Friday, June 06, 2008

Dust to Dust

Hydrangea

My trip to Boston, the memorial service for my father, and other family matters went about as well as I could have hoped.

We mingled my father's and mother's ashes together, as he had wished, and planted a small hydrangea bush on a strip of land right near their former studios in their memory. My brother and sister-in-law were headed to the cape, and were supposed to scatter the ashes in the ocean.

Life is fleeting, friends; show your love as completely as you can, while you can.

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Sunday, January 06, 2008

Going to Albuquerque

I've decided that I need to be in Albuquerque for my Dad's cremation. It just isn't right for my sister to have to deal with this alone. I'll be back on Wednesday.

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Friday, January 04, 2008

Gone

photo
Harold Tovish (July 31, 1921 - January 4, 2008)

My father died this morning in Albuquerque, NM. He was a creative, intelligent, funny, and sometimes difficult man, who was loved and admired by many.

We will be planning a Memorial Service for friends and family to be held in Boston some time in the coming months.

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Sunday, October 28, 2007

Passage

Last day in Albuquerque. I don't know if I'll ever see my father alive again. It's odd to say goodbye to someone you know very well who doesn't seem to have the vaguest idea who you are. He didn't call me by name once.

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Thursday, September 28, 2006

Not Sounding So Good

My Dad is in the hospital. He had to have surgery for a blood clot in his leg that was cutting off all circulation to his foot.

I just spoke to him on the telephone. I don't know if I woke him from a nap, or whether he's just really out of it, but he sounded pretty awful.

It's hard not to be worried.

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Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Dad at 85

Dad

Dad's birthday dinner was very nice, except for the horrible bit where Lois got her purse stolen.

I also had a bizarre auto-trance moment where, against all odds, and basically after I'd given up looking, I suddenly got up, went to a drawer full of junk, and instantly laid my hands on the missing safety-deposit box key.

A much less difficult visit than I anticipated, and for that I'm grateful. Not to say it was entirely without stress: I did spend my last 45 minutes before leaving lying on a couch trying to doze off a migraine.

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Saturday, July 29, 2006

To Boston

Family obligations take me to Boston Sunday and Monday. Please have a good thought for us.

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Wednesday, June 01, 2005

In Boston

Exhaustion.

Some positive steps.

Steps that seem like mere milimeters compared to the miles to go.

You can only do what you can do. Even if it seems utterly inadequate.

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Sunday, May 29, 2005

Boston Bound

I'm off to Boston for a week in the morning. It's hardly a pleasure trip: the goal is to try and bring some stability to my father's situation. My brother will be there too. I don't hold out much hope that we'll get everything resolved, but I hope at least that the three of us (my sister, brother, and I) will at least be able to agree on what needs to happen next.

I wish this weren't necessary, but it is. Perhaps once I get up there some of the dread will dissipate and I'll be able to get on the with the business of coping.

Wish me luck.

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Friday, May 13, 2005

We Become What We Practice

My Dad thought it was cute to act like an old curmudgeon. He amused himself by pushing the buttons of others. He invested his entire sense of self in two perishables: his marriage and his work. The interior lives of others were of little interest to him. He was a handsome man, gifted, intelligent and capable of charm, and that took him a long way.

Now my father is falling apart. His body is collapsing, his mind disintegrating. His wife died; he lost the will to work. The cranky old curmudgeon act became the reality. The friends whose goodwill was rebuffed again and again eventually gave up and withdrew. He rehearsed being a loner; now, when he desperately needs it he doesn't know how to accept help.

As for me, my buttons were pushed too many times: I feel pity, but not love. Any act of kindness I do toward him will be abstractly, not personally, motivated. I will do my best to do the right thing.

I'm taking mental notes like mad. This is not what I want the last years of my life to look like. I need to pay attention to what I practice.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Lots of Eating

Aaron at the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum

Aaron arrived on Saturday afternoon. I'd been up all night the night before and managed about four hours of sleep in the morning, so I was a bit discombobulated. I fed him ramen soup with peas for lunch. We did a little grocery shopping, largely to supply him with his requisite morning cereal and me with a refrigerator full of fruit and vegetables with which to fuel my Juicer. (Yes, the Juicer gets a capital "J." I love it Just that much. You now how miso soup both tastes good AND you can tell that it's good for you? Well, the Juicer makes Juices that are both fabulous tasting and patently good for you. The Juicer is my new bestest buddy. Which should give you some idea of how pathetic my frame of mind is right about now. OK, back to the narrative.)

For dinner, we went to Mei Wah, which I think I've frequented exactly ONCE during my time with the lovely Andrew, who disdained it as being too expensive for a Chinese restaurant. Actually, I think it's a very good value. The portions are enormous, and the food is really very, very tasty. We ordered way too much, gorged ourselves, and then ended up having take-away leftovers anyway. Fortunately, it was a fairly cool evening, as we left them in the car while we went to see Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Folger.

