My Dad Is Sitting Next To Me

My dad is sitting next to me. We haven't spoken since late 1979. When he died.

Today is much like any other. It is early December. The sky is that kind of white-gray that absorbs everything around it. The New York City skyline is but the faintest echo, an outline of an outline. Kind of like my father.

I wonder if he has been at my apartment before. I have lived here with my wife for nearly 20 years so he has surely had plenty of opportunity to visit. There are reminders of him throughout. The toy excavator he played with as a child, fixed up just before he passed. He was obsessed with making certain this was fully restored while he was alive. Apart from the shoelace now acting as a lever for the shovel, it remains intact. I hope he is happy the excavator is displayed in a place of prominence in the living room.

His varsity letter sweater from NYU, the one he received sometimes in the late 1930's, rests in the chest that sits by my side of the bed. It (the sweater, not the chest) is purple with NYU, in large white letters, sewn across the chest. My wife has worn this on occasion but it is several decades since last it saw the light of day.

Here, baseball cards he was given by his camp counselor. Coins we collected together. A blown up photo of him in his second World War military uniform. Letters between him and my mom written during and after the war. A birthday card from my mom to him just before the birth of their first child, my sister. Where she referenced giving him a carton of cigarettes as a present. My dad can be found in virtually every room of this apartment.

I don't really know how to start the conversation with him. What is the best way to break the ice with someone who passed away when Jimmy Carter was still in office, Derek Jeter likely in pre-school, when my son, the one who bears his grandfather's name and his brains, was still over a year from being born?

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my dad's death. He was sick for just over two years. Cancer. I remember how hard he and my mom tried to keep life as normal as possible to the end. He continued to go to his office until the day his last stay in the hospital began.

From what I can tell, my father hasn't aged in the last four and half decades. He looks well actually, as I remember him before the disease invaded his body. That would have made him 59. He had just started wearing a toupee a few years before. At night, when he went to bed, his hair sat on top of a Styrofoam head in the bathroom. On occasion, if I had a friend over, they might catch a glimpse of that unforgettable sight. It remains a frequent topic of discussion.

Anyway, I am not certain if my dad has the capacity to speak to me, being that I have never been in position to converse before with a deceased person. I don't know the protocol here.

If he has been able to follow along through the years, he knows how often I bring him up in conversation. How often I have written about him. How much my sister and I miss him. Oh, sorry, my sister missed him.

If he is not aware, I don't think I will be able to let him know of my sister's passing earlier this year. I recently found a letter my dad wrote to her when she was 11. When he told her how proud he was of her, of who she had become. It was clear on that day, and on every other day of my dad's life, that he absolutely adored his remarkable daughter. I can't cause him the pain of telling him of her last days.

I don't know how long I have been sitting here staring at him. It is still slate gray outside. The rain seems to have increased, and now lessened, during this time. Has it been seconds, or hours?

My mom has been gone since 2017. In the weeks following her death I thought she had reappeared in the form of a bird, pecking at the window to my office. That bird remained for days on end, hammering incessantly, clearly trying to get into my space. Had my mom forgotten to tell me something important? Was she just going to ask if I had enough to eat? Anyway, one day she was not there. And never returned since.

My niece sees her mom in every butterfly that passes by. We all are looking every day, searching the sky for evidence that my sister is still with us, still mastermind of all our destinies.

I feel the presence of my dad in my son. He has not merely the intelligence of the grandfather he never met, but his kind heart and gentle spirit. He radiates a goodness that one can feel. It is palpable, something one can touch even when it is unseen.

And maybe that is what I am experiencing now. Maybe my dad has not returned. Maybe he never left. For he is forever around my apartment, always in my thoughts. For I see him in a thousand different ways. Every day in my son.

It is approaching nighttime now. The sky turning ever darker. If the weather clears a little, maybe the city will come into sharper focus.

As for my dad, he is no longer sitting beside me. I seem to have lost sight of him. But then again he is everywhere I look.