Picking Up the Pieces - Exploring Parental Relationships

Saul Bellow wrote, “Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces.” In honor of Father’s day, we offer some thoughts about parental relationships that you may find helpful as you pick up your own pieces of glass, and maybe a few splinters.  https://bit.ly/4l8cvXf 

In this Episode:

• 02:54 - Road Trip: Virginia and Pimento Cheese Recipe
• 04:21 - Patrick Henry's Famous Speech
• 06:52 - Essay by David Sedaris on the Death of His Father, "Orphaned at Last"
• 18:08 - Leo Tolstoy - The Old Grandfather and the Grandson
• 19:42 - Outro

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:54 Road Trip to Virginia, Recipe for Pimento Cheese
• 4:21 Patrick Henry's Famous Speech
• 6:42 Essay by David Sedaris on Losing His Father, "Finally an Orphan"
• 18:08 Leo Tolstoy - The Old Grandfather and the Grandson
• 19:42 Outro

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 47 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every person viewpoint to our podcast.

We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions before a crisis hits. Also, this podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording.

Welcome to this week's show. We're so glad to have you join Charlie and me for the next hour as we talk about the death of a father. This podcast is a combination of education and entertainment.

Our main topic is in the second half. You can fast forward to that chitchat-free zone if you'd like. In the first half, we have our recipe of the week and an excerpt from Patrick Henry's speech to the Second Virginia Convention.

In the second half, Charlie has an excerpt from David Sedaris' essay, I Don't Think the Coffin Could Have Been Any Uglier, about the death of his father. And in the third half, I have a short story written by Leo Tolstoy. Charles, anything new? Yes.

New bartender. Let's just, let's call her Erin, because that's her name. This woman just made, makes a Long Island iced tea, which, yeah, and I thought, okay, you know, anyone could accidentally make a perfect Long Island iced tea.

And when I say perfect, it means you do not taste that alcohol. It tastes like a glass of iced tea. So I thought, well, I better, I better order a second one just to be safe.

Marianne, Marianne, I'm still thinking about this Long Island iced tea. Now, this was in Detroit? No. Oh, no, well, actually, yes, in where I'm staying right now.

It's north of Detroit. It's pretty close to where my sister and brother live. Yeah, this Long Island iced tea, oof, yeah.

So does it make you want to move back to Detroit? Is it that good? I don't know if I'd be ready to move back here, but I could see myself making more trips back here, yeah. It is that good. It's just really, this woman is an artist, yes.

So Marianne, what do you got? So we're going to travel to Virginia this week where milk is the official state beverage and the official state dance is the square dance. I mean, Virginia's rocking. At any funeral lunch in Virginia, there's bound to be some fresh pimento cheese available as part of the food spread.

This savory dish is often served with bread, crackers, biscuits, or ham. Pimento cheese combines cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, and sweet peppers into a smooth spread. This dish has become integral to Southern cuisine over the years, giving it nicknames such as the caviar of the South or the pate of the South.

Virginia is also home to the oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, which was established in 1619. Notable figures such as Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were instrumental in advocating for independence and leading the fight against British rule. The Second Virginia Convention met in March of 1775 at Richmond in St. John's Church.

Delegate Patrick Henry presented resolutions to raise and establish a militia and to put Virginia in a posture of defense. We have for you today the beginning and the end of his famous speech. Mr. President, It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it. Is it in vain, sir, to extenuate the manner? Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace, but there is no peace.

The war has actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field.

Why we stand here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as it to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe and for additional resources for this program.

Everyone Dies is offered at no cost, but it's not free to produce. Can we count on you to contribute? Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our non-profit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone. You can also donate at www.everyonedies.org or at our site on Patreon and search for Everyone Dies.

Charlie? Thanks, Marianne. Our second half is from author and humorist David Sedaris, whose essay begins with, I don't think the coffin could have been any uglier. Sedaris' father, Lou Sedaris, had always baffled his children.

So when he died at 98, where would they begin with his funeral? As David observed, Ten days before my father died, he suffered a small stroke and fell. Or perhaps he fell and then had the stroke. Either way, it surprised me when people asked what was the cause of death.

I mean, he was 98. Wasn't that cause enough? I visited him shortly after his fall, flew down from New York with Amy and Hugh. Gretchen and Paul met us at Springmore, his retirement home, but he was essentially gone by then.

