loved the house, and I think having the service at home made my mother feel closer to him at a time when he could not have been further away. And for my siblings and me, it was a comfort to be at home.
Once again, my friends came. And I, conditioned to always be graceful, did my very best to make them feel comfortable by not letting them see me cry. I knew that they were coming to support me, that they were there to stand by me on my darkest day. To love me. But, ever aware of people’s discomfort, I did not want to show anyone the true depth of my pain—even my closest friends.
Armed with fashion as a litmus test, Harry arrived in a hideous sport jacket, purchased at the Salvation Army in Champaign for the occasion.
“What are you wearing?” I exclaimed when I answered the door.
My response elicited smiles and uncomfortable laughter from my friends. They knew that if I commented on the jacket, I was still alive inside. To this day, I remain grateful that he wore something so ugly, for the sight of it brought me back to myself. Nothing draws a girl out like an otherwise impeccably dressed gay man in an intentionally, comically bad outfit. At a funeral.
Our much-beloved rabbi was amazing—and he brought with him the tenderness, peace, and love our family so desperately needed on that day. After he finished the traditional Jewish funeral prayers, and once the mournful sounds of El Malei Rachamim had ended, Rabbi added yet another unique touch to the day by sharing a personal story about my father. He spoke in his calming voice about how gentle and affectionate a man my father was. And that he’d seen my father’s gentleness manifest most when he was at synagogue with his family. That he always seemed to be holding the hands of his children. He alwa
ys made sure to escort my mother to every place she went.
And then the rabbi asked our friends and family to join him.
“I’d like to invite anyone who would like to, to also share a story or a memory about Jerry. In this way, we can celebrate his life together and offer comfort to his family.”
The rabbi’s invitation was meant to be a celebration of my father and the wonderful, loving man that he was. It was meant to fill our hearts with the joy of his memory on an impossible day. I was sitting on the floor at my mother’s feet during the service, and as the stories began, I was feeling everything the rabbi wanted us to feel. Comforted. Loved. I understood that my father had been loved deeply during his life and that we were in a room surrounded by people who wanted us to celebrate the life of a loving, kind, funny, and special man.
When it was my turn, I quietly wrapped my arm around my mother’s leg and breathed in.
“My father always told me that he wanted to keep me in a glass cage so that I would always be able to see the world but would never be hurt by it,” I said. “In so many ways, he was my glass cage. My ever-present protector. There are no words for how much I loved him. Or how much I will miss him …”
I glanced around the room and noticed a few members of my father’s family. We never had much of a relationship with that side of the family, but my father wanted them to be invited. “Marra,” he had said, “I want you to call them and tell them I’m sick. Tell them I want to see them.” I had asked if someone else could make the call, but he said no. “I want it to be you,” he had said. “Please.” And so I had called and introduced myself to a grandmother I barely knew. And here they were.
“Your father gave up everything for you,” one of them raged, turning his sights squarely on me. “I just hope you were worth it.”
And in that moment, my glass cage shattered.
I could not escape the brand of racist hate that had been hurled at my family and me from the moment we found one another. Even at my father’s funeral, there was no escape. I would love to know what my father would have said. But he was gone, and instead, there was silence.
In a room filled with family, friends, and my father’s coworkers, you could have heard a pin drop. I opened my mouth to speak—for the first time when confronted like this—but I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder, heard the gasps that had overtaken the room, and saw a college friend shake his head as if to say, “Now is not the time.”
And so instead, I said nothing and let Rabbi somehow bring us back to a place of focus and peace—and recover the state of grace that had just had a bomb dropped on it.
We finished the service, and my father’s family mercifully left immediately afterward. We moved on to the shiva, and I did my part and let people tell me how sorry they were and how much my father was loved and would be missed. But I wasn’t really there after my glass cage was shattered. My sister decided to stay upstairs with our mother, and I withdrew to the basement with my little brother and my friends, where we played video games and ate the chocolate chip coffee cake I had managed to tuck away when all of the food arrived.
Chapter Eight
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING MY FATHER’S death, my bubbie became quite ill. If I look back in my memory banks, I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t sick. Whether it was her Hashimoto’s disease or her heart condition, my bubbie was a combination of spirit strong and body broken for much of my life. This time, though, it was ovarian cancer, which was odd given that she had had a full hysterectomy years before. Apparently, even the tiniest bit of tissue left in the body can become a place for cancer to grow. And it did.
When I was around thirteen years old, she started to prepare me for her inevitable death. “I’m going to die someday, mamaleh,” she would say. And I would always respond, “Bubbie, I’ll let you know when it’s time for you to go. I promise.”
A bit macabre, I know, but it was nonetheless a part of our repartee. There were many times when our interactions were both macabre and funny. That was the beauty of her. She was always able to make even the most horrible moments somehow palatable.
