Two Decades Without My Father

Thinking about those days and this one

My father passed on Christmas Eve, 2000, at about 3:30 in the morning. He died in the nursing facility my mother had to place him in when his incontinence, dementia, and basic helplessness became too much for her to bear alone.

Actually, it was when he suffered an impacted colon that she took him to the hospital, and then to the home. She consulted me, and since I live two states away and was trying to finish out my semester before coming home again — my wife, daughters, and I had spent several days with them just before his impactment — I thought this the best plan.

We returned on December 22, and I won’t describe my last two visits with him except to say that at one, he was still sitting up, and at the other, he had lapsed into his final coma. I don’t think he knew who I was at either visit.

Two decades, twenty years. It hardly seems possible, especially when I consider all that he missed experiencing:

My brother’s two sons.

9/11.

Five Alabama football national championships.

America’s first African-American president.

America’s first fascist-leaning president.

My being awarded Professor of the Year at my small, hopefully surviving, liberal arts college.

The very likely collusion between the fascist-leaning president’s team and Russia.

And now, the beginnings of the Anti-Racism movement.

I have often wondered how my father would have reacted to all the things above.

Well, I know about the grandsons, the Alabama championships, my award.

But the others?

My father, a southern Jewish man who fought in Patton’s Third Army during WWII.

My father who was blackballed from social fraternities because he was Jewish after returning from the war and entering the University of Alabama.

My father who married a gentile woman and agreed to let her raise their two sons as Christians.

My father who treated all individuals with dignity and respect.

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