By Rachel Sussman
It was cold the day my father died. I remember because, before I knew he was dead, I went to feed my friend’s cats. Away for a week, she had left the house just warm enough to prevent pipes and cats from freezing solid. It brought back memories of the winters in our first house in the north. My parents bought an old farmhouse to escape encroaching suburbs farther south. It was so poorly insulated that, to keep our teeth from chattering while we ate, my mother hung cheap floral comforters over the dining room windows. But the bathroom was the coldest of all. Tacked on like an afterthought at the end of a long hall, it was the farthest point from the woodstove. There were two large windows where frost formed on the inside of the glass before it melted into streaks that stained the window frames. Wet washcloths left on the side of the clawfoot tub froze solid. My father took ascetic pride in that bathroom and especially in the morning ritual of seating himself on the frigid toilet. Like a cold plunge after a sauna, it demonstrated fortitude and strength. Skin to ice-cold seat, ice-cold seat to skin, a daily rejection of mainstream society and their well-insulated suburban boxes.
As I walked through my friend’s house, the vapor from my breath trailing after me like wraiths and my father hundreds of miles away in a well-insulated room, I thought I should remind him of the cold, the bathroom, and the frozen washcloths the next time we spoke.
As I was remembering, he was dying.
Later, my brother called. “Dad’s dead,” he said. His voice, so much like our father’s, cracking as he spoke. I made him repeat it twice — disbelief making me both deaf and selfish. Then I hung up and called everyone I knew, dialing number after number to stop myself from calling my father. “Can you believe it?” I wanted to ask him. “Can you believe you’re really dead?”
My father believed in skepticism, reason, critical thought, and science. He believed that white bread, television, and mainstream American life would rot your brain and your body. He found his salvation in health foods and exercise, in bucking the system and questioning authority. He embraced controversy, contradiction, and debate. He believed in pacifism and vegetarianism. He wore leather duster coats and taught us to shoot guns. He had absolute faith in a magician’s honesty to deceive you every time.
As a child I fervently believed there were monsters lurking in the cold, inky black corners of the bathroom, waiting to devour me. My father never tried to reason with me, never told me that monsters didn’t exist. He’d lift me into his arms and carry me down the long hall. My arms wrapped around his neck. His beard pricking at my face. The light and relative warmth from the rest of the house receding behind us until we reached the threshold. The dark there was so impenetrable that my eyes felt hollow staring into it. I would hold my breath and grip the fabric of his shirt in my fists. He would draw in a deep breath and bellow into the dark, “All right you monsters, you better get out or I’m coming in to get you.” Then, in one smooth motion, he flicked on the light, set me down, and left. It worked, I knew, because there were never any monsters left behind.
What he didn’t believe in — wouldn’t believe in — was life after death; heaven, hell, or purgatory; or organized religion.
So, when, again as a child, I lay in my bed, head under the covers, terrified of ghosts from a nearby graveyard coming through my window, he would sit and sigh and patiently explain that there was no scientific evidence for ghosts (or God for that matter). Seances, mediums, and psychics only preyed on a living person’s grief, he told me. He talked about evidenced-based research, about the burden of proof, about Harry Houdini’s crusade against spiritualists. He veered off into medical quacks and pseudoscience, con men and pyramid schemes. On and on went the litany, his voice deep and smooth. I was still afraid, but I let myself follow the rhythm of his voice and the flow of the facts until I fell asleep. It was a skeptic’s lullaby.
When he died, my brother and I clutched at solid things to soften our grief. My father’s possessions were everywhere in his house, but what we wanted most — the skull ring he had worn daily (only removing it before his final trip to the hospital) — had vanished. When it didn’t appear in the obvious places (his dresser, his desk, the hall table) we dug through closets and dusty boxes. We felt between his folded clothes where the molecules of his smell were still trapped between the warp and weft of the fabric. Finally, I gave up looking and flopped down on the couch. My foot hit an open cardboard box and something rattled. There, staring up at me, were two black eye sockets. I sat there hunched, mute, and disappointed, staring back at the hunk of molded silver. This was just a ring after all — solid, earthly, and cold to the touch — and I realized, to my dismay, that I had been searching for my father or, at least, a sign from him.
I felt then the vacuum death leaves behind, and the need there is to fill it with hope. I wanted to fill myself with everything his nighttime recitations had taught me to reject. I wanted to believe in life after death, ghosts rapping on tables, and pearly gates. I spent hours researching synagogues, meeting houses, and ashrams, but I never went. At night, I dreamed that he called me to complain about how boring he found the afterlife — that there were no books to read, and people only talked about the weather or golf. When I got sick, I went to alternative doctors (quacks, he would’ve said) for cures, but the treatments never worked, and he was still gone. At night I lay awake, repeating, Be wrong. Be wrong, like a prayer.
But he wasn’t wrong, and I’ve forgiven him for that. Forgiven myself for hoping he was. Sometimes, though, when the winter sun slants just so to illuminate the dust motes in their endless whirls, or when I’m shocked by a small jolt of unease upon entering a dark room, or when the outside cold invades the inside warmth, I reach for the phone to call him, to hear his voice, before I remember that I don’t have his number. That he’s still just gone.