The play was a hoot. As you may recall, it's considered one of the 'problem' plays of Shakespeare, because one of the main protagonists (Proteus) is a truly disastrous cad. He reaches his nadir mere moments before the happy ending (!) of the play, when he threatens his lady-love with rape. Nice, eh? This particular production didn't really try to do much to make sense of that ~ but it did include three women who played all the minor roles, including all the clowning parts. They were fabulous: versatile, inventive, and hilarious. Holly Twyford, one of my very favorite actresses, was among them. For me, this production was a stellar example of how important stagecraft is... and how it can utterly transform a script into a living, breathing theatrical experience.

Sunday morning, I plied Aaron with JUICE (yum!) while he ate cereal, and then he graciously came along with me to church (I was serving in the healing rite). Immediately afterward we went to Neisha Thai for lunch, emphasizing large plates of Pad Thai. Because, after all, one must eat, no?

We then drove out to the new Air & Space Museum branch at Dulles, the Udvar-Hazy Center. I'd been there with Andrew once before. Aaron wanted to go, mostly I think because he wanted to see for himself the way the Enola Gay is displayed. (He's currently working for a nuclear disaramament project funded by the city of Hiroshima.) For the people he works for, and in his own view, it is obscene to display the Enola Gay as just another artifact ~ or even at all ~ considering that it was the delivery vehicle for a weapon of mass destruction, unlike any other, aimed at a civilian population. He feels that, out of respect for the victims, some other Flying Fortress should be on view. I entirely agree that the signage associated with it is inadequate. But I'm not sure that it shouldn't be displayed at all.

On the one hand, the A & S Museum is not a war museum. None of the artifacts there, many of which ARE weapons (missiles), are labeled in such a way as to indicate their destructive uses. Flying Fortresses fire-bombed Dresden. Nuclear cruise and MIRVed trident missiles could end civilization as we know it. At the museum, they are presented simply as milestones in the history of flight. To provide labeling that restored all that context would completely recast the nature of the place.

On the other hand, the history of aviation, and indeed all technology, is the story of the interchange between combat-driven and commercial impetuses for development. Indeed, the vast majority of the technology of every kind that we enjoy today had its roots in warfare. A failure to acknowledge this at all, to gloss it over or, worse, to glamorize it, is a moral and intellectual failure. It is not enough merely to coo over artifacts. (And the Enola Gay is also a beautiful machine as well as a technological marvel of its time.)

Aaron wanted to know how I'd feel if a museum on valve and rubber gasket technology (a dubious prospect, but for the sake of argument...) had a display of an actual Zyklon B showerhead from Auschwitz. One actually used to exterminate people. Obviously, it's a hypothetical, and I can't say for sure, but I think I'd be okay with it. But I'd sure as hell want some very strongly worded placarding to put it in context. What do you think?

Okay, back to the eating. The eating was taken to new heights at dinner, which was dished up in great profusion by David and Lynn on Sunday. David went postal on many pounds of potatoes, and the result was (wait for it) more potato latkes than we could eat. Yes, you read it right. The six of us, including my brother, king eater of all time, were unable to finish the quantity of latkes that he made. Almost an entire quart of peanut oil gave its life in the process. The experience was on a par with one I had in Japan where, seated at a restaurant and plucking dishes from a conveyor belt, I for the first time ate all the sushi I could eat at one sitting. Except much, much richer. We watched the Survivor finale together, and then Aaron and I waddled to the car and went home to collapse.

I couldn't even imagine eating until about 3 in the afternoon on Monday, when I zapped a plate of Mei Wah leftovers.

Monday evening we were both STILL FULL. We went to see Ray at the Uptown. We both highly recommend this film. For those of the appropriate generation, the music is from our life's soundtrack. I learned things about Ray Charles's music that I didn't know, the acting was terrific (Jamie Foxx nails the part), and although a bit melodramatic in places, the movie is well made.

We came back to my place, I made some more ramen noodles, and we both staggered off to bed. Aaron left this morning. It was a really nice visit; I'm grateful that he chose to spend some time with me.

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Friday, December 10, 2004

Brother, brother

Aaron is coming to town tomorrow for a few nights. The timing is good for me... I'm looking forward to hanging out with him. It seems the weather is going to be pretty lousy, so anyone with novel ideas for indoor activities, please pipe up.

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Friday, November 05, 2004

Shelter Island Trip

It was too many hours uncomfortable travel to get there and back, but our visit with Annika and Aaron to the Shelter Island home of Kim and Aimo (?spelled how?) featured absolutely beautiful weather on Sunday. The place is gorgeous.

See some pictures from the trip here.

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