It was a Saturday night, the 13th, the day which would have been my mother's 84th birthday. My father-in-law would have been 90 next month. This has colored the last couple of weeks, of course. Even though by all accounts he died peacefully, and because of dementia, we felt in some ways that we had lost him years ago, it is still very sad, and the end of an era, and we say goodbye to a remarkable man.
Here's what I wrote in a social media post about him, just after a post about a poem I'd had published:
I need to share that Saturday night, my father-in-law passed away. The publication of a poem is swell, but really, all I can think about is the man who was like a (disciplined, French-speaking) father to me for 37 years. My heart is with his children, his family and friends, and the loving staff at the memory care facility where he'd been living. I will always be inspired by his daring escape as a teenager from communist Romania to pursue a dream of living in the United States. He worked and studied tirelessly for decades, and in some ways, he was one of the most serious people I've ever met. But he was also amazingly gregarious, and his Santa-like laughter at his own "dad" jokes will never leave my memory. Rest in peace, beau-père.
Grief can't be scheduled. It side-swipes you. It makes you tired, makes you forget to breathe normally. D's sister is making most of the arrangements (such as can be arranged right now), and the two of them have been talking about everything. Apart from driving D. to the memory care facility the night of his father's death, late at night, to meet his sister there, I have tried to stay out of the picture. My sister-in-law's hurtful accusations in a surprise email, years ago, claiming we were stealing their father's money - entirely untrue, and never apologized for - has kept me very cautious in terms of any contact with her. I can't trust her not to go suffer some other sudden delusions at some point. I'm wary.
He'll be cremated once they process the death certificate, but they're behind by 3 weeks in the county. Then he'd wanted to have his ashes scattered off of the side of the WWII ship for which he'd volunteered, but that won't be happening any time soon. It's okay. I know from experience that cremains keep. It took my siblings and me five years to get together to scatter my own father's ashes, along with his mother's.
These are pictures that capture the best of my F-I-L's spirit:
In pandemic news, Dr. Fauci spoke the other day during the first press conference of the Corona Virus White House Task Force team in moths: "...we are all in it together. And the only way we’re going to end it is by ending it together." The reported death toll from covid19 for the world just passed 504,000, and in the US, in many states, the numbers continue to rise. There are over 10 million reported cases worldwide. But in Arizona and Florida and Texas and parts of California, people gather to eat and drink and shop without masks or social distancing. It really is as though many people have just decided they're tired of staying home, of wearing masks, of considering how their actions combined with the common asymptomatic nature of the virus might affect those people around them who might be at risk.
The president continues to say stupid things and continues to fail to provide any real leadership. It's one debacle after another. I just hope things change for the better with the next election.
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