Much like my father, she took on the role of protector, especially on the rare occasions when we had to deal with my father’s family. When his relatives arrived at the hospital during his illness, my bubbie became filled with the love and rage that only she could pull together. She took me by the hand and dragged me out of the room, as if I were a young child.
“They will never see my granddaughter,” she proclaimed. “Come, mamaleh. Let’s go get some ice cream.”
Only my bubbie would have made that kind of scene and then turned on her heel to take me for ice cream. And only she could have made it work. Like something out of a movie.
As it turned out, things went so badly that the hospital asked my father’s family to leave and my father had to be sedated. To this day, I don’t know what was said, and no matter how I try to get it out of her, my mother will not speak of it. I only know that I wasn’t there to witness it because of my bubbie and our trip for ice cream.
I spent the two years after my father’s death doing my best to become a star in the world of Chicago musical theater. After losing him, I wanted nothing more than to lose myself by playing characters that were not me. It seemed the perfect escape from my profound grief. Unfortunately, the early 1990s did not provide the warmest and most open environment for mixed-race casting, and few directors knew what to do with me. For better or worse, I once saw the director’s notes on a casting sheet: “Is she black or is she white? What do we do with her?” Questions that some ask to this day.
I found a space doing original works of theater and joyfully did every rock opera that welcomed people who don’t fall neatly into any one category. Shows like Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar offered me a place. I was never going to be in Oklahoma! or Fiddler on the Roof. And I knew it. But that did not stop me from trying, and I certainly brought my flair for the dramatic home with me, something that my bubbie enjoyed.
Bubbie was hospitalized for the final time in late June 1992, just before the famous Taste of Chicago festival began. For more than a decade, the Taste had been the way to celebrate the Fourth of July in the city, and this was my year to go. I had never been and had made big plans. But Bubbie didn’t want me to go.
“I don’t like crowds. You don’t need to go,” she said.
“But, Bubbie, it looks like it’s so much fun! Don’t you want me to have fun?”
And then, while I was making plans to attend in spite of Bubbie’s wishes, we came to understand these were going to be her final days. I saw how tired she was, and I did as I had promised I would do. “Bubbie, I promised you I would tell you when it’s time for you to go. And I think it is time.”
She smiled at me. “Mamaleh, you did promise me you’d tell me. You’re a good girl. Thank you. But I still don’t want you to go to the Taste of Chicago.”
I laughed. “If I know you, you’ll wait and die on the Fourth of July just to make sure I don’t ever go!”
And that is exactly what she did. I believe it was on purpose so that she could leave me with a reminder of the truly comical character she was.
Unlike when my father died, I was present during her final moments. This time, I didn’t leave my mother’s side. I was grateful to be with them. It is a remarkable thing to be there when a life comes into the world, and it is equally remarkable to be there when a life leaves the world. I am privileged to have experienced both.
My bubbie was put on a morphine drip, which we were told would “slow her body” so that she might drift off into a permanent and peaceful sleep. Unfortunately, that is not how it worked, and she ended up holding on, with her heart unwilling to stop beating, for several days. The rest of her body was already gone, including her brain, and she had turned blue. I had never seen anything quite like it. My mother, who had been quiet and very composed during my father’s illness, was beside herself. Seeing her in so much pain was almost as bad
as knowing that my beloved bubbie was on the verge of death.
“I don’t understand why you can’t turn up the drip!” my mother wailed to the doctor. She begged the doctor to do something—my bubbie clearly had not been given enough of the drug for a peaceful send-off. The nurse agreed that the dosage needed to be adjusted to better do its work. But the doctor did not.
I joined in. “What is wrong with you, Doctor? Can’t you see that she is suffering? Please,” I begged, “increase the dosage like the nurse said you can so that this might all be over.”
“You are a horrible, selfish person to want to use a drug in this way,” the doctor shouted at me. “You just don’t want to have to watch it, but this is what death looks like.”
With the same brand of fierceness and protection that my bubbie had long shown to me, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and once the doctor left us alone, I went to turn up the morphine myself. By then, I had spent enough time in hospital rooms to know exactly what to do. But my mother stopped me. “Please, Marra,” she said. “They’ll send you to jail. Don’t do this. I can’t lose you too.”
And so we waited. Locked away in the room with my bubbie’s blue body and her strong heart. It’s amazing, really, that it was her heart that held on for so long. Clinically, it had always been considered weak. That could not have been further from the truth.
Finally, at some point on the Fourth of July, she left us. I did not go to the Taste of Chicago, and to this day, I have never been, and I do not celebrate on the Fourth of July. But I do laugh knowing that my bubbie got the final word—just as she would have wanted.