When my father was hospitalized, suddenly, for what would turn out to be the last few days of his life, I made a quick plane reservation and headed, by public transportation, to La Guardia airport.  At 42nd Street, where I switched trains, a man was singing on the train platform.  He was an older man, down on his luck by the looks of it, and he sang uncannily like Sam Cooke.  

He was singing one of my father and my favorite songs, You Send Me.  I began recording it.  As he hit that long “whoa-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” between verses the E train roared in, drowning him out.  I stepped on and headed to Queens for the bus to La Guardia.  Very cinematic, I thought at the time.  I had a ten second snippet ending with the train’s roar recorded on my digital recorder.  I’d intended to play the wonderful imitation for my father, but there was no point.  There wasn’t enough of the man’s beautiful singing on it.  The abrupt end was the very image of death.

Throughout our life, despite having much in common, my father was a determined adversary.  This started long before I could speak, when, according to him, I stared at him “accusingly, with those big black eyes”, from my crib next to his side of the bed.  Accusingly, because, apparently I could already see the future, knew, somehow, the long fight that was in store for us.  Because of my accusatory stare they had to move the crib, and eventually move to a house where I could have my own room.  His response to any suggestion that my conversations with Eli were giving me insight into this adversarial relationship was typical.    

“Sure,” he said, angrily dismissing the idea, “listen to fucking Eli.  Eli’s full of shit. He’s a great source of history.  Did he tell you how many times he was almost a millionaire, how every business he walked away from was somebody else’s fault?  Everyone he ever knew fucked him, as the always honest Eli will tell you.  Ask his kids about him, they’ll tell you what a great father he was to them.  Eli’s version of history is complete bullshit.  Go ahead, keep listening to Eli, you’re really getting some fucking wisdom there.”

The old man wasn’t giving me much credit, of course.  I listened to Eli and I argued with Eli and through this process came away with what I considered close to the truth of whatever matter we were discussing. Eli had no ax to grind against my father.  He was very proud of my father.  He told me so every time we talked about him.  

“Yeah, but Eli, you have to admit, both my father and my uncle are somewhat insane,” I would say.  

“OK, somewhat insane, that’s OK, fair enough.  But if you had seen where they came from, the horrible situation they came up in, and compared that to where they wound up, both well-educated, respected professionals with nice families, living in beautiful homes, you would see what I’m talking about.  You could never have imagined either of those dirty little urchins coming out of that place they grew up amounting to what they both amounted to.   You have to see the whole picture.  Somewhat insane, OK, but I’m very proud of both of them, your father especially.”

There was no question that Eli had no ax to grind in this particular case, though he had many axes he was constantly grinding.  He told me whatever he did about my father’s life to help me understand a very complicated and troubling puzzle.  And, in a sense, a very simple one.  Add up the facts.  

In a time when everybody was poor, your father’s family was more poor than anyone else’s.  As well-spoken and quick witted as your father is now, when he arrived in kindergarten he was treated as a big retard by the other kids because he spoke not a word of English.  When your father was first able to stand his mother began whipping him in the face every day.  Do the math.  Somewhat insane?  Well, I’d say that’s pretty goddamned good.

I got it, too.   It was only by having these pieces to give context to the aggravating whole that I was able to make any sense of it.   This information allowed me to realize the guy couldn’t help being paranoid, and guarded, and macho, and unsympathetic, and bullying, and maudlin.  In time I was able to realize he couldn’t help being that way and it helped me get past some of the hurt and anger.  The damage was done, and was in some ways unforgivable, but at least it was understandable.  What I learned from Eli was a huge help to me.

My uncle, who always cowered around his much bigger older brother, was the person my father kept asking about from his deathbed.  “Is my brother on his way?” he wanted to know.  I had a call, he was at the airport, I drove down and picked my uncle up.  He stopped the doctor in the hall, asked if a liver transplant was possible for his 80 year-old brother in the last days of liver cancer, wasn’t there a possibility to get him a liver in time to save him?  I gently pulled him away from the doctor.  He and my father clung to each other, the sight of it was very poignant to my sister and me.  After my father died my uncle sat by the body, until the members of the chevrai cadesha arrived to take the body and prepare it for the funeral.  My brother-in-law sat and waited with my uncle and dead father, a not un-moving detail.  

We sat with my dying father throughout the day and at some point in the evening, my uncle said we should let my father rest and we all left for the night.  I’d bought my father a small digital recorder and, before I left, I showed him how to operate it.  “If you think of anything you want to say to anyone, you can record it on here,” I told him and he nodded and told the nurse to put it in the drawer next to his bed.    

Then, trying to sleep back at my parents’ apartment, I realized it was absurd.  My father was clearly dying and I was trying to get a good night’s sleep.  My uncle, for all his intelligence, was a fucking rigid idiot who tried to make rules for everyone around him.  I got dressed and left without waking him up.  On the drive to the hospital I came as close as I would come to shedding tears.  I got choked up, thinking about the many wasted years when my father and I could have been friends, helped each other, instead of being enemies, harming each other.  

It was probably one a.m. when I reached the hospital.   I made my way through the quiet halls and was greeted warmly by the night nurse, an angel who had quickly bonded with my father.  She was a black woman, slightly resembling a couple my father had been close friends with at one point during his life, and they seemed to get each other immediately.   She was very protective of him and was clearly glad I had arrived.  I went in and left the door open.  

My father was awake, as though he’d been waiting for me.  “Did you bring the recorder?” was the first thing he said.  A lifelong fascination with history caused him to date things and to be aware of the historical significance of primary sources.  We were about to create a primary source.  

“I left it with,” and I said the name of that angelic nurse, a name I’ve forgotten now, sad to say.  

“Oh, she put it in the drawer,” he said gesturing feebly in the jerky, ghostly way he gestured those last few days of his life.  I got the recorder, switched it on and laid it on his chest.

“Those stories Eli told you,” he began, “he pretty much hit the nail on the head.  Only he spared you the worst of it, how awful it really was.  My life was pretty much over by the time I was two.”

(arbitrary end of part one)