by Lissa Warren
Bod thought for a moment. “The living,” he said. “Er. The dead.” He stopped. Then, “… Cats?” he offered, uncertainly.
—Neil Gaiman
After arranging for an autopsy, we left the hospital quickly. I can’t remember who drove—can’t recall which car we took or which streets we went down or what words we said, if any. When we got home, Ting came to the top of the stairs to greet us, like usual, but did a 180 when she didn’t see Dad. That part I remember.
And so our life without Dad begins …
We set about making the necessary calls. First, Aunt Harriet—Dad’s only sibling. Even though their father had died of a heart attack, and even though she’d had a triple bypass shortly after Dad’s quadruple, she’s still shocked by the news. She screams and hands the phone to Uncle Harold. Next, our Florida cousins, the Clays, with whom we spend most holidays and with whom my parents have taken many trips, including a quick but memorable one to Acadia National Park in Maine where they ate lobster bisque and fed a seagull pancakes. They are stunned as well. They express regret that they’re so far away, and promise to come up soon.
We call Mom and Dad’s longtime friends—Elliot and Sharon, Phyllis and Irv, Connie and Ted, and the ever-faithful Judy. We hold off on calling Dad’s cousin, Ira, himself a cardiologist. We want to have a long talk with him—to go over the things that happened that night, and the things that should have happened but didn’t. But we’re not ready to go there yet.
I call in to work, tell one of the women in my department that my dad died, and that I’m putting on an “out of office” message. I e-mail my boss, telling him I’ll come back to work as soon as I can, and that I don’t know when that will be. I e-mail a couple of friends to cancel dinner plans for that night. They e-mail back to ask what they can do to help, but I can’t think of anything. In fact, I can’t actually think. I’ve been awake for more than twenty-four hours, and in one night I’ve lost half my family.
We hear our neighbor’s garage door go up, and I walk out and tell Lyn what happened. Mom joins me, and they hug. Dad was friends with Lyn’s husband, Bob. They used to play bridge together. Bob died of cancer a couple of years ago.
Later that day, Lyn cooks a whole chicken in a pot with jasmine rice, and brings it over to us. Our other neighbor, Charles, whom Lyn has alerted, stops by with his little girl, Samantha, to deliver turkey meatballs and couscous. We eat because we should. We eat, trying to ignore the empty chair—the one that didn’t look out at the pond because my father wanted Mom and me to have the nicest view. In the spring, it’s like a Monet out there.
But it’s winter now, and everything is white. The birches by our brook are bent so low with snow that their foreheads are resting on the bank. The women in my department send flowers—a beautiful vase full of pine sprigs, baby’s breath, and red roses, the latter of which we eventually dry and save. Days later, they send me a box with the Christmas presents they were planning to give me in person—a dark blue scarf and mitten set, a leather-bound day planner, a container of homemade oatmeal cookies. The only other box we receive contains my father’s ashes, dropped off by Al, the funeral director, who doesn’t push us when we say we won’t be holding a service. Neither Mom nor I feel we could get through it, and we’re certain Dad wouldn’t want us to try.
The box is small and terrifyingly light, and we can’t decide where to put it. We settle on Dad’s sock drawer—the second drawer of his armoire, which we can see from the bed, and on which Ting likes to sleep, her face against the warm glass base of a squat heirloom lamp. We add his money clip and glasses. We add his watch. His wedding ring we put in the fireproof box we keep downstairs.
In ancient Egypt people were often buried with their cats, to keep them company in the afterlife. The cats received the same careful mummification as their humans—were wrapped in strips of linen and embalmed with fragrant spices. They were even afforded provisions for the journey: bowls of milk and mummified mice. If there’s a Heaven, Dad’s in it … but he’s there without Ting, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
We are glad we had Dad cremated. It’s the only way we can keep him in the house with us—keep him in the room where he used to sit in his rocker, watching the Yankees on TV, his old blue robe around his shoulders, Ting nestled against his chest.
