The Heart Is The Matter

It is a public space, after all. A place, you see
where people are gathered when suddenly -
or chronically - their bodies stutter, halt
in their normal, mechanistic routines. A
place where health professionals, groomed
and expertly schooled to differentiate, to
diagnose and to offer and effect amelioration
are stationed within the labyrinthine confines
of old piles of steel, concrete and brick.

Naked curiosity follows me unabashedly
defying anonymity while utilizing it to
advantage. Vetting my social status through
my dress code, evaluating my obvious age and
most evident physical appearance against the
possibilities of my afflictions. The mystery
cannot be too deep for this is the cardiology
waiting room and a technician bids me to a
nearby chamber for a pre-appointment
cardiogram. Unneeded, for I have so recently
been more than adequately screened.

But my name revealed and the clues
gathering, the men and women seated there
in pairs and singly, young and of middle age
elderly and decrepit, are alert to any and all
revelations to lighten the boredom of the wait
and their burdensome self-concern. The
television screen, mounted high in a corner,
captures most swivelling eyes, but not the minds
behind them. Few opt to ease the wait by reading,
but The Economist is well worth the effort.

From the corridors, purposeful footsteps,
voices raised in querulous conversation; no one's
favourite ambiance. No sharp odours of
disinfectants detectable in this wing of this
campus of this municipal hospital serving over
one million citizens. Outside the windows, the
sky is hooded with brightly beaming clouds. A
sneak preview of late autumn sun glances briefly
through a slit in the contiguity of the clouds.
There will be far more to this unassuming
day than the current landscape assumes. 

 

Breaking News

 

Brilliant sunshine streams through the
windows of our breakfast room as we take
our leisurely breakfast. Though it is crisply
cold out, our little dog's preferred spot
these late autumn days, is the wood deck
seated happily within the radiant ambiance
of a perfectly cloudless porcelain sky.

This brief reprieve from winter's onset
coddles us with a sense of nature's favour
and we immerse ourselves in the pleasures
derived from such leisure, inviting yet
another cup of coffee for him, tea for me.
Flying through the sun-kissed-green branches
of the backyard spruce, a small flock of
purple finches, their sibilant chorus
perfecting the priceless atmosphere.

As we murmur contentment with this
breaking day, breaking our overnight fast,
we consume also the breaking news of the day.
Radio newscast, augmented and magnified
by print reports in full from the day previous.
And we read of peacekeepers killed in Congo,
humanitarian aid workers abducted and
murdered in Afghanistan, cholera in Haiti,
church bombings in Iraq, priests and
parishioners - all mercilessly slaughtered.

And we are given pause in the breaking of
this day. This is our day, not to be confused
or conflated in any measure with the tragedies
unfolding elsewhere in the world. Our country
does not sentence a mother of five to death
for her crime of giving insult to the Prophet.
Our country has sentenced a mother of two
infants to 25 years of remorse for destroying
her children in a mad fit of ownership,
denying their grieving father custody. 

 

Apart and Beyond

 

The man is resolved and clearly indefatigable.
He has identified a mission to which he devotes
himself and upon which he spares no efforts to
achieve. He resembles in purpose, if not in
presence, Sisyphus, for despite his prodigious
efforts, his goal will never completely be achieved.
He has selflessly set himself the task of remediating
the harm to natural surroundings that others
cavalierly inflict. His dedication to the effort
purely altruistic, he seeks no acclaim and no
notice comes his way, as his work consumes his
days. Where others insult the landscape with the
soiled and degraded detritus of urban life,
discarding what is no longer valued, he tracks,
isolates, gathers those items in homage to nature.

His burgeoning task is never-ending, for it seems
that no one cares of humankind's indebtedness.
With his voluminous knapsack stretched taut with
its torn, broken rusted pieces of discards, he
strains his way out of the ravined woods, back
arched with the effort, legs pushing uphill under
the weight of his burden. That which must be wrestled
out of the deep wooded pockets too large and
cumbersome, is pulled patiently uphill. The
objects retrieved as various as overstuffed chairs,
deck furniture, matted mattress coils, shattered,
rusted bicycles, highway signs, boards and fencing,
tires, wheel-less wagons and coils of barbed wire.

He is a large man of sturdy physique and middle
age. His clothing shabbily utilitarian as befits
the task he has set himself loading the resulting mass
of refuse time after time into the back of his truck,
he hauls it to recycle depots; his self-appointed duty.
Not entirely a thankless job, since the obvious
satisfaction he derives must fulfill in him a valuable
and deeply-rooted imperative. He sets himself apart
and beyond; no mere example, but an exemplar. 

