Dear Dad
The Yiskor candles are burning
in my kitchen. It has been 45 years
since your death. I was 19 years old
when I shoveled dirt onto your coffin.
I’m 64 years now and I’ve lived 15 years longer than your cancer truncated
life.
It has been a difficult number
of months for me. I took over a
significantly troubled non-profit organization two and a half years and, while
many things have improved dramatically, our financial situation is dire. Revenue has not kept up with expenses and we
ran a significant deficit last year. We
are faced with dramatic cash flow challenges. There were and continue to be
extenuating circumstances which made this task virtually impossible. Part of the fault lies also with me. There are things I could have and should have
done better.
The organization’s financial
challenges have caused me enormous anxiety, to the point that I faced severe
panic attacks this past summer. At this
point, I am only able to maintain functioning with the help of a cocktail of
anti-anxiety medications. Even full
dosed, my mood remains edgy and nervous.
There is so much to unwrap as I
attempt to understand the profoundly painful emotional impact this current
situation is having on my psyche. But I
cannot help recall vivid childhood images where, perhaps fueled by a Depression
Era Weltanschauung, you raged at me for being fiscally careless. In retrospect, the memories seem, to be
honest, ridiculous. Perhaps I was 6 or 7
when you screamed at me for not squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom of the
tube. I still can remember feeling so
utterly confused by the ferocity of your anger. Perhaps you remember the day at
the Renaissance Swim Club when a dime dropped from my hand and rolled under the
soda machine. You screamed at me
demanding that I get the custodian to move the machine so the dime could be
retrieved. I believe I was 11. Even back then I remember thinking how
unreasonable that demand was. But you
were my father.
And so 50 or more years later,
the thought that I am being judged for financial carelessness, the
organizational equivalent of squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the
tube or failing to reclaim the dime from the bottom of the soda machine, has elevated
my anxiety to frightful levels. I am
once again, the small child, in pajamas, in the bathroom with improperly
squeezed toothpaste tube clutched in my hand.
Intriguingly, even understanding
the underlying emotional dynamic doesn’t seem to, in any way alleviate my
anxiety. It is the little orange pill
that seems to do the trick and, while not transitioned in to “Mr. Happy” I am
able to proceed with the tasks and responsibilities of the day. At least until the medically induced calm
begins to subside.
I think about your life and I
remember with such clarity your humor and your charm. But, in retrospect, also realize that lurking
underneath your warmth and your smile were deeply troubling emotionally painful
demons. That you were claustrophobic was well known by all family members. Thus, you never flew and rarely took highways
as the exits were spaced too far apart. And it is why you chose to be treated
on an outpatient basis when your Hodgkin’s Disease was first diagnosed. We would drive you to the hospital, wait
while you underwent chemotherapy and then rushed you back home before the
nauseating effects began.
A relapse of the disease a year
later necessitated your admission to Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital in New
York where, after 3 weeks, you passed away.
Later in life as I studied at
the Columbia University School of Social Work, I began to think about your
claustrophobia in metaphorical terms. At
age 18 you entered Pace University in New York to study to become a history
teacher. After your freshman year you
were recruited and served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. The war concluded and you returned home,
planning to continue your college studies.
But your father would have none of it.
It was time to go to work in the family business – J Raphael and Son’s
Importers and Grinders of Spices – where you remained until cancer found you. As
I learned later in life, it was work that you never enjoyed and never gave you
a real sense of satisfaction. I vividly remember screaming arguments between
you and your brother Sidney. Your joy
came after work with friends and they were a balm to your restless and pained
soul. At age 27 you met my mother and by
age 31 you had a wife and three children.
Any semblance of freedom was gone.
At work and at home you were trapped, you were on a life highway with no
exits.
I think of you now in my period
of anxiety. Deep within my psyche, here
is the scathing voice of my father berating me being careless with money. But I
also think that there is a tinge of your claustrophobia – that I am trapped,
that I cannot succeed in this job and that I will be jobless when I return to
Atlanta. I am not a psychiatrist, but it
occurs to me that claustrophobia is broad, full impact anxiety – overwhelmed by
the painful constrictions that life has presented you and fearful of living
them out on a day-to-day basis.
As I make my way through my own
emotional challenges, I have come to better understand the nature of your
anxiety and profoundly debilitating impact of the stresses you must have
felt. But for you, there was no orange
pill and perhaps at home and at work there was no relief. That anxiety, that fear, that sense of life
closing in on you from all sides must have been unbearable. It is hard for me
to truly comprehend your emotional pain or understand how you managed the unrelenting
psychic distress. Squeezing the toothpaste is more than depression era
parsimony, it is the unforgivable wasting of the limited resources that provide
an opportunity to live a happy life. We
are all feeling squeezed. I look back at your life and now understand that
the ongoing pressure on your psyche must have been relentless and
unbearable. You weren’t yelling at me
but raging at life’s unrelenting pressure. By the way, since that day I have
never squeezed the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.
