Build a Better Runway for a Better Journey

Reflections in the form of a travelogue

In the last photo I took of my father, he’s wearing three different patterns, his eyes are all puffy, and his hair is fashionably long for the times, but just looks grown out. Like he had no time for a haircut.

Although he’s standing right next to my brother and mom, he appears detached, almost lost. And soon after this, he will be.

He died at 49 years old of a massive coronary. I witnessed some of his last moments, all bloated and hooked up with electrodes. It wasn’t pretty. He had not been the rock star I saw him as for quite some time.

The last thing he said to me was “Take care of your mother,” which I might have thought meant for the next few evenings while he recovered. But now I believe he knew he was going for quite some time.

Maybe he couldn’t face the truth. The truth that he was dying and that he could have prevented it.

I doubt he knew what taking care of my mother would entail.

She could not marry another Sadowsky

In that photo of my parents on their honeymoon, they seem happy. But they almost didn’t get married. Mom was dating another guy who wanted to marry her.

“He was a basketball player,” she used to say. But he had a critical flaw—the same last name as hers.

“So, I married Bill.”

At least, that’s the story she told us.

They went to Miami and Havana on their honeymoon. In most of the photos, they are in bathing suits by the pool at the Hotel Algiers, appropriately relaxed. Appropriately romantic.

But their relationship could be volatile. He had a bad temper. He yelled. He drank too much, his temper got worse, and he yelled more.

But he worshipped her.

He never let us refer to Mom as “she.” He’d correct us if we did.

“She said we could have ice cream,” one of us would say.

“Who’s ‘she?’” He’d counter.

If anyone made too much noise when Mom had a migraine, he’d yell at us. To be quiet!

But they made their own kind of noise. The kind you could hear through a closed bedroom door. The sex chatter.

“Oh, Bill!” she’d say, and laugh. Or “Bill, stop it!” but that didn’t sound prohibitive at all.

They were happy for the most part. He was especially happy after a night partying together. They went out a lot during my childhood. To parties, concerts, and dancing. They’d get all dressed up.

They were movie stars.

Mom would drive because Dad gave it up after losing a kidney in a car accident. He had this huge scar across his stomach as a memento.

But she would have had to drive anyway because he was usually almost too drunk to walk. She was incredibly tolerant of this behavior, or so it seemed at the time.

We’d go away every summer for one to two weeks. Dad would take his travel bar with him. It looked like an attaché case and contained one bottle of J&B and another of Smirnoff. It also contained a couple of shot glasses and a martini mixer.

And no, my mom didn’t drink.

I never saw her drink. I never thought to question it. At one point, I asked a cousin what she thought.

“Why do you think Mom never drank?”

“Control,” she responded after a few seconds of thinking.

This baffled me.

“Control?” I asked.

“Yeah, she needs to be in control.”

In hindsight, I was able to consider that “in control” might have meant “maintaining order” or even “keeping everyone safe.” She did that for him and us.

She protected him against himself as long as she could.

California dreaming

Dad’s posing on a cliff overlooking Monterey Bay, and he looks like a rock star.

He’s dressed in multi-colored striped jeans and a grey polo shirt. The sunglasses complete the look. He must have picked them up at one of his and mom’s shopping trips to Syms.

That was one of their other activities, shopping. He was a freaking clothes horse, my dad. He had his work wardrobe and his leisure outfits. This included those jumpsuits that became so popular in the 70s.

He’d worn one during the trip to the Bahamas in 1972. His tan brought out the gold in the jumpsuit, and he sported a goatee.

But for this trip, those jeans stole the spotlight.

We must have landed in L.A., stopped at this spot overlooking Monterey Bay, and then gone on to Hearst Castle at San Simeon. During our stay in S.F., all the hotel workers went on strike. After Yosemite, we went to Sequoia. In the photos, he’s smoking while walking through the giant redwoods.

Our final destination was Las Vegas, where I had my parents’ permission to sneak into the casino while they were off to dinner and a show. I stood in front of the brightly lit mirror in our hotel room bathroom applying extra make-up to bridge the age gap between 13 and 21.

I won at the slots. I lost him three years later.

Nantucket early warning

We’re spending time with Dad’s twin, Jack, and his family on Nantucket.

Cape Cod and the Islands have always represented the epitome of a healthy, outdoor holiday destination. On that vacation, we rode bicycles, played tennis, walked around town, and did some sort of fishing.

But Jack didn’t like what he was seeing with Dad, who was having trouble keeping up with the rest of us. He scheduled a full medical work-up in Michigan, where he practiced radiology.

They determined that he’d had what is called a “silent” heart attack. “Eat better,” he was told. “Smoke and drink less.”

Be less of a rock star.

I have now lived longer than my father did.

My memories of him and us as a family are stored in old slides and photographs.

And some Super 8.

And like those slides and the Super 8, the memories embedded in me are not all that easily accessible. I’ve retained a lot of them, but I’ve come to realize that he and I didn’t have a long enough runway to draw them all out.

There just isn’t enough lift.

“I’ll never forgive him for leaving me,” my mom said the night my father died.

After many years, knowing how and what parents continue to give—and what we, as children, continue to need—perhaps I don’t either.

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