Table For Two

About a month before my father died, I brought my three children to New York to visit him one last time. It was Passover, and I was determined to have him with us as we conducted our version of a Seder, which, even under the best of circumstances, was shamefully brief and shamelessly irreverent.

He knew his time was limited -- otherwise he never would have asked me to bring his grandchildren, never would have suggested anything that might inconvenience us -- and he quickly became too ill to sit at the table. I suppose I, too, knew his time was limited, but that wasn't going to keep me from having him participate. I didn't really see the point of having a Seder at all if he couldn't be there.

And so, after he recovered from some uncontrollable shaking and whatever else happens when your body betrays you, I dragged the kids and their chairs into the bedroom so we could carry on with a ritual that had somehow taken on a somewhat baffling importance. I don't think my dad even realized we were in the room with him, he was that sick.

It's a weird feeling of deja vu to be back in New York, thirteen years later, helping my mother accomplish the simplest tasks. It stirs up all kinds of memories, both good and bad. Bad, because I recall vividly how the cancer was beating the life out of my father; good, because he was still alive, and I had not yet known what it feels like to lose a parent, to feel as if your legs had been cut off at the knees. I miss just having him here. And so it is that those feelings of loss are being stirred up, as I anticipate missing my mother one day.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, she will recover, but the snail's pace of that recovery is a potent reminder of her advanced age. Spending time with her as she struggles through her daily rituals, I have become acutely aware not only of the toll the accident took on her but of the permanent damage that has been done by the ravages of time. She is old. My mother was not made to be old.

There are no holidays requiring celebration in June, no ancient rituals to be followed. But my mother and I have our own age old rituals, like sitting together over a cup of coffee in the morning, and I'll be damned if she's not going to hobble over there to join me. She gets it, and no matter what it takes, she shows up at the table.