Remembering my Father

Los Angeles

by Andrea Scarpino

 

My father was a child of Italian immigrants, a child of the Great Depression. He first started working when he was nine years old, rolling tobacco into cigars. On payday, he would share some of his earnings with his cousins, buying them (and himself) ice cream sodas. He loved sweets. For much of his life, he was a big man, someone who loved to eat and share food with friends. I remember him making me toast in the morning when I visited him as a child, sending me gingerbread houses whose roofs opened up to a treasure trove of cookies and candies, sending me boxes of chocolate. When I was in college, he packed me special bags of cookies and fruit he bought during his weekly shopping trip. After we had dinner each Saturday night, I returned to my own apartment with a shopping bag full of grapes, anisette cookies, carrot sticks.

He started giving me espresso when I was still a toddler. I remember him feeding me teaspoons from his cup, then laughing at the bitter faces I would make. My father loved to laugh, to exaggerate a good story for effect, to play jokes on friends. He loved to make up stories for me, about little foxes living at the end of his street, giant six foot tall rabbits, the old neighbor lady he insisted lived two doors down who would pierce my ear with a long needle for a dollar. About piranhas living in any body of water in which I wanted to swim.

And yes, he could be a grouch. He was easy to anger, and he let you know when you had made him angry. He held a grudge, he believed the worst in innocent mistakes and accidents, he could exaggerate wrongs committed against him until I wasn’t sure what to believe. But he was also brilliant, always reading, writing grants, fighting for projects he believed in. He worked harder than anyone else I’ve ever met. He knew how to get a job done, to schmooze important people, to turn up at the right time looking the part. He could be hard to live with. He made me cry. And I have missed him every day since he died two years ago.

I’ve read a lot about death and grieving since my father died, and I know some people believe in stages of grief, that after a loved one has died, we should work towards acceptance. I don’t agree. I know that my father is dead, that he isn’t coming back. But I don’t think I’ll ever accept that fact, or accept death as just another part of nature, another part of the earthly condition. Again, I know it is. I know there’s nothing any of us can do to beat death. But acceptance doesn’t seem to be the right word when faced with death or with losing a father. Sadness seems right. And anger. And holes of loss that widen and contract as the day, the moment, the second permits. Remembering seems right. Laughing and loving, even so. Checking in with the dead, even though I don’t believe in an afterlife. Checking in to say hello. I miss you. Two years without you seem like no time at all. Seem like forever.

 

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB.

You can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com