He was raised in an apartment building with a “no animals allowed” policy. All he had was a tank of tropical fish—mollies, guppies, the occasional neon tetra. And while he saw to it that I had what he did not have as a child—namely, a cat to cuddle—he also saw to it that I had a tropical fish tank. I loved that tank, and the responsibility that came with it, for I was in charge of alerting him when the pregnant fish were about to pop so he could put them in a separate container where their babies, once born, wouldn’t be eaten. Unfortunately, on one occasion, a guppy got so pregnant it died—which led my father to fetch a razor blade and perform a delicate guppy C-section, saving all six fan-finned babies and stopping me from crying.
The apartment where Dad grew up was in the shadow of Yankee Stadium—a stadium that would hold its last inning a mere three months before he died. He had told me once that, when he couldn’t fall asleep at night, he imagined himself as a Yankees pitcher—a closer from the dugout, called in to save the game. Just like I escaped into books, Dad escaped into baseball.
Christmas comes. We try to pretend it’s just another day. We don’t wrap the usual can of tuna fish for Ting. We watch What Not to Wear and other mindless shows on TLC—anything to distract us; any channel that doesn’t have news breaks that contain decorated trees, wreathed front doors or, worse, a family around a table. Sometimes Mom nods off. She hasn’t been sleeping well, and I know this because I have been sleeping in her bed—sleeping in my father’s spot, just so it isn’t empty.
I will sleep in my parents’ bed for months. I will fall asleep at two or three a.m., and always with the TV on to save me from my thoughts. I will dream him dead again and again, each time a different way. I’m always there, but the common thread is I never manage to save him.
I also dream my father is a cat. Having read somewhere that Buddhists believe cats can act as hosts for human souls, I imagine him in feline form being allowed into Heaven. He looks like Dusk, the tabby we fostered, and Heaven is our Ohio backyard, a long stone walkway with violets beside it, a hammock that he used to nap in.
Somehow Mom and I get through the holidays. I take the clothes I was wearing the night we lost him—a dark denim miniskirt, an old black T-shirt, a chartreuse cashmere cardigan, and my favorite pair of black tights—which have been lying for days on my bedroom floor, and stuff them in a plastic bag. They still smell like the hospital, but to wash or dry-clean them would seem too much like moving on. I bury the bag in my hamper. I cannot accept any of what has happened: that seventy-two years is all my father got, that all of us only get a little time here.
The autopsy results come back and show what we expected—a massive coronary. We need to obtain all of Dad’s medical records—from the hospital, the hematologist/oncologist, and the cardiologist. All of the requests have to be made in person, which means Mom and I have to go to the hospital again—the last thing we want to do. Anxious, we get there too early and have to kill time in the cafeteria. Mom gets coffee and a bagel. Concerned there’s too much cholesterol in cream cheese, I just get some tea. While I sip it, I keep an eye out for the doctors whom I hold responsible for Dad’s death. I don’t know what I’ll do if I see them—glare, confront, avoid? Thankfully I don’t have to figure it out. Lots of white coats in here, but no one familiar.
We take the elevator to the fourth floor. The people in the hospital’s records office are curt and officious. They make us fill out forms, and then charge us a fee. The head of the records department appears, and comes off to us as defensive, telling us it’s unusual for a family to request the records of someone who’s deceased. We don’t believe him, but know better than to say it. We tell him just to be sure
to give us everything. Then we take the elevator down to the hematologist/oncologist’s office. When he learns we’re there, he comes out to the waiting room to hug my mom and to tell her how much he liked my dad, and how the last time he saw him—the day before he died—he had a hunch the problem was unrelated to the myeloproliferative disease, and that’s why he had told my father to go see his cardiologist again. We don’t get the sense he’s trying to cover his ass. Like us, he seems full of regret.
Next we head to the cardiologist’s office to get Dad’s records. He invites us in and asks us to tell him what happened the night Dad died. I sum it up in ten words: “He was having a heart attack, and they missed it.” He asks us who treated my dad that evening, and I tell him the doctors’ names. The cardiologist knows one of them and tells us he’s a good doctor, and a good man. I can’t attest to the latter, but say “Apparently not” to the former. As we’re leaving, we run smack-dab into the emergency room doctor. He’s there to see the cardiologist—a social visit, it seems. I get the sense the two of them have each other’s back.
