Pop
It’s been a Dad-Day for me. For absolutely no particular reason, I find my dad, dead 24 years, all around me today.
His name is Sidney. Sidney Futuronsky. One of the kindest men in America, he had no boundaries. His people-pleasing could fill every AlAnon meeting on the Planet and still need more containment. He was obsessed with his health, having had his first heart attack when I was in fourth grade. He spent the rest of his days, and there were many, fearful of dying, poor guy.
Cosmic joke? He lived to be 84.
His heart was massive; although blocked and defective, his was the heart of a love-bug.
Pop owned a small neighborhood grocery store that was his father’s. He grew up in the store, driving the truck at age eight, delivering orders, weaving through the alleys. My sister and I grew up in the store, too, which was two blocks from our house and one block from our elementary school.
No truck driving for us. I thought the green boxy-square Colfax Market truck was cool and, but in certain situations, I was ashamed of it. Picking me up after bowling at the Jewish Community Center, I felt anxious and scared that the cooler kids, whose parents did not drive smelly trucks, might see me.
My parents worked side by side in the store, my mom for six days a week, my dad, six-and-a-half.
I come by my worker bee status righteously.
My days were filled with the silent fear that this day, this particular day, any and every particular day, would be his last. Nobody talked about it. It was simply the air we breathed. Fear of his dying was the backdrop of the first fifty years of my life.
There are two memories of Pop-Conversations I want to share with you today.
~~~
The first took place in super comfy chair in our living room. It might have been a wingback, with lots of room behind us and around us, so good for snuggling with my daddy. I might have been six years old? Eight years old? Snuggling on his lap, our evening ritual, finding my spot, my home base, we were having a conversation, as we did, about life. My memory zooms in, crystal clarity of the conversation emerges, as follows:
Me/Little Nan, expressing some hurt or fear about school. Being a stutterer offered a hard road for my tender heart. Being a stutterer who wanted to kiss girls? In 1956? Scary. Silence.
He listened. He held me. He cuddled with me. And he said:
“Nan,” he said, snuggling me even closer into his gentle arms,
“Nan, you can be anything, absolutely anything that you choose to be in this world.”
I remember the texture of the air, the specificity of the chair’s patterned texture, the feel of his arms around me.
I remember the words, specifically and exactly.
Somehow, through his kind, kind love, (this is Phase #1 of The Miracle), he was able to tell me that. He was able to know that, somehow, that would be true for me.
These words didn’t immediately change me. It wasn’t that kind of miracle. But I tucked them close and deep inside my heart and struggled onward, through the stuttering, through the wanting-to-kiss-Susie-Garber-who-was-a-year-ahead-of-me-in-school.
Through all of it. All of the separateness I felt. All of the fear of talking. All of the loneliness.
And you know what?
The Miracle, Phase #2:
His words were like a beacon. Somehow, they brought light to my road. No matter the amount of fear and separateness I felt for the next thirty years, somehow, I was guided.
The Miracle, Phase #3:
My pop’s pronouncement?
He was right, absolutely right.
He was absolutely and totally right.
I have been carried and I have been blessed to continue to become exactly who I am, to offer myself to others, to be available for the sacredness of the moment. Imperfectly, of course.
He was absolutely and totally right.
And I continue to be blessed by his words.
~~~
Conversation #2.
Fast forward fifty+ years for this next Pop conversation.
My Pop now is at the end of his life. For a man so afraid of pain and death, for a man who had so many physical issues, he lived a long damn time. But now, it was his time. This was the end. We all knew it. That which we forever dreaded hovered nearby.
Ras, my spouse, was, of course, with me in Florida, with my family. We had been married in the Kripalu community a few years before, the first same-sex couple to be acknowledged by the Kripalu community. The Guru, who was opposed to same-sex relationships had left via disgrace that fall, making it possible.
My parents knew Ras. She was becoming part of our family.
My dad was in his bed. Mom kept him out of the hospital, making her life harder. But his fear of hospitals was massive and debilitating for him.
My sister, her kids, everybody had left the bedroom for some reason. We sat alone with him, Ras sitting on the bed holding his left hand. I sat on the other side, holding his right hand.
He was in and he was out. Conscious, not conscious. External, internal. We just sat and breathed and held his hands.
Time passed.
Then—his eyes fluttered open. He looked dazed for a moment, then focused, caught, first my gaze, then Rasmani’s. He looked again at me, and then, back to Ras. There he paused for a long, full moment.
He looked at her again even more deeply, and gave her the ultimate of blessings:
“My daughter-in-law,” my Pop said to her.
“My daughter-in-law.”
It was a breathtaking moment that lasted and echoed around us. Dazed, we both were, by his extraordinary acknowledgement and naming.
In a few days he was gone from this earth.
His blessing lives on.
His Sidney-Kindness offers me access to my own.
His memory will always be a blessing.
My pop. Sidney.
And you, dear reader? Is any conversation from yesteryear alive in your heart? Any blessings living deep inside?
Any words, spoken or unspoken, received or offered, that live as a lamppost, shinning light on yesterday, today, tomorrow?
~~~
Mumurations! What a word. Rather than talking about it, here is a 2-minute video that offers it. Check this out. It’s—miraculous.
~~~
Give us the courage and the willingness
To keep showing up.
Give us a strong back,
A soft front,
And the willingness
To live between
The two.
Help us to be present
Right here,
Right now.
Help us to see the
Grace around us,
No matter what
Is happening.
May all beings benefit from the words we share.
Stay blessed,
Aruni