The Oppenheimer Report 9/30/13

We have been back up north for a little over a week now, and re-entering this house was a bit like opening up a short term time capsule. It is as if summer was put on hold July 6th, and everything froze. We left here in a hurry on that day and short of throwing out some leftovers from the fridge and cleaning up a bit, we did not really close up properly before we left. There is a bathing suit still hung over the post on our bed to dry, plastic flower containers still litter the property, bags of peat moss are stacked on the porch. There is a can of stain lying near the front door, because I had been in the middle of staining some of the porch furniture. I drove the ATV into Burk’s Falls the other day just in time to see what was likely the peak of Fall colors on that route. So much about the past two months is out of focus, a flash of time.

Back in 2001 when Jordan passed away, I made a makeshift flagpole out of a narrow pine, and from the dock we flew a flag of the planet earth at half mast. Jordan had a company called Planet Earth Productions , and the flag was something we found while we were cleaning out his apartment in Florida. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone else flying such a flag, much less at half mast, from a dead tree, but we did. Because he was a veteran, Syd had a Canadian flag draped over his casket, which was presented to the family after the service. A few days ago, I bought a proper flagpole and installed it on our dock, and we raised that flag to half mast to commemorate Syd. I do not know if we were even supposed to use that flag, or what the proper protocol is for flying it at half mast, but that’s what we did. As we did with Shauna’s brother we will scatter a little of Syd’s hair on the lake and recite The Mourner’s Kaddish. This property was his favorite place in the world to be, it is only fitting that a little of his DNA should remain here. I suppose everyone has their own little ceremony for their departed.

For the past week we have been receiving correspondences from people from all over, expressing their condolences and talking about what a good man my father-in-law was, and what happy memories they have of him. Some were patients, some were old friends who knew him from his childhood days. A lot of people have paid their respects. Shauna was worried that, as her family shrinks, it will be forgotten, and I remember raising that existential question when my father passed away four years ago. To me, my dad was an exceptional man, and I think a lot of other people felt the same way, but who would remember him in 20 years? He did not invent a cure for polio, he did not end the Cold War, there are no monuments to his greatness. The same is true of many other good people, destined to be forgotten as generations pass; but that is how it has always been. Unless some gifted author choses to tell their story, many great people are forgotten after they die. When Jill and I went to the Forest Lawn mausoleum in Buffalo to inter my dad’s ashes, we were handed a blue cardboard box to place in the crypt. I remember thinking to myself that we should have bought a fancy urn, but thinking about it, a cardboard box was exactly what my father would have wanted. No fuss. For the same reason he chose to be cremated, not something sanctioned by the Jewish religion, he would have eschewed all ceremony and unnecessary expense. Why pay for the fancy urn when it will be placed behind a stone and never seen by anyone?

I had a stormy relationship with my dad in my early teens, but he and I worked it out, and I grew to love and respect him very much. The same is true of my mom, although I don’t think I gave her as hard a time. Now that they are gone, I feel their life lessons indelibly burned into my soul. Who they were is in me now, and how I choose to lead my life from hereon in is the legacy that will either honor their memory or sentence me and my family to the anonymity I fear. The same is true for any family member or friend I have loved and respected and who is no longer here. How do I best honor the dead; certainly not by grieving incessantly? Whether I believe in the afterlife, or re-incarnation, or that nothing at all happens after we die, it is my life with which I am concerned. Do I matter, can I make things better, have I done more in my life to make my parents proud than ashamed; have I known love; more important, have I given love? I feel the influence of all these departed, and I hope I do not disappoint them.


“I am a shadow on the coat tails of fame, you’ve seen the face but don’t know the name/ I guess in some respects we’re all the same, when we play the imposter’s game …”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED