Remember me?

            People cradled my face and said things like, “You look just like him. Look at those eyes,” and, “Really, he lives on in you and your sister.” Those are lovely sentiments, but I couldn’t fathom how to appreciate them, so instead I would smile vacantly, nod, and think, “No, he’s dead. There’s no more living on for him.”
            At his funeral, while teeming with self-consciousness, I remember pulling at the clingy, black outfit from Loehmann’s I had found in the Junior’s department and worn to Rosh Hashanah services earlier that year. At eleven years old, I had one foot firmly placed in the comfy confines of childhood, and the other foot precariously positioned in the world of tweendom. I had planned to use my tween years to test out make-up and slightly trendier clothes, all in pursuit of becoming instantly cool a la She’s Out of Control – the 90s movie in which the geeky girl turns into a gorgeous teen whom all the boys fawn over. But my sixth grade year did no go as planned and in lieu of consumption by way of boys and parties and what lunch table I’d sit at, my dad developed stomachaches. His pain grew so suddenly intense that on our family road trip, he drank an entire bulk case of Maalox. The eternal optimist he was, and clutching to a gross misdiagnosis of ulcers, he kept his worst fears and the severity of his agony hidden from us the best he could. He assured us he was fine, despite wearing the unspoken truth on his taught, strained face. Be we soon realized he was slipping out of our grasp, as if a thin yet impenetrable membrane had formed over his handsome, charming, Irish self.
            His stomachaches quickly turned into cancer and cancer turned into a funeral four months later. During his illness he remained upright because the cancer had coiled in and around his spine. Unable to recline, he sat up through the duration of his battle, writhing in a leather chair in our living room, captive to his own rapidly deteriorating body. My parents spent entire days at the library poring over journals and books that espoused recent breakthroughs in cancer research. Since his cancer had advanced beyond the aid of chemotherapy, and radiation eroded his organs worse than the tumor, his only options were natural remedies. My parents soaked Maitake mushrooms in the basement, ordered capsules of Cat’s Claw and Shark Cartilage, and began contacting anyone who had found success using alternative regimens. One day I accompanied my mom to visit a local woman who contributed her recovery to all the supplements my dad had begun taking religiously. The youthful forty-something woman possessed the glow of survival and she convinced us that we too could one day find our way to remission. It was moments such as those where I thought, “It’s not too late. The doctors are wrong. He can make it.” But, then I would return home from school only to see him writhing in the living room, exactly how I had left him—his withered frame bent over, gray beard attempting to fill in the cavities of his gaunt face. And just like that, remission seemed as made-up a place as Oz. Six-months after learning that cancer had invaded his spine and stomach, there I was, receiving people’s tears, words, and attempts at comfort. But what could they say to the daughters and wife who survived this beloved man? Nothing could bring him back, and that was the fact that I held onto.
            The seasons have turned, years have elapsed, and we have somehow managed to turn our broken pieces into a collage of normalcy. More entangled in each other’s lives now than ever, we remaining three talk on the phone so often that upon starting my freshman year of college, a fellow frosh asked, “How often do you call home?” I replied, in earnest, “Today?”
            My husband knows my dad through stories, I remember my dad through yellowed photo albums, and my mom, sister and I still yearn for one more moment with the man whose absence and presence have had equal impressions on our lives. Unlike many friends of mine whose parents got divorced and soon remarried another, my mom has never dated anyone. She says she found her one true love and that, in her words, she’s “perfectly content.” She travels through Europe, has a season’s pass to the local theater house, and frequents the independent cinema in town. She has never been one to accept idle life. My mom jokes that visitors to our house probably assume my dad has just briefly stepped out since we tell stories of him so effortlessly and often. However, sometimes our longing to hug him glows so strong that it is not uncommon for any one of us to dream that he has come back, forcing said dreamer mid-reverie to awkwardly explain to everyone he was just “on vacation.” We have our lives as they are now, and we have our lives as they were then. Yet, the slightest whiff of Stetson or faintest melody of a Willie Nelson song, and the past fourteen years collapse like an accordion and I’m back to remembering he’s gone.
            One recent morning, while walking to work, I called my mom to ask about a birthday party she attended the night before. She said, “Oh you know, it was like Mary Tyler Moore goes to a party.” I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but took it to imply, “Strong, fabulous lady goes to social event solo, carrying conversation, witty banter, and glasses of wine all at once.” Then she said, “Oh my, do I have a story for you!”
            She went on to say, “I was just futzing around the house yesterday, tired from the party, when I heard the bell ring. I assumed it was Steve from across the street coming to see about painting the side of the house, but there was some guy standing at the front door. He asked me if I recognized him. And as you know, ‘Do you recognize me,’ are my least favorite words next to, ‘Mom, watch me.’ Anyway, of course I said, ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry but I don’t know you. What’s your name?’ And this guy said his name is Ray, and then said, ‘Don’t you remember? I worked in Julius’s? The deli in town? I used to help Billy out on little odds-and-ends jobs, and we’d all hang out on your boat?’ Then, it all came flooding back to me! I knew exactly who it was! Ray was this guy who we knew from town, and he and Dad were friends, but this was years ago! He was one of our first friends when we moved here. Ray lives in Florida, and has for a long time, and was just up visiting a few friends on Long Island and thought he’d swing by. Anyway, so then, here’s the kicker, we were still standing at the front door when he asked, ‘Is Billy home?’”
            I drew in my breath as if gasping for air and stopped short on the sidewalk. My mom continued on with her story, recounting how she explained to Ray that my dad passed away fourteen years ago. Apparently, Ray almost fell over. He couldn’t believe or understand it. He kept saying, “He was so healthy! Cancer? I’m so sorry. Wow…” He reiterated how my dad was truly the nicest person he had ever met and how my parents remain some of the most welcoming and generous people he’s ever known. During the impromptu reunion, Ray said he was pleased to hear that my parents decided to have kids as he cooed over the gallery of wall and table space devoted to plaster imprints of our once small hands, finger-painted pictures “To Mom,” and photos of us across the years, at Colonial Williamsburg, The Eiffel Tower, my wedding, all testimony to childhoods salvaged and savored.
            The last time Ray saw my parents was thirty years. In that time he has moved away, carrying his friends with him in memories. He has led a good life, and assumed his old friends did the same. In Ray’s version of how things unfolded, my dad remained as friendly and fit as ever—restoring old furniture in the garage, and watching the sunset with my mom on their little house boat, which they bought for $1,000 in 1976. He assumed my parents had gone on to raise kids, and if they did, they were sure to be the parents everyone wanted—camping, wearing high-tops, going on midnight adventures to Carvel for sundaes with extra gummy bears. Even though cancer punctuated our happy foursome, shifting the course of our lives away from our original destination of picket-fence perfection, we have journeyed on a nourishing route. Nonetheless, we have gone on, us three. Hearing my mom’s story, however, instantly made me feel like my dad died all over again. And this time, instead of mourning the life he actually left behind, I mourned the life Ray authored for him—complete with adventures with the grown daughters, the strong wife, and the changing times. The life that was just beyond his grasp. That morning, Ray brought my dad back, and not just for the moment that my mom, sister and I always longed for, but he wrote him into the past thirty years, and he gave him the life he would have wanted.