He was propped up in his bed. Well, he looks good, Amy said, pulling a chair up to his bedside. Who was she comparing him to, I wondered.

Google, old man dying, and I'm pretty sure you'll see exactly what was in front of us, an unconscious skeleton with just a little meat on it. After twenty or so minutes, we all step outside. My sister Gretchen reaches into her purse and pulls out a palm-sized black book.

Here. She hands it to me. I found this at Dad's house a few days ago and saved it for you.

I mistake it for a pocket Bible, super abbreviated, with only the good parts included, and just as I wonder, wait, what good parts, I realize it's for addresses, that it is, true to its color and size, my father's little black book. I open it to find fifty or so names, followed by addresses and phone numbers, mainly of women, and most with a note beside them. Faith Avery.

Too serious. Beryl Davis. Yes.

Pat Smith. Oddy. Mary Hobart.

Advanced. Arlene Knickerbocker. Looks are deceiving.

Anne Quinlan. Oddy. That's all.

No brains. Returning to the room, I look at my father, still seemingly asleep, and wonder if he had sex with these women, or just tried to. The next time I see him, he'll be dead, I say.

Hugh frowns. You don't know that. I mean, he's pulled through before.

This was on a Sunday. Six days later, Springmore called and said that my father had stopped eating and was on morphine. My sister Lisa and her husband Bob were at the C-section restaurant with us, as was my friend Ronnie and Hugh's friend Carol.

We all went to dinner that night in the town of Atlantic Beach. Dad is going to die while we're eating, I said as we left the house. David, Hugh scowled.

I'm not wishing, I told him, just predicting. And, correctly it turned out, Lisa received the call just as we were finishing our appetizers. Dad's dead, she said matter-of-factly.

She told Paul that our father had died, and I told the others. When our mother died, my siblings and I fell headfirst into a dark pit. Those first few days were the blackest.

It was the same after our sister Tiffany's suicide. With our father, though, it was different. By the time the check arrived, we were talking about other things.

Gas stoves versus electric ones. A funny TV show about vampires. The time Lisa ate an entire gallon of ice cream with her bare hands while driving home from the grocery store, clawing it out of the carton with her increasingly numb fingers.

Perhaps we strayed so easily onto other topics because, at my father's advanced age, this moment was expected. Then, too, he was lucidaris. By the second half of his ninety-seventh year, the man was a pussycat.

A delight. Unfortunately, it were all those years that preceded it. A month before our father's stroke, Amy and I went through a box of pictures and chose what we thought might make the perfect obituary photo.

The one Amy chose amounted to an old-person senior class photo. A snapshot of our father at age ninety-six. The obituary was similarly planned.

A résumé, essentially. None of us could have managed the countless things Lisa saw to. Contacting the funeral home.

Cleaning out our father's room at Springmoor. Calling his bank. His lawyer.

He wanted a funeral out at the Greek... He wanted a funeral at the Greek Orthodox Church. This meant that he couldn't be cremated, so a casket had to be purchased and clothing picked out. Most people I know would prefer to be disposed of with as little fanfare as possible.

My father, by contrast, insisted on what amounted to a three-part, multi-state death tour. A funeral in Raleigh. A burial almost a week later in my father's hometown of Cortland, New York.

Then a third service to take place forty days after his death. A sort of don't-think-for-one-minute-that-you-can-forget-me sort of thing. After which a traditional dish of boiled wheat berries and pomegranate would be served.

As I said to Gretchen, it's a lot of running around for someone who couldn't be bothered to pick us up from the airport. My father's mass took place at Holy Trinity, the church we grew up in. We all checked into a hotel, a very expensive one, in the town of Cary, charging everything to the estate.

Room service, drinks, the works. The staff thought we were attending a wedding. That's how merry we seemed as we headed to the church in our dress clothes, wondering how the coffin Lisa selected could possibly have been any uglier.

What struck me, what struck us all, was how tiny he was. His hands, seemingly no larger than a ventriloquist's dummy, rested vampirically across his chest, while his face and hair were the spooky off-white of a button mushroom. That open-casket business is so tacky, I said afterward, as we gathered for coffee and baklava in the church's multipurpose room.