 

Forever Dreaming

She had an older brother, Sammy was his name. Her father used to take her and Sammy on picnics when she was a little girl. Her mother disliked the country and went to the cinema instead. They would picnic, the three of them, happy to be without the nagging voice of mother, wife. The father's gentle hands and shaggy beard, a familiar solace at home, became a guiding mentor in the woods, on the riverbanks, traversing small streams. She was happy then, and laughed.

An accident with the brother, he died. She cried. Her robust father became drawn and pale, lost weight and he too died, though it had nothing to do with grief. Although there was that, too.

After, her mother used to say to her all the time: "Miss Longface, smile some time! It's not that I want to see you smile. I don't care for myself, but do you think any nice men will be attracted to such a sour face?" She was a dutiful daughter, did everything her mother wanted her to, but she winced at the order to look happy. Happiness was her lapsed childhood, the memory she had of a happy family. She knew though, it was illusory; there never had been a happy family. Or, if it had existed, she had laughed it out of existence. The Angelic Host had been made jealous by her happiness.

The travelling salesman hadn't been put off by her sad-faced exterior. Her dreamy, lost eyes, the bruised mouth, the long dark hair, unharnessed, enraptured him, captured him. Her mother was glad to see her go. "Go, I'm sick of seeing such a face around me all the time", her mother said.

And Clara too, was glad to sever her connection with the woman who was her mother. Finally, the tumult, the ever-present curses, would evaporate.

At night, Morris himself brushed her long hair. Gently, as he knew she would like it done. At night, when nothing moved but the shadow of memories; when there was no sound but their shallow breathing, he made love to her with gentle hands. He made her forget to be sad. But only at night. In the morning, she always regretted her lapses.

Morris was a good provider and delighted in bringing her little gifts, useless trinkets. Murmuring thank-you, she took them but he never saw her wear them.

Morris noted her grave silences becoming more prolonged. Particularly after he had been travelling on his job. Her withdrawals bothered him only slightly. He liked her sweet silence, her poignant solitudes. But he decided he would give up his travelling occupation. He apprenticed himself to a cobbler, an old man on Dundas Avenue.

They lived at that time in a little flat on Manning Avenue, across the street from the bottling works, and every morning he would kiss Clara good-bye and walk to work. In the evening when he returned, his dinner would be waiting and so would Clara be.

In a few years, the old cobbler decided to retire and Morris offered to buy him out. He moved Clara into the rooms behind the shop. Now he could see her throughout the day, moving wraithlike about the rooms, dreamily. Morris dug a little garden for her behind the shop, and in the spring he planted anemones, marigolds, so that their frail slender shapes, their golden colours, might cheer her, give her silent pleasure.

If they did, she gave no outward sign, but sometimes he saw her standing at the window, looking through at the garden, never herself going to work in it.

One winter morning, while it was still dark and snow was softly falling, he helped her deliver a baby. She had carried easily, a dreamy expression on her face, her body becoming ever more bulky, but seeming oddly, more graceful than ever. Promise me, she had said to him, promise that you will help me.

During the night, when the baby cried, he brought the tiny boy to her and sat on the edge of the bed, watching her suckling the child. He watched her, with her great hollow eyes, hungrily watching her baby grow.

A friendly, happy child, he toddled after her around the little rooms. As he grew older, he became incautiously curious and despite Clara's anxious hoverings, the child ventured out into the streets to explore. He wanted to be with other children.

He had a wide grin, an exuberant manner, and a happy, slurred 'hi' greeted everyone. The child loved people and no adult spurning of his overtures, no childish slurs arrested his friendly advances.

As he grew older, people began to mumble dark things. The butcher's wife, next door, came into the shop to tell Morris he should keep the boy at home. His happy moonface frightened her. The people from the laundry, on the other side, told their children to stop calling the little boy names, but also not to play with him. Morris shook his shoulders with regret, promising nothing, when the complaints flooded in.

Clara knew nothing about the peoples' fear and distrust of her shining boy. Morris observed her unexpressed love for their son, her constant state of anxiety. He tried to explain to the boy why it was necessary for him to stay home. The boy looked lovingly at this father and repeated, in his gutteral tones "Da-vid stay ho-ome!" He never did, of course, although it was evident how much he wanted to please.

As the boy grew older, he began exploring further afield. Sometimes, a policeman would bring him home, shaking his head as he watched the tired little shoemaker scold the hulking boy with the silly grin on his face. Soon, too, ugly rumours began making the rounds and Morris began to notice how much business was falling off.

