A Bag of Gumdrops

My Dad died nine years ago, at age ninety-four. Since then, I’ve marked that January anniversary with rituals that move me. Every year, for instance, I light a candle and put it close to a picture of him that I keep on my desk. I lay flowers at his headstone, grateful that I had him in my life for as long as I did, and thankful at the same time that the sadness his absence evokes no longer presses upon me as hard as it once did. Yet, at the same time that I honor my father in these ways, the shell that protects me against unwanted thoughts about my own mortality cracks a bit wider. How do you hope to be remembered? an unexpected voice whispers in my mind and I have no answer. This year, however, with his date only a short time away, that voice has become insistent. Perhaps it is tired of waiting for a definitive reply.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by the voice’s uptick in volume, given how preoccupied by loss we all are, in this, our year of pandemic fear and grief. In a New York Times article that ran in January of the new year, titled “Death Was A Theory Until I Became a Mother,” existentialist philosopher Danielle LaSussa noted that “death has come sooner than expected for many.” Reading that phrase, I felt another fissure forming in the shell of my defenses. But what she wrote next, so incisively, resonated with even more acuity: “Perhaps by learning to embrace this fragile and exquisite life, while we have it, we might recognize that death has been part of the deal all along.”

Indeed. Wasn’t it unreasonable to expect to articulate how I wished to be remembered if I hadn’t fully accepted that one day I would be gone? Death had always been part of the deal—whether I wanted to recognize it or not.

Last night, while lying on the sofa in my writing room, the Times piece came to mind again. I’d been thinking about mothering my own daughter, who was an only child, so many years before: how could I protect her, I’d thought at the time, when the world was so filled with the dangers of childhood and adolescence. In a strange way, it was a relief when the inner voice I’d been hearing the day before began to chime in: Okay, the job of raising her was done long ago. Now, what do you want her to remember about you? With frustration, I realized that I still didn’t know.

I scanned the room’s wall of framed family photos, my eyes coming to rest on one of my Dad and me, taken near the end of his life. Had I ever posed the “legacy” question to him? Asked directly how he hoped to be remembered by us, his children? A moment later, I laughed. Like so many men of his generation, my father was not one for “confessional shares.” My mind shifted focus then, thinking back on this hard-toiling, humble, lover of wisecracks. He was a man for whom family had made up his entire inner life. How would he have answered this question which was pestering me? And then I laughed once more. Dad’s quick wit had been his go-to to deflect any feeling that might have left his emotions exposed. You mean when I’m ready to part my hair for the last time, Terry? he’d have said solemnly, before sending me a mischievous smile. Why should I care how you’ll remember me? Jesus, I’ll be dead!

So, I let my mind drift once more, and as I did, memories of conversations he and I’d had in the last year of his life surfaced anew. Many, as it turned out, orbited around a tender back-and-forth habit that always emerged at the point when my visits to Dad in the nursing home came to an end and I got ready to leave.

Already? he’d say, sounding surprised as he watched me reach for my purse. This, even though we’d just passed the long stretch of an afternoon together, chatting about politics, the news, or whatever topic on which his mind, still-sharp, had honed in. Then, he’d wheel himself toward the bureau near his bed. What can I get you? he’d ask as he rummaged through each drawer. Tell me. What do you need? “Nothing, Daddy,” I’d say with a smile, as I searched my pockets for my keys. But my father was never easily deterred. I’ve got some packs of Juicy Fruit, he’d insist. How about a magazine?

One time, after he’d come up with zilch, he glanced at his dinner tray. Clucking his tongue, he reached for the menu and pressed the printed sheet into my hand. Send this to the kid, he said, referring to my girl, his granddaughter, who was off at college then. Tell her I’ve got more, he added in a bright tone. She can use them to wallpaper her room!

Whether it was a bag of gumdrops, a rollerball pen, or a small book of meditations, I never left these visits empty-handed. But even so. After a last kiss had been planted on his cheek, my father would look up at me, his brow slightly furrowed. Then tell me he wished he had something more.

With a deep sigh, I now rise from the couch and straighten up, the warm memories of our goodbyes lingering. Had he hoped, I wonder as I walk to the kitchen, that one day I would understand each little giveaway was meant as a metaphorical hug? Had he hoped that someday I would recognize his insistence that I accept a sleeve of Oreos for the road was his way to tell me: “This is how you take me with you. See?

In a few days, I will observe the rituals that began after my last, long-ago visit with my Dad once again. A trip to the cemetery; a lighted candle; texts back and forth with my brothers and sisters. I expect they will be as meaningful for me this year as they have been in every one past.

This morning, I heard again the voice that challenged me to articulate how I hope to be remembered—the voice that, as you’ve probably suspected, is none other than my own. What I can say in response to it is that I am better equipped to answer. These several weeks of recollection and reflection about my father have helped me to find it easier to accept that article I read earlier in the week, the one which postulates that “legacy awareness” aids people to live more fully and to manage death-related anxiety better.

I don’t have it all worked out yet. But what I’ve discovered is that I may just be a little bit like Dad. It turns out I am my father’s daughter, after all.

So, what do I hope for when I think about my own daughter, who one day will summon up her memories of me? Part of the answer, at least, is remarkably simple—and perhaps obvious: I want her to remember me as someone who loved her deeply and unconditionally. However, two questions remain that come straight from the past. They echo and stay with me and do not diminish in importance over time.

What can I get you? I will ask my girl. Tell me. What do you need?

Best,