I'd heard again and again at the church that morning that Lou was a real character. A character is what you call a massively difficult person once he has reached the age of 85. It's what Hitler might have been labeled had he lived another three decades, and Idi Amin.

It used to be that people's parents died in their 60s and 70s, cleanly, of good old-fashioned cancers and heart attacks, meaning the child was on his or her own by the age of 45 or so. Now, though, with people living longer and longer, you can be a grandparent and still be somebody's son or daughter. But there's a role you have to play when a parent dies.

So I'd said, each time I'd heard it, yes, he certainly was unique. As long as my father had power, he used it to hurt me. In my youth, I just took it.

Then I started to write about it, to actually profit from it. The money was a comfort, but better yet, was a roar of live audiences as they laughed at how petty and arrogant he was. Well, I feel sorry for him, Hugh has taken to saying.

Nobody was born acting that way. Something must have happened that made him that mean. I remembered the time I was invited to give the baccalaureate address at Princeton.

I was going to decline the offer, but instead I called my father and said that if he would like to accompany me, I'd do it. The Ivy League stuff was really appealing to him, though, in fairness, it has always appealed to me as well. People who attend at Harvard or Princeton or Yale are always maddeningly discreet about it.

I went to school in the Boston area, they say. Had I graduated from a top-notch school, I'd have found a way to work it into every conversation I had. Would you like that coffee hot or riced? Back at Columbia, I always had it hot, but what the hell, let's try something new.

Now my father said, Princeton? Are you kidding? I'd love to go. Before the graduation ceremony, we attended a luncheon and sat at a table with the president of the university. There were other people joining us, dignitaries of one stripe or another, and as our food was delivered, my father, who had earlier referred to Bill Clinton as Slick Willie, told the president that she had made a terrible mistake.

You asked my son to give this speech, but the person you really want is my daughter, Amy. She'd have the audience in the palm of her hand. They'd eat her up.

I'm telling you, I've got videotapes I can send you, her on some of the talk shows. Then you'll see, Amy's the ticket, not David. The university president politely asked me a question about the lecture tour I'd just wrapped up, and my father started it again.

They'd go home talking about her. They'd tell all their friends, Amy's who you want. Is this why you came here with me? I asked him afterward as a car arrived to take us to New York.

Oh, don't pull that business, my father said. The woman needed to know that she could have done better. I was 50 years old at the time, and what hurt me were not my father's words.

I was immune by this point, but the fact that he was still trying to undermine me. I never blamed Amy when things like this happened. It wasn't her fault.

He was always trying to pit his children against one another, never understanding the bond we shared. It was forged by having him as a father, and as long as he was alive, it held. One always hears of families falling apart after the death of a parent.

Lifelong checks are no longer in place, and the balance is thrown off. Slights become insurpountable. There are squabbles over the estate, etc.

It's a pretty rough patch of road. Saul Bellow wrote, Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come, you're picking up the pieces.

I felt like I'd collected all the big, easy-to-reach, obvious ones. The splinters, though, will definitely take a while. The rest of my life, perhaps.

I could feel them beneath my skin as I paused with my sisters, orphaned at last. Thanks, Charlie. The following story, The Old Grandfather and the Grandson, by Leo Tolstoy, raises some important questions about the good life.

The grandfather had become very old. His legs wouldn't go. His eyes didn't see.

His ears didn't hear. He had no teeth. And when he ate, the food dripped from his mouth.

The son and daughter-in-law stopped setting a place for him at the table and gave him supper in the back of the stove. Once they brought dinner down to him in a cup, the old man wanted to move the cup and dropped and broke it. The daughter-in-law began to grumble at the old man for spoiling everything in the house and breaking the cups and said that she would now give him dinner in a dishpan.

The old man only sighed and said nothing. Once the husband and wife were staying at home and watching their small son playing on the floor with some wooden planks. He was building something.

The father asked, What is that you're doing, Misha? And Misha said, Dear father, I am making a dishpan so that when you and dear mother become old, you may be fed from this dishpan. The husband and wife looked at one another and began to weep. They became ashamed of so offending the old man and from then on seated him at the table and waited on him.

Please stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies and thank you for listening. This is Charlie Navarette and for my dad, been a couple of years now, Death Ends a Life, Not a Relationship from Mitch Alba. And I'm Marian Matzo and we'll see you next week.

Remember, every day is a gift. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.

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