Month: October 2021

The thought flashes into my mind rarely enough that I’m surprised when it does. I’m surprised at the flood of anguish, surprised how quickly it subsides.

Three times a year, maybe four, I’ll hear something or read something or think of something that reminds me of my dad, and I’ll get an automatic impulse to call him.

As soon as the impulse arrives, a wave of grief appears and washes it away. But the grief sticks around.

I first met that grief five years ago today.

It had been lurking for some time, but as my father got sicker, it began to venture out. In the week before Dad died, it got bolder. It became a vague, unwelcome presence and then a more insistent one.

And then, on this day five years ago, Grief kicked down the door.

That morning, I trudged up the long hallway in my parents’ house to see my dad. The hospice nurse asked me to wait for a moment while she checked his blood pressure.

Less than a minute later, she uttered a phrase that was absurd on every level:

“Your father has no blood pressure.”

Grief prepared to burst in while I tried to make sense of what the nurse had just said.

“You mean he’s gone?” I asked.

She said it again. “He has no blood pressure.”

Grief slapped me hard in the gut.

It made no sense. I understood that my father had been dying, but for him to actually die? Absurd. He was too gregarious. Too alive to die.

Alvin Weinstein managed to be both stubborn and open-minded, silly and urbane. He was a brilliant lawyer who excelled at the scholarly analysis of law and at the combat of trial. He was a remarkably talented classical musician who could explain the logic behind Paganini’s music and play that music with passion. He spoke four languages – and could tell fart jokes in each.

He was a fighter. An infantry officer. He had always been there. How could he be gone?

Five years have passed. Grief began to relent. It’s now a dull ache rather than a screaming raw nerve, but it’s still strong enough to surprise.

I’m surprised by the impulse, however fleeting, to call my father. I’m surprised that his name and long-ago discarded telephone number are saved in an iPhone that hadn’t been built when he died. Maybe I should delete it. But I won’t.

Five years.

A lot has happened. A pandemic. Two presidential administrations. Family weddings. Successes. Disappointments. Things too sad to type.

There’s an artificial heaviness – a phony significance – to the number five simply because it’s half of 10, and our numerical system is based on 10. That quirk of mathematics splashes into life, and we assign special meaning to the number five. We think we should feel something at five years, and at 10.

I do feel something: Sad. A similar sad, I suppose, to six. I’ll let you know then.