Randi Kreiss

Thankful this year for a life well lived

Posted

“But the ending always comes at last.
Endings always come too fast. They come too fast. But they pass too slow I love you and that’s all I know …”
— Art Garfunkel

All around the country, people are finding their way home, enduring withering wait times and tedious traffic because it means something in America to gather around the Thanksgiving table on the fourth Thursday of November.

What a strange Thanksgiving this will be for my family. My dad, Stanley Bromberg, died last Thursday at his home in Florida. He had lived so long that it feels surreal to even write those words. My mother, my sister, my husband and I were with him. You cannot imagine a better death. We had kept the vigil for a week, with hospice nurses as our guides. In his last conscious hours, he knew he was home, he knew we were there and he knew that his wife of 72 years, my mother, Pearl, was at his side.

As he lay dying, the birds sang outside, the hours passed, people came and went.

He was 97. Considering the fact that we all have to die, he put it off as long as possible, and then took his time departing. For years, just before he would leave the house, he would go back for his glasses or his cane or his cap or his handkerchief. A deliberate man, he was not about to just leap into the netherworld.

The son of Austrian and Polish immigrants, my dad was born in 1919 in Ridgewood, Brooklyn. He was part of the Greatest Generation, and he embraced its values. His father developed Parkinson’s disease when my dad was just 7 years old, so his mother opened an awning business to support the family.

My dad was the studious brother, so the family’s meager resources were invested in him. He went to college and then pharmacy school and then NYU Dental School. He worked hard, married Pearl Brownstein, the girl he met one summer in Rockaway Beach, supported his parents and then supported my mother’s parents. It was just what one did.

After being deferred during World War II, Dad was drafted into the Army in 1952, during the Korean War. He stayed stateside and served two years. He wore his captain’s bars on his fishing cap until his last days on earth.

He made a living by being a dentist, but his joy was in the contemplative life, time with his children, grandchildren and four great-grandkids. He retired at 55. Yes, his retired life was longer than his working life. My mother, as the poet said, was his north, his south, his east and west. If they were in touching distance, they were holding hands.

On Sunday my dad was buried on Long Island, with a military honor guard paying tribute to his service. At the graveside service were my mother, my sister, Meryl Greenbaum, and my husband, Don. Also there were grandchildren Jason and Cathy Kreiss, Jocelyn and Joshua Kreiss, Eric and Emily Greenbaum and Amy and Jeff Fox, as well as great-grandchildren Sabrina, Jacob, Elijah and Emilia.

My dad was quick-minded and witty. He taught me to love books and words and good conversation. He taught me to ride a bicycle and to drive a car when I was young, and I taught him to make egg rolls and bake bread when he was old. For a man born before TV and refrigerators, he evolved. He embraced the progressive changes in our culture for women and minorities. He voted this year, just a day before going into hospice care.

My dad didn’t climb Everest or discover penicillin; he didn’t write a book or make millions. But he was my hero in the way that good men become the north star for their daughters. He put one foot in front of the other for nearly 100 years, cherishing his Pearlie, my mother, above all else. For her, of course, there is little consolation, because some losses cannot be ameliorated.

We kids share a deep well of gratitude for having him in our lives all these years. On Thanksgiving, we will look around the table and remember who we are, tell “Poppy” stories and feel thankful for one another, just one more American family gathering for the holiday, but with one fewer chair at the table.

Copyright © 2016 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.