Tirza ~ May 20

 

Today would be my father’s 109^th birthday

 

Early in his nineties, my father announced that he planned to live until the age of 140.  That was revised to 120 by the time he hit 95, a sign that his own mortality was beginning to dawn on him.  

My father was what some call a womanizer, be it on the massage table or the boutique or the grocery aisle – every encounter or passerby seen as an opportunity.  Looking back, I knew many he was tangled up with as I grew up – the secretaries in Iran, then Puerto Rico…just a shade too strident or too blonde to be spending their entire time typing.  My father used laptops before laptops.

The General’s wife, from their cocktail party circuit, Mrs. Dobson, a southern belle with a glum if not alcoholic husband.  She was a horsewoman, and so suddenly, my father was buying a box of seats in the front of horseshows.  She was calling me a “devil” to him, perhaps because she could sense I didn’t like her, though I wasn’t aware of the why.  She tried to win me over by inviting me to ride with her son Drew, which I learned was short for Andrew.  

And as a teenager, it was especially cringy to notice him look over the girlfriends that came over. 

Getting old didn’t make a dent.  Already in his nineties, I helped him find an assistant. Celia didn’t seem not at all his type – no nail polish, no plunging neckline. After a few weeks, she became his girlfriend.  Everything was fine for a few years until she campaigned to have a couple of afternoons off a week.  They found Suzanne, Swedish with long silky blond hair, and in a very short time, Celia was replaced by Suzanne.

She invited her mother and her mother’s boyfriend to visit, hired a nurse, and my father, along with bedsores, began to talk about changing prior arrangements so that the company apartment could be put back in his name. 

Just two months later, 3 months short of his 99th birthday, he fell.  They had a fight, she had threatened to leave if he didn’t marry her, he fell out of her bed, and broke his femur.  She dragged him to the hallway to change the location of the fall. They lied and said he had gone to get a glass of water.  Her boyfriend -yes, turns out she had a live-in boyfriend – was using the BMW that I found missing when I flew down without telling her.  I became a sleuth, and when I realized the extent of her neglect and conniving, had a lawyer call her and threaten her with elder abuse.  My father went hysterical on me, but then, he was also attempting to punch nurses that came near him after his hip surgery, furious for feeling so much pain. The medical team responded by medicating more, and I couldn’t convince them to stop.  

He began to rant in Hebrew, and my Hebrew was very rusty since he had forbidden us from speaking it at home when we came to the States.  I thought he spoke about people who were after him, complex calculations and what seemed like explanations for deals.  He raved about a war where he was being attacked. 

I got your back, I told him.  You’re safe.

I asked my Israeli niece who was living in Nevada to come relieve me for a few days.  The night she was to arrive, I went to visit him.  CALL HER! He ordered.  Call who? I asked.  

HER, HER!!! CALL HER!

I don’t know, I said, who you are talking about.  Leigh is coming.  We’ll see you tomorrow.

He kept screaming after I tried to say goodbye, calling after me as I fled down the white corridors. 

Safely in the car, I was sobbing, knowing that I could never see him again. I was the only link to that nameless blonde.

My father, the playboy, died three days later.

Happy birthday father.