Category Archives: Personal

So it's been a month now since I lost my father.  I realized this Monday morning at my orthodontist appointment, as my last was the morning that my father died.  It's been a hard and weird month, but I'm doing much better.  Have been very busy with a trip to Tucson to be with my mother, then a business trip to Maine (recap TK), and then lots of catch-up work since. 

Tucson was good, we spent a weekend going through my father's office, as he was a defense attorney, we had to go through and keep 6 years of case files and shred the rest. It made me never want to get into law, but H has been inspired to consider a career in criminal law.  More fun was the memorial party at his favorite bar, the Kon Tiki, where I heard stories and sides of my father that I'd never known.  My mother compiled a book for me of all of the wonderful emails she's gotten from long-time friends and colleagues.  One thing my father wrote shortly before he died was a bar napkin detailing his favorite defenses.  They ranged from the familiar "My client is too dumb to have committed X crime" and "Cops hate my guy because (fill in the blank)" to the inscrutable "What me worry?" and "Rope a dope."

While the first two weeks were very emotional, filled with sad moments when I realized things like my father had never gone to Europe or that I would never be able to ask him about the "Rope a Dope" defense, but I haven't had the major breakdown I've been expecting.  It's like that feeling when you know you are going to throw up and you stand hovering in the bathroom, eager to get it over with.  Sorry for that image, but it's the best metaphor I can think of.  Since I'm not surrounded with reminders every day, it's more like a series of tiny shocks, like the other night when I called my mother late at night and worried that I might wake my father up.  I emailed pretty much everyone I've ever met with the news, to avoid the awkward "'How are you?' 'Fine.  Oh, but actually…'" conversation, but I still wish I could wear a sign that said "My father died so give me your subway seat/don't worry if I seem out of it/buy me a drink, etc."  More than anything, it's the finality of death that is so hard, but I'm trying not to drive my self crazy with the what ifs and the if onlys.

At the end of this month, we are going to Boston for another memorial party with my father's MA friends (we are from there originally) and desperately looking for a hotel for one night.  Naturally, it is the most expensive time to visit Boston (fall foliage and many colleges have parent weekends), not to mention the Red Sox.  I feel torn about wanting the Sox to go to the World Series since my father was such a huge fan, and not wanting them to go so that I can get a cheaper room!  Plus, the party is at a bar near Fenway, so it will be a nightmare in many ways if they are in the Series.  But I look forward to hearing more stories and meeting other Animal House peeps.

Back to the much more comfortable subject of travel soon.

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I lost my father yesterday, he was 64.  I wouldn't say he had been ill, but he had been in a lot of pain recently, and his death was not entirely unexpected but still shocking.  There won't be a funeral, but several memorial services coming up on the east coast and in Arizona where my mother lives.  I'm going home to be with her on Friday, but until then I am at work, grateful for the distraction of media lists and press releases.  My father wasn't a phone person, and since we lived on opposite coasts, we didn't see a lot of each other, so I feel like it will take longer to really hit me.  What's amazing is how many friends I have who have lost a parent young, it's a shitty club to join but comforting to have so many friends who understand.  My father, originator of the famous "Who is this Harry Potter asshole?" line, was a true original.  Here are some of my favorite memories:

*He would ask of every boy I dated in high school, "Does he play ball?," referring of course to baseball (he was a Red Sox man all the way).  I would inevitably reply, "No, but he's in a band/skateboards/etc." He would then snort, "Well, he sounds like a chump," and he was usually right.
*He was a huge fan of the My Blue Heaven line, "The shoes are tragic," and he would tell me that regularly during my Doc Martens/combat boot phase in high school.
*After the Seinfeld episode when George comes up with the lame line, "Oh yeah?  Well, the jerk store called: they're running out of you!" he left me a note that read: "The jerk store called, they want you back for a second interview!"  I was looking for my first job at the time and I still have the note.
*After we discovered that we had some African blood, he wrote to me to say that he wasn't surprised as his walk had often been described as "a pimp roll."  This makes the second time I have used that phrase on this blog, funny enough.
*He won his last major case just a week ago and asked the judge if he could deliver his closing statement sitting down, as his legs were bothering him.  The judge later asked him about his health and told him, "Well, you better take care of yourself.  You're ornery and you read good books, we need more people like you."
*My father was in the Dartmouth fraternity that was the basis for the movie Animal House and his friend Chris Miller recently wrote a book about it.  In the afterward, he says that "Sugar Ray is a defense attorney in Tucson, Arizona.  He still has a great sneer."  My mother also features prominently in the book, he says that "her smiles balance his sneers."  Here it is, about 20 years ago:

When I go home to Tucson this weekend, I will go to my father's favorite bar and raise a glass (or many) to him.  I plan to sit on his stool and try to muster up a good sneer.

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We interrupt our regularly scheduled travel talk to rant about Harry Potter mania.  When I got off the train this morning at Union Square at 8:30am, the Barnes & Noble hosting a midnight release party already had a line two blocks long!  Of. Adults!  I've never read a HP book, but I'm told they are quite good.  A good  friend of mine just wrote this about HP books, which is rather convincing, but then again, she is a lawyah!  Also enjoyed this blog post this morning, at least they have the good sense to be embarrassed about reading kid books.

*The above quote comes from none other than my father, a man of few but all well-considered words.  He said this to my mother a few years ago, when HP mania first began, and I have repeated it with delight many times since.  I can recall telling it to someone in an East Village bar years ago, who told me I could make a million dollars if I put it on a t-shirt.  I was positively gobsmacked (yes, I've been looking for an opportunity to use that word) to find a t-shirt with that very phrase in a London market last summer.  I was too angry and confused to buy one or inquire as to the origin of the phrase, but I blame globalization.  Be careful what you say in bars, there may be some enterprising Brit just waiting to steal your idea. 

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