When my parents met, my father was a doorman at 81 Beacon Street in Boston. He had dropped out of law school three times, and was set on living a monastic life — reading a book every few days, and loving his job as a door-opener/door-closer. He could read almost every waking hour, and he was resigned to a comfortable if ill-fitting position. He was contemplative, he was gentle, and he was hurt.
On a quest to become the strong, silent type, it probably would have surprised my father that the cute Jewish girl who balanced a grain of rice on her fork for their entire first date would be the woman he built the rest of his life with. Vivacious, quick on her feet, endlessly entertaining, and also deeply hurt, it turned out that this upper-class castaway was the perfect match.
They met on December 2nd, 1987. She was 28, he was 30. They were both on the downward slope of cynicism that comes in the aftermath of painful relationships, and they were both trying to figure out what they were going to do with the next several decades of their life.
On their second date, which took place at a friend’s wedding, people kept coming up to them to ask how long they’d been married. 34 years later — after becoming teachers, moving to the Pacific Northwest, having two children, settling down in Oregon, becoming college professors, sending two kids to boarding school and then to college, and laughing more times than seem possible — my father died in my mother’s arms.
Two had become four, and now four has become three.
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I was reminded this morning of a joke that my dad would often make about a book he was going to write. (A personal aside: I’m a bit horrified that it took prompting for me to remember this joke; perhaps it’s a sign that the really painful memories still aren't at the surface of my brain.) This book, on the infinite joys of a marriage he described as “the great romance of the 21st century,” was going to be titled Codependent and Loving It.
This morning, this one-liner feels like the quintessential joke I will remember from my dad — it was funny, disarming, tied to his love of learning and reading, and in the end, tragically insightful. It’s related to another phrase he liked repeating: “There is truth in every joke.” If you were able to deflect that phrase, explaining that whatever joke you’d made was not intended to be profound, he’d say, “Freud said there are no accidents.” And then if it looked like you were embarrassed, he’d follow that with, “But he also said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
He’d say a string like this to my mom, and she would try to resist laughing at his flirtatious (and sometimes irritating) proddings. Then she’d bounce a bit, shake her head with glee, tilt her chin slightly back, and give herself into the fun of his warmth, affection, and humor.
And then, sometimes, he’d go towards her, hug her, look at me or my sister, and say something like, “See? Codependent and Loving It!”
My parents were the ultimate expression of each other — and as I have described my father these past few days, it has only become more obvious that his self was a self built out of and atop my mother’s strengths. Every skill he had, he honed with my mom. And the duality of my father’s existence — the tightrope that he walked so gracefully — was not a tightrope he walked alone. Because that rope would not have existed without my mother. It didn’t exist before her.
Their relationship — the tightrope of love that they danced back and forth on — was constructed in the space between trauma and principle, ambition and appreciation, worldliness and intimacy, parental commitment and profound interpersonal love.
My dad appreciated every single one of my mom’s behavioural quirks — the way she leaves bottle caps loose, the suave elegance of her hand gestures, the enunciation of her “thank yous.” He was constantly teasing these quiddities, but only as a means of acknowledging how closely he was paying attention to her. How obsessed he was with her. How he hung on her every word, her every movement, her every desire.
“Codependent and Loving It.”
My mom filled all the gaps in my dad’s self-destructive empathy, and she appreciated the delicate nature of his duality. Somehow still, she built an incredible career of her own — and she was proud of the fact that despite my dad’s very public magnetism, she somehow wore both the pants and the dresses in the family. (Here, my dad probably would have made a kilts/skirts joke. I’ll let him have that one.)
My dad’s enrapturing presence was made possible by my mom’s constant, if slight, remove — always planning the steps ahead, just in case there was a bump in the road that my dad couldn’t see as he spun around in a million directions. Sometimes he’d walk over to her, touch the top of her head, look at me, and say, “My entire life exists in there.”
As he flailed with care, she paved with precision.
“Codependent and Loving It.”
Because of this, their frequent, playful bickering always seemed so silly to me. They were so clearly, so deeply in love. And obviously, every conflict was so clearly, so deeply going to resolve itself. So why have the performance of conflict at all?
In truth, I think it was just another part of their dance. They were in constant harmony — toying with the beat just enough to know that the song was still playing, and all the while knowing that they could find the perfect steps whenever they so desired.
This is how I will choose to remember their final, traumatic moments: It was the closing act of a decades-long dance — a massive Irishman leaned back into the arms of his lover, the song they had played for 34 years finally coming to a resounding halt. Of course it was violent. An act like theirs had to go out with a bang.
This is not their history; this is not their future.
Their history unfolds in every story we tell about my dad — an impossible task, I found, for just one essay. And hardly a possible task for 34 years of partnership.
And their future died with my father on Thursday morning.
“Codependent and Loving It” no more.
Dear Emmett, I am blown away on two fronts - first, your ability to observe and appreciate your mom and dad while experiencing these loving moments between them, and secondly, your ability to bring those experiences to life so well in your writing, so well that a reader can truly see them and feel those moments the way you do through your appreciative and loving eyes! I am so grateful for these wonderful memories of mom and dad. BTW, whenever I think of your mom, I ALWAYS see her smiling, laughing, giggling in response to something Mike said or did. Their happiness together was soooo exceptional and contagious to anyone in their presence. Thank you again, with love, Walter. (ps - I can't help but read each of your posts over and over. Thank you for allowing me this chance to connect, even in this way, with your dad.)