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elegy |ˈeləjē|
noun ( pl. -gies)
1 a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.
• a piece of music in a mournful style.
2 (in Greek and Roman poetry) a poem written in elegiac couplets, as notably by Catullus and Propertius.

ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from French élégie, or via Latin, from Greek elegeia, from elegos ‘mournful poem.’

The plan was this: leave New York City on Tuesday, August 17, arrive in Atlanta, pick up Penelope, spend a day or two with St. Mary and The Wizard, a couple of days with my father, the weekend with my sister, then head north and west through Canada, making my way slowly back to Coolville, stopping along the way in Seattle to see Amelie and Susie and in San Francisco to see Indira. It was to be the mirror image of my June trip across the country, camping, writing, thinking, and soaking up the solitude and the sacred. The week before I left, I spoke to my father outside the Rector Street subway station. I was on my way to meet Vivien to see the new film about Basquiat. He told me stories, updated me on his health, which was excellent, then asked me about my summer. “Dad, it’s been the summer of my life.” When he asked why, I told him about the book, my friends, the city, and the women who make it beautiful. “They’re really that beautiful?” he asked. I assured him they were, like the one approaching me at that moment on Trinity Place. “Well, stop talking to me and talk to her. What are you doing?” I laughed at my ninety-year-old father, the player still, and watched her walk by as he and I said our goodbyes before I jumped on the subway.

Four days later Kaye and Robby and I were having a street dog in the little park just below the Wall Street bull. They wanted to do some shopping at Century 21, a few blocks up, and I decided to take a look at the Museum of the American Indian. I was a charter member, but I had never visited this one or the one in D.C. I was disappointed. The most interesting exhibit, Hide: Skin as Material and Metaphor, was closed, and the exhibit on horse cultures of the Plains was uninspiring. It had been raining on and off all day, and I hesitated going back out, so I wandered around the entrance hall looking for something interesting but found nothing. My phone rang; it was my sister. I said hello and the sound echoed in the airy hallway of the old customs house. I don’t remember what she said; I only remember the sound of her voice. It was the call I knew I would get one day, each day increasing the possibility: our father was dead.

Okay, he prepared us for this. The True Philosopher who studied death and worked at a funeral home and was almost ninety was dead. We could handle this. “It gets worse,” she said, “he took his own life.” I could feel my knees buckling. I walked outside and sat on the steps of the museum, the rain pelting me, my eyes seeing everything and nothing at the same time, my mind racing to try to incorporate this new reality. This could not be. It went against everything he stood for, everything his life had meant. I walked back toward my apartment like a ghost and called Robby and Kaye to come back and meet me there.

I was packed in fifteen minutes, back at the Vortex with Jey and Kwasi, calling Fyodor, my brother, and the airlines to try to get a flight to Tennessee. Nothing was available that night, but I got a 6:00 am the next morning. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway. I talked to my sister again and learned that my father had been taking a drug called Celexa (generic Citalopram), prescribed for the nightmares he has had all his life. He began taking it on Monday, and by Thursday he was dead. A story began to form. My dad was the victim of altered brain chemistry mixing with some ancient family history, and it was a lethal combination. Cursory research on the drug reveals that it lists suicidal ideation as a common side affect, and several class action law suits have been attempted but to no end. The FDA has allowed the drug to remain on the market. I was prescribed this drug in Boston three years ago when I experienced the event that gave birth to this blog. I chose not to take any of the pills. My father, hoping for some relief from his nightmares, did. It killed him. Of this, there is no question. He abhorred suicide, having experienced it first-hand a number of times in family members and friends. He loved life, took care of his house and property, worked every weekend, wrote nearly every day, and told stories to anyone who would listen. This was not him. He believed that life was good and worth living. He was a victim of the pharmaceutical industry—and history, and he was gone.

There was nothing to do but stay in the Vortex with my bags packed. Vivien and Taylor came down, Aurora and Carlos came from Brooklyn. Fyodor was in Maine and scheduled to return the next morning. Once again, we would cross paths, just missing each other, as we followed our own story lines. I called St. Mary of New York. I was supposed to go there for a meal on Monday. I talked to my brother again, but he was driving and on the way to the house, so I hung up and let him focus on that. Then, with nothing left to do, we all went to the pub. My son called me back there, and I told him, heard him struggle with the impossible reality as I had hours earlier. His confusion turned to anger—at doctors, pharmaceutical companies, ultimately, at life itself. An event like this is incomprehensible, and your first instinct is to put it into a category that is familiar and understandable, but that does not work. It was a rupture in the universe, a tear in the fabric of consciousness, a black hole from which no light could escape.

We moved back up to the Tower, overlooking the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero, my friends gathered around me like a fortress to protect me, a bridge to carry me over, a blanket to keep me warm. We did what we always we do: we talked about life, the city, women, men, books, ideas, food, culture. I sat quietly in the corner and watched it all, marveling at how even such a deep wound was already beginning to heal as love and life rushed to repair the damage done by death. Nine of us sat together on a summer night in New York and had a eucharist made of words and silence. Finally, I got up and opened a bottle of Russian Standard, poured shots for everyone, and made a toast to my father. It went something like this:

My father died today, and he died in a manner that was inconsistent with his life. I’ll be trying to deal with that the rest of my life, but for now, what I do know is that he was a good man who lived a unique life. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade but got his GED at forty-four and raised three children all of whom have graduate degrees. He served in the Navy in World War II and schooled himself on the event so that he could teach it to others, so much that he because the region’s most sought-after lecturer on it. He was the longest serving grand jury foreman for Sullivan County, and he did that in his eighties. He worked twenty-eight years at the funeral home, staring death in the face daily and without fear. He was a writer, a philosopher, a worker, a husband, and a father. He was my father, and I loved him. To a life well-lived.

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