Once, a knot of angry people assembled outside the shop. They shouted to Morris that he would have to keep Clara's boy, (an 'animal' they called him), inside. Or, they said, they would do something to have him put away. One neighbour, feeling Morris's anguish, came around later, to explain sympathetically that it wasn't that the boy had actually done anything, but that the mothers feared for their daughters, and you couldn't blame them, could you?

Of course, Morris told Clara nothing about what had happened. Again he tried to talk to his son. The boy listened with his mouth hanging agape, as he often did, when he was trying very hard to be good. Saliva ran from a corner of the boy's mouth and Morris gently wiped it away. The boy smiled his love and kissed his father's hand.

Clara never spoke any more during the day. Her eyes were frightened animals. Her eyes no longer looked dreamy; they expressed a frightened prescience. Only at night, she would speak, and then in whispers, when Morris touched her.

Even though the boy was now thirteen years old, she still helped him to dress and undress, tucked him into bed and sat for a while by his bed, Morris beside them, crooning a lullaby until the boy fell asleep, his hand in his mother's.

One evening, when they had just fallen asleep, Morris was brought back to wakefulness by a loud crash. Quietly, he insisted that Clara lie back down and go back to sleep. It had been nothing. When she fell asleep again he silently went to the front of the store and saw that his front window had been smashed. The body of a stray cat that his son sometimes played with, was strung inside the window,swaying with the wind that came through. On its body read a note: "The other animal will be next".

Morris sighed. He cut the cat down and looked for a box to put it in. Then he checked that the front door was locked. Then the back door. Then he wearily made his way back to the little rooms. He looked first in at his son, innocently dreaming, loving the world. He looked long at his wife, fearfully sighing, even in her dreams, fearing the world.

None of the neighbours ever had reason to complain again about the little family.

 

Our Jewish Heritage

There has always been great curiosity expressed with regard to origins; where did it all begin, and how? Geologists, paleontologists, historians, social anthropologists (long before modern science recognized these divisions in intellectual investigation and gave them their present nomenclature) assiduously sifted rock and sand, bones and crockery, deciphered hieroglyphs, pored over ancient writings and tried to make sense of it all. Logically, everything, every phenomenon, be it geologic, biological or cultural-sociographic had to begin somewhere. So where did that peculiar strain of people, Jews, originate, and how?

Somewhere in the Middle East, we know. They are grouped, not with Caucasians, but with the Armenids. This originally nomadic, pastoral group had been little documented in the ancient writings of other people, and it is assumed that reference to a group termed 'the Habiru' in casual and brief mention of a group of troublesome nomads is the first recognition of their existence as a distinct group by another and better-lettered early culture.

From that undistinguished beginning we have a people somehow bound together by a common destiny, a gradually enlightened culture, and a homophilic socialization. This group has ascended the heights of human endeavours, both singly and collectively; it has plumbed the depths of human despair and degradation, and somehow, survived intact. An achievement that no other ancient cultural-ethno-social group can claim. From the ranks of this people have come first and foremost, ideas which have revolutionized civilization, concepts which have paved the way to humanistic enlightenment, and moral and legal laws which have fathered those of the entire Western world. Jewish religion, philosophy, art, jurisprudence, medicine has had an impact on the world whose like has not been equalled by any other single group of people.

As humanists millennia ago, it was recognized that all life is sacred, and from that recognition was enacted moral and ethical laws to protect the very quality of life, and life itself. At a time when slavery was common (when it was sometimes a practical economic solution to survival for the chronically indigent) Jewish law proclaimed that every seventh year any person held in bondage should be deemed a free person.

Because of the respect with which the people termed 'the Habiru' viewed life they eschewed common practises seen in casual and brief early cultures that practised human sacrifice as an appeasement to their gods. Jews viewed this practise with repugnance and replaced such sacrifice with animal sacrifice. And to protect animals, strict laws ensuring humane slaughter were encoded.

And though, like most religions a great many prohibitions (meant to protect both the individual and the status of the religion) became ritual dogma, they could be suspended if under special circumstances life would be endangered by their enactment. Jewish law was not meant to be absolutely inflexible. The law-makers recognized human frailty and the need to be elastic in interpretation so that exigencies could be coped with.

Some very early and forward-thinking Jews wrote a wonderful series of literature embodying all possible human conditions, and at the same time they conceived of monotheism, a startling departure from the pantheism (worship of many gods) then customary throughout the world of religion. Jews, in this context, were enjoined to regard themselves as 'the chosen'. Not particularly 'chosen' as being better or in some manner elevated above their fellow creatures, but as given the responsibility to present a moral example that others might follow and in this indirect way ennoble the world of humankind.