On the way home, Mom and I go to Staples and make a copy of the records. Trying not to look at them, we box them up. It will be almost three years before we can gather the strength to send them to a law firm that specializes in medical malpractice—half hoping they’ll take the case, half hoping they won’t. If they do, it means a chance for justice for my dad. But it also means that they, too, suspect there was negligence involved. And if there was negligence involved, Mom and I were right there and allowed it to happen.
A few days later I head back to work, grateful for the distraction. I leave Ting in Mom’s care, and Mom in Ting’s.
Most days after work, I can make it as far as the garage elevator before I break down crying. And most nights I cry the whole way home, all forty-five minutes north. I’m still struggling to write my father’s obituary—to come up with anything that remotely captures who he was. With Mom’s help, I manage to complete it in time for what would have been Dad’s seventy-third birthday—January 20, 2009. It’s the day Barack Obama is inaugurated. I stream the ceremony on my computer at work, proud that Dad lived long enough to vote for him and see him elected, but sad he didn’t get to see him sworn in.
My Father’s Obituary
Jerome “Jerry” Warren of Salem, New Hampshire, died of a heart attack on December 18th. He was 72.
Born in the Bronx, he grew up playing stickball near Yankee Stadium and was a lifelong Yankees fan. He did, however, convert from the Giants to the Pats upon moving to the Boston area in the early 1990s. In addition to sports, he loved doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, and rarely missed a letter.
Upon graduation from New York’s Dewitt Clinton High School, he entered the University of Michigan at the age of 16. After obtaining his degree, he served as a naval officer on the USS Grapple—home-ported at Pearl Harbor—earning an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal during the Matsu Islands Crisis. He went on to become a retail executive with Abraham and Straus, and later worked at Gimbels, the May Company, and Jordan Marsh.
He enjoyed his retirement, traveling with his wife to China, Europe, Central America, Australia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. While on safari in Africa, he kept a journal in which he noted every bird and beast they saw. But his favorite wildlife was on the pond in New Hampshire where they made their home. He constantly marveled at how a New York boy had come to love deer, otter, great blue heron, and hooded mergansers.
He was preceded in death by his father, Irving Warchaizer, and his mother, Pearl (Rappelfeld), as well as his in-laws, Grace and Michael, whom he loved. He is survived by his wife Donna (McKittrick) and his daughter Lissa, who liked the world more when he was in it, and are grateful that he knew. He also leaves his sister Harriet Silkowitz and her husband Harold, their daughters Paula and Adrienne, several close cousins, and a little gray cat named Ting, who still goes to see whose footsteps she’s hearing, just in case they’re his.
Chapter Twelve
Spring and Summer
I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that’s all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.
—Charles Bukowski
Ting slowly adjusts to life without Dad. We all do. Because he’s not there to pal around with upstairs, she spends more time on the window ledge on the lower level, napping in the sun. Mom and I agree that she’s sleeping more than she used to—more than the thirteen to sixteen hours a day that’s normal for grown cats. We Google “cat depression.”
It seems entirely plausible to me that Ting is depressed. In fact, it seems entirely plausible to me that a cat can have pretty much any emotion a human can. I reread a book I publicized, Drawing the Line by Steven Wise, in which he claims we know enough about the cognitive abilities of certain animals—bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, elephants, dolphins, African grey parrots, and dogs—that they should be afforded the same fundamental rights as humans: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Sounds a bit crazy until you learn that he was the first person to ever teach animal rights law at Harvard University. And until you really think about it.
Wise says the jury is still out on cats—that we haven’t studied them enough yet to determine how much they can comprehend. It’s just a matter of time, I say. One thing’s clear: They grieve.
