There’s this idea out there that the human body regenerates itself every seven years, and so you’re literally not the same person you were seven years ago.
It’s wrong.
And it’s unintentionally right.
The body does not regenerate every seven years. Bones, for instance, replace themselves every 10 years or so. Other parts of your body don’t regenerate at all. So the odds are good you have some of your original parts.
Here’s where it’s right: A lot can happen in seven years. Big celebrations, terrible tragedies. We can have revelations, we can make mistakes, we can learn. We change.
Seven years is longer than law school, longer than a Senate term, longer than World War II.
It is how long my father has been dead.
(I tried to avoid that word, “dead.” I typed “how long my father has been gone,” “how long it has been since my father died,” “how long is has been since my father was alive.” They’re all accurate, but none of them are right.)
I am not the same person I was seven years and one day ago. How could I be?
It has been seven years since Alvin N. Weinstein roamed this earth. Seven years since I heard his voice or saw his face. More than seven years since I heard his laugh.
And still, once in a while, for a fraction of a second, I forget. An idea flashes into my head that I should call him because he’ll know what to do.
(He would, by the way.)
And as soon as the idea arrives, it rushes away, embarrassed. It surprises me that the thought enters my mind at all. Sadness washes over me and I shake it off, sending little droplets of sad onto whatever is nearby.
My dad was a complicated guy. He was urbane and witty, a brilliant trial lawyer, an infantry officer, an accomplished violinist. He could speak three languages and tell jokes in four. He thought the Three Stooges were funny (there he was wrong). He was stubborn and loyal and generous and mischievous.
I miss him.
I miss his stories, I miss hearing him at home in his den, playing Gavotte en Rondeau from Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major.
I miss his irreverence.
He had to have surgery once, because his lazy, incompetent physician missed (and missed) a symptom that should have been obvious. Before the surgery, a nurse asked him the standard questions: “What’s your name? Your birthdate?”
And then: “Do you have any allergies?”
“Yes,” my father answered.
The nurse looked flustered. She flipped through papers on her clipboard. Nothing about allergies.
My father smiled and said:
“To bullshit.”
Sometimes I wonder what he would think about these past seven years. I know what he would think about these past seven days. I know he would be angry, as I am, and sad, as I am.
And there I am: Sad again.
Dad has a great-granddaughter, an adorable child with a radiant smile and a hint of mischief. He’ll never meet her. She’ll only know him through stories. Her mother has Dad’s violin. Maybe Ariella will hear her great-grandfather’s voice through the strings.
Seven years is a long time, and it’s no time at all. On October 12, 2016, I could not imagine the world without my father in it. Now it’s been seven years.
A smart guy often says, “The day will come when the memory of the person you lost brings a smile to your face before a tear to your eye.”
Today, the smile and the tear arrive at the same time. Maybe tomorrow, the smile will come first.