It was a bold decision indeed for a people to determine, even collectively, even involuntarily, to regard themselves as a shining example toward the rest of mankind. Some might term it, with justification, hubristic. But here is where the precept "Act Unto Others" evolves from. If no other guidelines existed for human behaviour, that one alone would suffice.

And the individual was never forgotten. Everyone's 'right' to quality of life was recognized. Welfare or charity then was not the pejorative it has since become. It was the community's responsibility to care for all of its members and this was a responsibility taken seriously, not grudgingly, nor condescendingly.

Children were regarded as a blessing, and they were universally loved, protected and cherished. Education was always held in awe, and avidly sought. Yet the work ethic also was finely ingrained and respected. Uncouth behaviour, which might encompass anything from rudeness to gambling, or a disregard for others, to drinking to excess, was looked upon with revulsion.

Well, it is true that Jews also looked upon themselves, privately, as being distinct, different - other and above. There were Jews, and there were the others - Gentiles. Gentiles could not be presumed to be as steeped in the values and virtues of life as Jews, and therefore, suspect. There was always this great apartness - us and they.

Because of this exclusivity of apprehension, there arose also an exclusivity of thought, and dogmatism crept into the culture, and the interpretation of the popular religion, and Jews often became inward-looking; intellectually and for practical purposes, immune to change. Yet there arose also those who chafed at the bonds imposed and from their ranks came our Thinkers, those who looked further - our two Moseses, our Spinoza, our Marx, our Sholem Aleichem, our Freud, our Herzl, our Einstein, our Chagall.

And there were others - our scientists, philosophers, musicians, artists, writers, philanthropists, jurists, economists, men of medicine, financiers, inventors, industrialists, teachers and yes, even politicians and soldiers. These outstanding and often brilliant people collectively enriched the world with their contribution to the great fund of knowledge being accumulated and utilized.

Although Jewry has produced paragons, it has also produced by far a larger number of quite ordinary folk, the great majority of whom are indistinguishable from those of other backgrounds and traditions. And within the groupings of Jews themselves lie great fractiousness and even bigotry. Social strata have always existed, creating cultural and social ghettos between Jews themselves.

When at one time Sephardim were considered the cultural aristocracy of Jewry, the Ashkenazim were considered the peasantry. With the passage of time that perception has reversed itself, and we see its results in present-day Israel. And Jewish politics is as diverse as the population it represents, further creating internal strife.

Jews, in the collective sense, were in the past imbued with a great vision. Those people have been the progressives, those who stimulate change and progress. Yet these progressives have always been shunned by the established order within the Jewish tradition until the inexorable change occurred and the passage of time softened and blurred their offence, and they were looked upon with pride.

We've produced, as a people, some excellence - and a great deal of dross. Where does the excellence come from, one wonders? As a great amorphous mass of humanity, we've expressed a collective desire to be greater than a mere human might aspire to; greater than the sum of our parts.

We've attempted to be close to a supreme being in our religion; we've tried to behave as the god would have us do. We have tried to better the lot of humankind. Have we succeeded to any great degree? Lamentably, no. The task seems too great. The obstacles placed in the way of fulfillment too overwhelming. Although we have committed ourselves to an ideal which is part way achievable, singly we have not tried to live the ideal nor cared enough for others to strive together to achieve that ideal.

Yet this singular group, with so much potential did return to its roots. A proud and representative number of Diaspora Jews, some by Zionist conviction and zeal, some Holocaust survivors, and others returnees from countries where Jews have not felt comfortable, or have been openly oppressed, live in a state founded in the original land of their forefathers. In that land the ideal was to be realized finally, the dream fulfilled.

For a time it appeared that the original social humanist precepts, the ethics and vision that the prophets of old exhorted; fundamental human values that would enrich the whole while permitting each and every citizen to live with individual grace, would come to pass. The forward thinkers, the socialists, the kibbutzniks, the Labourites, began to fashion the experimental state and the state blossomed, becoming a noble ideal actually fruiting.

Soon, though, the original concept and dedication to egalitarianism gave way gradually to creeping elitism as one social-cultural group disparaged the 'backwardness' of another. And religious fundamentalism with its insistence on strict observance began to force its opinions into state structure.

Hostile neighbours stimulated the siege-mentality which bred militarism, rightist nationalism and xenophobia. In a world that was increasingly perceived as being unsympathetic to Israel, Israel further isolated itself, this time deliberately, by carrying a big stick and using it, and aligning itself with other rightist, nationalist regimes. Once the Labour Party and its socialist precepts was ousted and that of the rightist Likud installed, it could be predicted in which direction Israel, the emotional fount of world Jewry, was headed.

Today an encircled country defies the rest of the world and bitterly denounces its most immediate neighbours. This is bitter gall for a people whose origins, whose roots are so far removed from anti-humanism, from the military ideal, and colonialism.

