Hindsight
In the twelve months before my father died the two of us spent a great deal of time talking together about the way things once were.
I flew down to Miami from New York every month just to sit and talk with him. He was seventy-two, but the cancer that had already begun to metastasize throughout his body made i him look a thin and frail ninety. We would sit in the den drinking whiskey or move to the porch and watch the fat, white clouds floating over, Biscayne Bay, but always we talked about times pll§t-times in Ohio, in the old frame farmhouse on the hill, and later times in Miami Beach, times when we were together as a family.
The odd thing was, we never were much of a family, hadn’t been for a very, very long time. Business usually kept him in the North, and for holidays he and my mother would go on their vacation, to some resort or to a Caribbean island.
Yet, during those monthly visits, all he wanted to do was talk about the old days. We talked about our first trip to Florida in 1947, three interminable days on a train so bad~ ly sprung that none of us slept, and about the weekend we all, drove to Key West and I fell off the seawall. We talked about summers at the farm, and how much he wanted to see it again.
Though he grew progressively weaker during that year, weakened first by radiation treatments, then by surgery, and finally by the drugs, he loved to get out. And on those days when he felt strong enough, on the warm sunny days of that spring, I would put him in the car and we would drive, and always he wanted to go to the same places. Over Haulover Bridge, to park by the sight of the old Lighthouse Restaurant and talk about the giant turtles that once filled the fish tank there. Down Ocean Drive to where we lived that first winter, to park there by the beach and talk about the little juice stand where my brother and I had a charge account, and about our red Ford convertible that came all the way from Ohio by freight train. Always the good times, the family times.
It was as if he were skimming back over the years, stopping only to pick up those incidents which showed us. together. His memory for detail was excellent, but the over-all picture was sadly distorted. What he recalled were not examples of our family life; they were all of our family life. In the course of that year I bet we discussed each and every episode lived by the four of us. Minuscule fragments from the past, blown up to represent a way of life that never existed.
I could not understand if the events had suddenly become more important to him, or if the pain and medication and disappointment were taking their toll. Not that it mattered. He enjoyed those talks, and, frankly, so did I. In all the time I had known him—all my life—I had never had the luxury of so much time simply to be with him. And those things he chose to recall, though I had forgotten many, were the best parts’ of my childhood, and I was thrilled to have them back.
My father died that winter, on a Thursday night, while I was driving to the airport to catch a plane for Miami. I tried to reach my mother before boarding the flight and, getting no answer, called my brother in Ohio. I needn’t have called him. When she hadn’t answered, I knew.
I remember strapping myself into my seat. Then the sitting, waiting for the engines to start, thinking about my father. How clever he had been, weaving those few, carefully selected memories into a childhood filled with family. And as the plane taxied into line, on the runway, I could think of nothing else.