The rest is silence

So it has been over a week. My dad passed away a week and a half ago and I am processing it. That still isn't much time and maybe, I don't have the kind of chronological distance to allow be the right to hindsight and retrospection. In longer time, maybe I will be able to craft something witty and insightful informed by the wisdom of years and not days. But right now I am starting the healing process and trying to be as aware of every moment so that later I won't say that everything was such a blur. Because everything has been such a blur.

I still find myself choked up at odd moments, with blips of memory seeping through and connecting with random phrases, ideas and images. I do my best not to break down and maybe, as the days go by, that will become easier, whether or not I want it to. Right now, I'm just not sure. Do I want to hurt? Do I want to man up and accept and try to move on (for literature nerds, who was right, Hamlet or his mother and step-father as it relates to dealing with the loss of a father?) I just don't know what is expected, right, proper or normal. Strangely, no one has written the definitive book telling me how to feel and what to do. It is almost like the grieving process is unique to each individual. That's not very helpful.

Yesterday something struck me. While I "miss" so much, there are certain things that I miss more than others. I have pictures of my dad, so I don't have to worry about his appearance's disappearing from my mind. I can picture him but I don't have to -- the internet, the photo albums and the cameras we have are well stocked with his face from his younger years until recently. I can show people what he looked like. I can remind myself of his face with and without a beard (and even with hair). I can find pictures of him singing, sitting with his grandchildren (and great grandchildren), or praying. So that's taken care of.

I don't yet miss his ideas. Not only do I feel that his thought process impressed itself on me so I have adopted ways of approaching the world that mirror his, but he left behind concrete examples of how he thought through substantial amounts of writing. His cookbook, his book of short stories, his Judaica catalog and his letters and professional contributions are always there for me. He also has his blog which is full of bad puns, political musings and more personal reflections on himself as a Jew, an American and as someone with cancer. Side note -- I recommend his blog to people so that they can get a sense of who he was, but I warn them: he set up a delay on the publishing of his writing so you might still see new posts dated after his death. It is weird, but this is very comforting to me. There is more to come, and more for me to learn about him.

In a horrible way, I can't even say that I miss his being around. The fact is, and I'm being brutally honest here, while we were close in one sense, we didn't hang around together much. He had his life and I have mine so while there were weekly phone conversations (plus occasional others, as the calendar deemed appropriate) and emails, and we did see each other when it was mutually convenient, I, on a day-to-day basis, took his presence for granted and didn't go out of my way to refresh my connection with any responsible frequency. That wasn't because I was an especially bad son, or because of any tension or animosity -- it was a result of how I was brought up and who I am. That might be "not as good as I should have been" and that's a guilt that I have to wrestle with, and I do, but at the time, it made sense.

But here's what I realized that I really miss: his voice. I'm a voice guy so this hits me hard. We have recordings from 40 or more years ago but they don't sound like he sounded during most of my life -- the quality of the recordings, their age, and the changes in people make it clear that what I have isn't his voice -- I can compare what is recorded from 1967 with how my mother sounds now and they aren't even close. I can picture him and if I can't, I can look up images. I can quote him, and if I can't I can find his writings. But I can't hear him, the "him" I remember from my teen age years, my young adulthood and into my middle age. Sure, I can hear a choir he is in, but I don't hear HIM. I can imagine what he would say, or laugh with friends about how he answered questions (when asked, "How are you" he answered "Faaaan-tastic!" or something like that), but I will never hear his voice again. And that hurts me a lot. To call the home phone and hear "Rosen, here" just one more time would be wonderful. To hear him yell my name at dinner time, and not to come down promptly just so that he would yell it again and I could savor it. To hear him sing the kiddush, or warble (intentionally off key) a bit of "Melancholy Baby" just once more. But it won't happen. I can imagine his voice saying "I don't know" or "ask your mother" but that memorial fiction, even if it does not fade, is unverifiable. I am no professional mimic so all I have is the way I remember it, and who knows how accurate that is. So I fear losing that one aspect which I cannot get back, ever. I tear up. I have a pit in my stomach when I realize that I can't ever remind myself of the exact pitch and timbre, the essence of who he was.

We can read speeches. We can look at pictures. But life is in the delivery and his was unmatched. I miss what made him into a person, his voice.