Before he died, my father showed me how to pierce grief with laughter

I learnt not to squirm or scurry off. There didn’t seem to be any rules in my father’s mispronunciations. Fax became fux but Trump became Tramp. My father laughed more easily than anyone I have ever known. He laughed so hard that I often thought he was in danger of having a heart attack or a stroke. He found humour in situations that others might find frustrating or irritating.

My father was the light of my childhood. I loved my mother very much but, in a community where everyone was in a state of grief, it was my father who showed me that it was possible to pierce that grief with laughter.

“He laughed so hard that I often thought he was in danger of having a heart attack or a stroke. He found humour in situations that others might find frustrating or irritating.”

He was loved by so many people. My high-school friends adored him. People he met only once always remembered him. He loved cafes.

He could also be very stubborn. There is a father figure in several of my novels. He is mostly called Edek. My father believed that Edek was him. He was convinced he was Edek. Even when I pointed out so many of the different things that Edek had done – for example, that Edek had opened a very successful meatball restaurant on the Lower East Side, and that Edek, late in his life, had married a blonde, very big-busted Polish woman – my father insisted that he was Edek.

There are parts of my novels that are based on my life and my father’s life. There was quite a lot of Edek in my father. Edek was always generous and always kind. He was mischievous and he was a great dancer. I understand that seeing so much of yourself in a character could lead to some confusion and possibly allow you to think you had opened a meatball restaurant with a blonde, very big-busted attractive Polish woman. Months later my father conceded that maybe he wasn’t 100 per cent Edek.

One day my father was talking about his very stern father and how he dominated his wife, my father’s mother. I had heard quite a lot about my father’s father, who was a very successful businessman. I suggested that maybe my father should try to write a memoir. He thought about it for a few minutes and then said he would write a memoir.

The first two lines of this memoir almost sounded like a beginning and an end. He had written: “I am 87 years old born on 6 July 1916. I lost my wife on 24 August 1986.” The loss of my mother broke my father’s heart.

My father started writing his memoir on a Tuesday. On Friday, he called me to let me know he had finished. I spent a long time trying to explain to him that he had to expand everything he had written and include everything he had left out. Three weeks later he had written 12 pages and was very pleased with himself.

“In almost every one of my father’s letters, he tells me how much he loves me. I took those words for granted. Now the same words seem neon-lit.”

Twelve pages after the date of his birth, he had skipped to the fact that he had lived in Australia for more than 40 years and was now living in New York and he was very happy. He spent another few weeks working on the memoir. He ended it with a large and firm statement. “The End.”

My father and I were talking about nothing in particular when he looked at me and said, “You are my mother and my daughter.” It took me a minute or two to absorb what he had said. And then I wanted to cry at what that short sentence implied.

Almost three years after my father’s death, I plucked up the courage to open a file of letters and faxes my father had, over the years, sent to me. In almost every one of my father’s letters, he tells me how much he loves me. I think I took those words for granted. Now the same words seem neon-lit. I have always known my father loved me and he knew I loved him, but I wish I had paused and thought more about the unwavering depth of that love.

I had been preparing myself for my father’s death for several years. Every time my phone rang late at night, I took a deep breath and girded myself for the news. As part of my preparation, I rang the funeral parlour to make sure that all the arrangements were in place. They were bewildered. It turned out that no one had ever called before the demise of the deceased.

Sometime around my father’s 98th birthday, I had lulled myself into feeling that my father would always be there. He had, in his 90s, survived several bouts of the flu, stomach viruses and other illnesses. He recovered from all of these with lightning speed. He was knocked over by a reasonably large van while he was crossing Essex Street. He got up and then argued with the paramedics when they wanted to take him to hospital.

When my father died, I felt utterly shocked. I felt distraught. I couldn’t believe he was dead. I called my children. I knew that they would feel very distressed.

At the funeral parlour, I had to identify the body. I didn’t expect this. Jews, on the whole, don’t view the body. I was frightened – no, terrified – of seeing my father dead. When I finally took the elevator to go to the chapel or, as it is sometimes called, “the visiting room”, I was shocked, again. My father looked just like himself. And he looked well. He didn’t look dead.

I started stroking his head and crying and kissing him. “I am so sorry, I am so sorry, I am so sorry,” I said, over and over again. I didn’t know what I was saying sorry for. I think I was telling him how sorry I was that he had died.

My husband and I were both crying when we left the funeral parlour, although I felt much better after I had seen my father and been able to kiss him and talk to him. At home, I wrote a list of things I had to do. At the top of the list was finding a rabbi who would not mention the word “God”. My father was adamant that there was no God. He was not the only survivor of Nazi death camps who lost all faith in God. The rabbi we chose understood.

We had a small family funeral. There were 10 adults and two of my father’s eight great-grandchildren. My son wanted to see my father one last time. The driver of the hearse arrived. I asked him about seeing my father. He hesitated and then nodded his head.

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The hearse was parked in the cemetery’s relatively crowded car park. We each took our turn to say goodbye and give him one last kiss. My father would have loved how he was last seen in an open casket that was sticking out of the back of a hearse, in a car park. We were all crying as we walked behind the hearse to my father’s burial plot.

The grave site was marked with my father’s name and a Star of David. We each spoke at the service. I can’t recall a word I said. What was crystal clear was how much each of us loved him. I threw the first shovelful of earth onto his coffin, then suddenly became very anxious about how on earth my father was going to be able to breathe with all that earth on top of him.

Edited extract from Old Seems to Be Other People by Lily Brett (Penguin Random House) out now.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale September 5. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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