Before I made the phone call to tell him the truth, I mulled
the difficulty of living a covert double life.
I was leaving the law firm. No big deal. People leave their
jobs all the time. I was also abandoning my search for any legal jobs. Okay,
kind of a big deal. He’s going to wonder how I’ll pay the bills and loans. I would be spending the next year or more working with cheesemakers and cheese
shops to learn the business of cheese. Yeaaah. He was going to demand I come
home to convalesce from my mental illness.
Maybe I could pretend I’m still lawyering for the next few
decades, I thought. I’ll just throw out some terms occasionally. Contracts. Deposition. Objection.
To that point, the reception for my change in life course had been mostly
positive. Yet, I was not without critics and deserters. They were
easy to ignore, however, because nobody had anything invested in me. I owed
them nothing. I owed my father everything.
He left behind the adventures of serving in the Indian Army
and the familiarity of his home country to live in some of the backwateriest
regions of the American South that a non-white immigrant could have the
misfortune of experiencing circa 1970. He worked menial jobs to put himself
through a doctorate program. He helped run a successful veterinary practice,
and eventually became a civil servant with the USDA. Each decision made for the
good of his family. He put me through a private high school, four years of
college, and helped me anytime my loans fell short in law school.
I, on the other hand, was leaving a career path that he
helped subsidize for nothing but my own sake. To my surprise, he didn't see it
that way.
“Learning about business is good. It’s smart to start
from the bottom. So you’ll open a cheese shop maybe? Tell me when; I can invest
in it. We’ll put mummy to work behind the counter. She likes sales.”
It was the easiest, difficult conversation I’d ever had. As
parents, and especially as South Asian parents, mine always surprised me.
They never pressured us to get married; never quizzed us about giving them
grandchildren; never made us feel guilty about moving away from home to pursue
our lives. My dad wanted his children to be happy, no matter what that looked
like.
When I told him I had started training for and signed up to
run a marathon, he sounded concerned. “Oh that’s very far to run. What if it’s
hot? You know if you get tired or exhausted, it’s okay to just stop and leave.”
That’s. That’s just the worst advice ever. But each time he
gave similarly terrible-seeming advice, I realized that behind his worry was an effort to remove our worry. He would remain proud; just having the courage to try was enough for him. Despite the potential that I would actually just give up, my parents were the only ones to travel to Chicago and Disney World that year to support Tad and I as we crossed the finish line of two marathons.
His unconditional support was an outgrowth of his
generosity. My dad took the courtesy – or often cultural imperative – of offering
guests sustenance one step further. His welcome mantra was “here take all of this.”
My dad would hunt for excuses to give us everything he had.
“Daddy this coffee is good.”
“Oh you need coffee?”
“No we have coffee at home; it’s okay.”
Two weeks later a box packed full of his latest Gevalia
shipment shows up at our doorstep.
Tad jokes that the government budget cuts prevent his office
from ordering new pens.
Daddy goes around the house collecting every stray pen he
can find, giving Tad two handfuls of various promotional writing instruments.
My Dad makes a friendly Superbowl bet with Tad every year.
Ten dollars for pizza.
Oh the Broncos lost? Well, there’s $10 in the mail for you
anyway.
It was a running joke amongst my high school friends to guess what my dad would scrounge up to give them when they came over. Jugs
of orange juice. Every jasmine bloom from my mom’s plant (to my mother’s
dismay). Entire 12-packs of Diet Coke.
“You want Coke?”
“No, thank you.”
“But look we have so much. Look, here, take all of this.”
My daddy was the most soft-hearted person I've ever known.
At times, it left him open to being taken advantage of by contractors,
businesses, and even family members. But who cares really? If, like my dad, we
could all hold on to our innate goodness even when we’re being totally screwed, we'd build a happier world.
We had disagreements, and I’m sure there were disappointments at
times. I second-guess whether I could have done more, been a better daughter. I
question what happens to him now and whether the things we believe, or tell
ourselves we believe, about the afterlife are just delusions of comfort. What
is this “better place” really? When he didn't wake up that Tuesday morning was
he anywhere? Can he watch over us now or is he just gone forever? I have to
believe at least some of what everyone else says: he was proud of us and he
knew how much we love him. To believe otherwise now that confirmation of those
facts is impossible would spell certain insanity.
Millions of people suffer painful loss of some kind every
day. There is nothing that makes my loss any greater, more tragic, or different
in any way. It simply feels insurmountable because it is mine. Much like my mother's grief for her best friend of almost 50 years is her own. I have to hope that eventually
the tears will run out and the pain will cauterize itself. Perhaps when enough
time has wedged itself between the Tuesday before the blood moon and sometime
beyond – enough time that I can no longer play a macabre version of I-spy life
before my daddy died: The last time I wore this shirt, my daddy was still
alive. When I bought this gallon of milk, my daddy was still alive. The first
time I heard this song, my daddy was still alive.
My dad shuffled his feet (I've noticed that my sister and I often do the same). He loved old movies, action movies, and the Andy Griffith Show. He had many
friends (I learned from him). His heavy cologne would rub off on the seat belt.
When I drove his car, I hated that. Now, I will miss it. His comb-over would
flap in the wind, and I’d beg him to get rid of it. He always had a mustache.
When I was eight, they shaved it off for surgery, and I was terribly
confused. He would always warn me of
food recalls and remind me of birthdays. He ate a lot of bananas. Some might say too many bananas. He had
nicknames for many people. He called Tad, James Bond. He was always good for
the ego.
And someday when I fulfill the goal that I nervously called
to tell him about four years ago, he'll hopefully be able to see it. Maybe it will be a cheese shop. And maybe he'll find a way to tell me, "you know, if it fails, it's okay."
