My youngest son, almost 4, is introducing death into life with remarkable regularity. When I tell him there is a leftover lobster claw from a special occasion grown-up meal for him, he says, “Is it dead?”
In the car, listening to Big River, he yells, “Hey Dad! Is the man in the song dead?” The connective lyrical tissue between this country song and the Grim Reaper eventually hits me: “I’m gonna sit right here until I die.”
He and his 6-year-old brother love sitting with their grandfather, my dad, who once told them over Cherry Garcia ice cream that I had cried when Jerry Garcia died. Together, they hold Toby jugs, those ceramic vessels depicting giants of history, literature and culture. Always, it’s the same question: “Is he dead?”
My dad’s answers are brutally truthful, to their delight: Captain Ahab? “Eaten by a whale.” Elvis? “Died in his 40s.” The wives of Henry VIII? “They put them on a tree stump and cut their heads off.”
Reality is breaching the dam of innocence, and awareness, like drips off an icicle, is creeping into my sons’ lives.
Death, after all, is the great infiltrator. No matter one’s efforts, it finds a way in. It certainly barged into my life. My dad — whose frankness about death I welcome — entered my orbit after my birth father died suddenly, accidentally, brutally. He left a happy family — my mother, my 7-year-old brother and 3-year-old me — behind. So when my dad courted my mother, he must have grasped that there were two young boys and a widow who knew all that anyone ever really needs to know about death. Though we were young, my brother and I, who became my dad’s sons, understood that some things in life really are forever.
There is a black and white photograph of Augusta National Golf Club hanging in my house. When my brother was visiting at Thanksgiving, he peered at the initials on the mat board. He asked, “Did Dad take this?”
The question clobbered me. Indeed, our birth father was the photographer. But my brother struggled with the word “Dad,” adding a question mark to its end. Nearly 40 years later, we remain uncertain about what his death meant for us, what it means now, and how we are who we are because of it. More than anything else, we remain flummoxed about how to discuss it, as brothers. Never before had I heard either of us refer to him as “Dad.”
There is little doubt that a freak moment in time sent my life careering toward new places, ideas and interests. It is impossible not to imagine what my life would be like had he been around. I never think about it in a better-than/worse-than manner. Instead, I try to consider the differences, profound and banal. If he were here, what would my attitude toward friendship be? Would I have played ice hockey? What would have been his tolerance for profanity in the house? Occasionally, I wonder what books he would have given me.
I consistently avoid discussing this defining moment in my life. I do not recall reading an obituary, if there is one. I do not ask questions about him. I change the topic, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes skillfully, when people get too close to the rawness of his absence.
Any amateur sleuth could guess why his death is on my mind recently. Periodically, I look at my youngest son and gasp at the realization that my father never knew me older than 3. I bet I loved to make him laugh the same way my sons enjoy sending me into wordless, doubled-over hysterics. But, of course, I will never know.
Now, with my children becoming more inquisitive, the day is drawing nearer when I will need to broach the topic of a grandfather they never knew. I am terribly worried someone else will do it for me, a well-intentioned soul robbing me of an experience that simply has to be mine. But, until I am ready, that is a risk I run.
All parents must struggle with the death talk, the dark yin to the ticklish yang of the sperm and egg talk. On many subjects, I seek out the advice of mothers and fathers. They teach me verbal balms for disappointment (“Keep small problems small”), tactics for snack packing, and the Fine Art of Distraction, which can pull children back from the abyss.
But I don’t ask people how they handle the topic of death and dying. It feels, simply, that parents should confront this most complicated aspect of existence however their gut tells them to do it. For starters, what is more personal than deciding whether your family says someone “died,” “is in a better place,” “is at peace,” “passed away,” “is with God,” or, a new favorite of mine, “joined the great majority”? Furthermore, I suspect that my kids, like millions before and millions after them, will absorb this new information with the limitless flexibility of youth.
Obviously, I also don’t ask other parents because I see no reason to pick at my own scar tissue. I have made it nearly 40 years since my father’s death without a complete examination of my emotions, a streak I jealously, selfishly, stubbornly keep alive.
Perhaps my boys will help me end it.
Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.