“A Conversation with My Father” is the name of one of my favorite short stories by Grace Paley. I admit there are many of her stories and poems that could be called favorites. I miss her as time goes by. Three and a half years since her death? I cannot quite count. We (my partner and I) sat Shiva (the Jewish custom of sitting at the home of a family in mourning– to pray, to console, to keep company and share time and food together) last night with a good friend whose father just died at age 93.
It was a sad thing and an ok thing– my friend really at peace with how her father died, and with the goodness of his life and with the ways she had found to be with him shortly before his death– to say goodbye. She is wildly organized and a major planner in ways I am not, and I could not help but notice that his death happened in a very orderly way–which suited her well and I am guessing him too– with time to think through how she wanted her last times with him to be. And by her account, it was a peaceful death. I was honored to sit Shiva with my friend, her partner, our Rabbi and my friend’s family and many other friends. I say honored, not because I wouldn’t expect to be there, but because I find it an honor to be part of this kind of intimate and important moment in people’s lives– even these very painful moments.
My partner and I stayed late to do clean-up which was a lovely time to talk to them, to put our bodies to the task of simple work as a way to help and to show our caring and respect.
It has been a hard couple of weeks on the circle-of-life front; two very important friends in our lives– diagnosed with cancer. The young daughter (not yet 3 years old) of another very close friend is in the hospital for illness related to my young friend’s serious disability. My friend (the little girl’s mom) called us at 6:20 a.m. on Saturday from the pediatric intensive care unit and I was there by 7:45. A funny story which maybe I will recount later about claiming to be the girl’s grandmother– so they wouldn’t give me any flack about going into the unit before visiting hours made for that poignant contrast between grief and humor, worry and brazen-ness– and I carried the taste of that contrast with me as I sat with my friends and their daughter for many hours on Saturday.
And a couple of weeks before that, I learned that the adult son of a friend– a close former colleague from a job I loved, also has cancer; in his case a more advanced cancer. I cannot help but think over and over about what this must be like for my friend, as a mother.
Today I paused long enough to download and listen to the reading that the link below will lead you to. It is a link sent to me by one of my two good friends recently diagnosed. I always loved this story, which is about a Jewish father near the end of his life and his daughter. It’s a sweet and cranky conversation that reflects their differing perspectives, their values and good-natured tensions in their relationship coming out of these differences. Although my differences with my father never seemed funny to me in this way, it is a conversation which I think I had often with my own father, but in a different, somewhat more antagonistic form, about different points of view across generations.
The story is about the fact that one’s own perspective, one’s own history is always injected into any telling, recounting. One of the things I loved about Grace was that she was adamant about her views– no pushover. But her writing often leaves me wondering– who was right here and who is missing the boat? It is never so clear in her stories, as it feels to us when we are in the midst of such a difference with someone. The story is the story of the significance of telling.
Like my last week or two, in this very short story lives the pain and sharp grief of lives, the roaring belly-shaking humor of life, the wry, dry humor of life and my love of literature– all distilled into a very few pages. This story is one of my favorites of Grace Paley. You can hear the story prior to the commentary in about eight minutes. I don’t know the writer who is the reader in this recording, but I love especially that Grace’s unmistakable Bronx voice is read with the nuance and meaning just perfect–but by a reader from a very different background, a woman of color reader/writer– who has a gorgeous Scottish accent. Grace would have loved this reading and so do I.
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