While Ting takes one approach, Mom and I take the other—going into overdrive. Mom busies herself as best she can. She goes to the market almost every day, though we have enough food to last us months. She makes all of the appointments she was loathe to make for herself when Dad was sick—eye doctor, dentist, hairdresser. She has the deck repainted, a new furnace installed, a bunch of chair cushions redone. She learns how to use an ATM because my father always gave her cash. I teach her to balance a checkbook, just like years before my father taught me: “To the penny, Lissa. To the penny.” She switches Ting, who is thirteen now, to Eukanuba for seniors, and clips Ting’s nails like it’s religion. She brushes Ting so often that she starts to give off light.
One thing Mom doesn’t tackle is the box of photographs beside her bed—the ones she’d been planning to sort through for an album. There are too many memories in that box, too many shots of Dad. It’s just too soon to comb through them. I wonder if there are pictures of him and Ting. There must be a few; they were with each other so much. But I can’t say we made a point of taking shots of them together. Simply put, we thought we had more time.
In January, I start teaching again—a graduate course on book publicity that I developed for the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College, a school that hugs the Boston Common. It meets every Thursday for an exhausting three hours and forty-five minutes. It always takes some adjusting to at the beginning of the semester—takes me a good two or three weeks to build up my stamina so that I can get through the class on just one cup of tea and without losing my voice. But this semester it seems physically harder. Even the T ride, from Kendall Square on the Red Line to Boylston on the Green Line, seems formidable, although it’s a mere three stops and just involves one change of train.
I jostle for a seat, but it’s rush hour, so I’m left to strap-hang. I feel like every stranger on the subway should know that my father died last month—should magically stand up and offer me their seat as a condolence, or just as mercy. No one does, of course. No one knows. They’re not aware that he’s gone, or that he was good, or that my body feels heavy. My twelve students are equally in the dark, which is a blessing and a curse—a curse because it’s hard to be animated, hard to fake it for four straight hours; a blessing because, at least while I teach, my mind is otherwise occupied. My classroom becomes my safe room.
February comes, and my Raynaud’s kicks into gear. If I’m outside for more than a few minutes, even if I have my gloves on, my fingers start to hurt and turn white, like little attacks of frostbite. It can result in nerve damage, though, so it can’t be taken lightly. It’s the reason my father had my c
ar equipped with an automatic starter shortly after I was diagnosed my freshman year of college—so that, with the click of a button, I could turn it on from wherever I was to give it a chance to warm up.
I’m reminded of him every time I start the engine—not just because he bought me the automatic starter, but because, when I was little and we were living in Ohio (years before automatic starters existed), he used to go out in the cold and the lake-effect snow to turn over the car ten minutes before it was time to drive me to school so that it would be warm by the time I got in it.
Now, every time I go somewhere, I’m at once reminded of how much he loved me, and of the fact he’s not around to take care of me anymore. He’s not around to take care of Mom, either. That’s my job now, and I don’t think I’m very good at it. I buy her cupcakes for Valentine’s Day just so she has something from someone—a dozen lemon-vanilla ones with strawberry frosting. Dad would have known her preference (chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting). She tells me gently, so I’ll know for next time.
In March, Mom and I go on a cleaning tear. We decide that the seashells on the étagère in the living room are dusty, and spend a whole Saturday taking them down, one by one, brushing them off with old unmatched socks that we’ve turned into mittens, and polishing them with baby oil until they practically glow. There are hundreds and, between the two of us, we’re able to remember who found most of them, and where: the keyhole limpets I located between rocks in Green Turtle Cay, the giant conch Mom literally tripped over at low tide in the Caymans, the cowries Dad dove for while snorkeling off Maui, and the tusk shell he bought in Sanibel for me because they’re just too fragile to find along the beach. It’s the most we’ve talked about Dad since his death, and because it hurts it will be the last we speak of him for weeks, so as not to risk upsetting each other. The house has grown so quiet that we can hear Ting’s footsteps.
April, and the snow has crushed the crocuses—the dark purple ones in the park I walk through to get to my office each day. In prior years I bent down and wiped them off, but this year the cold seems colder, so I keep walking.
