Let’s start with a dad joke. Cyrus told the same jokes, over and over. Most of them were shaggy dog stories without much payoff. Lucky for you, this one is from when I was a kid and this introduction is longer than the joke. “If Mrs. Sippy borrowed Mary Land’s new jersey, what would Della wear? … Idaho, Alaska!”
He had a few bad weeks at the end, but that’s not a bad record when you average it over 102 years. And even for most of those last weeks, he was very much present, asking what Trump had done that day, or if a court had ruled against him in one of dozens of cases, or if he had been – ever hopeful – indicted… an example of his magical thinking, but really just an expression of a wish.
Our small family all lives here in Philly, but we’re not from here. Dad practiced law in northern New Jersey until he was 88, when mom and dad moved to Philadelphia to be near us, and I’d say dad was the more reluctant one to move. Never much of a joiner, he became a joiner. He joined the Franklin Inn Club, one of those obscure “clubs” on South Camac Street, where a group of mostly retired intellectuals gather to talk about books and architecture and politics. He made a friend in the building, Jules, who collected WWII movies on DVD and he would go downstairs to watch movies at Jules and Bernice’s apartment. He had a poker game of nonagenarians that he ultimately quit because he didn’t like that they played variations on five-card stud. He would find out who was speaking at the Constitution Center and take the bus to hear whoever had come to speak. He would go to the Rosenbach Library to hear the annual reading of Ulysses on Bloomsday. He made a life for himself here and he embraced his adopted city and tried to absorb as much as it offered.
But it was Dad’s memory – his ability to remember – that was extraordinary and a point of personal pride. He remembered the names of the streets his childhood friends lived on in Newark and the names and occupations of their parents, including a childhood friend’s father who was in the Jewish Mafia. He remembered the years and dates of relatively insignificant events throughout his life, like the date he last saw his retinologist or the date he would next see his retinologist, six months hence. Or he could tell you what happened last Tuesday, when nothing important happened – like, “I went to the bank to cash a check,” which was a thing he did. This extraordinary recall remained true up until about three weeks ago.
About a year ago… or maybe two years ago (I can’t remember…), Tom and I were over for Sunday dinner and Tom was reading a tweet to dad. (Never mind that he had no idea what Twitter, or X, was.) The tweet was something about how venal Trump and his family are, and it quoted what the author of the tweet identified as the first lines of The Great Gatsby. And Tom read the tweet aloud, including the quote:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"
Dad interrupted to say those are NOT the first lines of The Great Gatsby – nor are they the last lines, both of which he proceeded to recite from memory:
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
And then he quoted the last line:
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
In the last couple of years, no longer able to read because of his eyesight, he became tethered to his iPad as a source of news, podcasts, and audiobooks. And YouTube videos from liberal conspiracists. In his final weeks, he wasn’t able to use the iPad any longer and I asked him if he was bored, unable to read or really do much of anything. He said he was just remembering. He was passing the time by mining his memories. I asked if they were fond memories or regrets. He said both.
In the last weeks we – Tom and Mom and I – wondered aloud about how and why he held on so aggressively, at 102. It’s sort of an absurdity to say that one of the things that we are all going to miss when we die is ourselves. His memory – and his memories – were so important to him that I think he was mourning the eventual loss of all that he contained, the life that was his singular experience and no one else's.