This situation cannot continue. World Jewry, so possessive and loving of Israel, for the first time begins to caution that country that its focus and mentality must undergo a change and direct itself more in keeping with its traditional view of itself, and its people.

Israelis, stricken by their own hapless direction, ambivalent about their feelings toward their neighbours, uncertain of their country's future, are beginning to re-assess national policy and their own place in the world structure.

There will be a turn-about to the spirit which underlies that elusive, little-understood element, the Jewish soul; sensitivity to one's fellow companions on the earth. And with that change in direction Jews will once more strive to fulfill an ancient precept, and to charge themselves again with the responsibility of the 'example' of the chosen.  

About What It's Like To Die (part II)

 


My father's coin collection intrigued me. I would often beg him to take out the box and let me inspect the coins. "I'm too tired", he'd say, "not now", and I suspected with a child's cunning that he wanted to keep them all to himself.

"Please, please, Daddy" I would pester him until he might let me see them. Once, I was presumptuous enough to ask if I might keep one of the coins.
"I'll give them all to you", he told me wearily.
"When?" I asked eagerly.
"Some day". Some Day was a handy reply that he often used when he wanted to put off stating something definitely where I was concerned. Some Day frustrated me; I had no tolerance for the promise implied in those words, made ambiguous by their constant use.
"When, when?" I would persist.
"When? When I'm dead", he finally replied.

I never again asked to be permitted to see the collection although I often thought about it, and about my father's reply - frightened into docile submission on the subject.

Years later he started collecting quarters as a way of saving money. The glittering silver hoard piled in a box was another source of wonder to me. Occasionally I was given one of the large copper pennies which were then so common and I would run to a little store down the street; a cramped, dirty little place, where I might buy a special treat. Once, I decided to take one of my father's quarters, curious to see just how much something so much more elegant than a mere copper penny could purchase. My mother discovered me in the act of taking the quarter. She was furious with me and I took refuge under my parents' bed. I refused to come out and my mother warned. "Wait, just wait until you father comes home!" Wait I did, crying in the dust-balled dark for hours, wondering what my fate as a discovered felon would be. When finally my father came home from work he spoke quietly to me, said he was certain I would never do anything like that again. Nor did I.

He was an inveterate and unrepentant smoker. There was not then the campaign against smoking that there is now, although later, when it became evident how ill my father was, it was assumed that his smoking had acted as a carcinogen. Actually, he told me once that he had begun smoking as a child, picking up cigarette butts on the streets of Warsaw, perhaps to assuage the pangs of hunter.

I can remember my father sitting at the scratched porcelain-topped table in the kitchen, rolling cigarettes. Later, he bought a cigarette-making machine, a small gadget that expedited his cigarette making. His fingers were permanently stained a hard amber, and his teeth gradually rotted from neglect.

When I was no longer living at home he was admitted to hospital with a gall bladder attack. While he was there, he mentioned to his doctor a consistent ghostlike pain in his head, but nothing much was made of it. Shortly afterward, he was diagnosed as having cancer of the throat. He was given radiation treatment and was in and out of hospital for years.

At the General Hospital I visited him, never believing that he wouldn't recover. Then at the Princess Margaret Hospital I began to realize, on an abstract level, that he might die. At the Doctors' Hospital he permitted himself to be used for new approaches to the disease; became a guinea pig. He said if anything new could be found, that had good results, he was willing to help. It bothered me that he was being used as an experiment. All through those times he was reasonably cheerful. He never gave up hope.

Later on, he would sometimes be in a hopeful mood, sometimes he might be querulous and I was always uncomfortable, somehow panicky, not wanting to reveal my thoughts of finality to him.

Once he sent me out to get him some ice cream to relieve his throat and I gratefully went out to the street and ran from store to store, to try to buy some ice cream in a small container to take back to him. I felt like shouting at everyone, 'My father has cancer! He's dying. Doesn't anyone care?!' Despite that I was then a mother of three young children I felt like an orphan child myself, lost in an alien city, everyone oblivious of my frightened confusion. Unwillingly unable to help myself, I visualized his end, comprehended his physical pain, his psychological torment, coming to grips with the inevitability of impending death.

Once when I got to the hospital he was writing and I asked him what he was writing about.
"Just writing", he said casually.
"About what, Daddy?"
"About what it's like to die", he replied calmly. But then, another day, he would tell me he wasn't ready to die, not yet. And he hung on. In and out of hospitals.

At my sister's wedding, a scant half-year before his death many of my father's old friends approached me and said, emotion straining their voices, that he would be all right, he would come through. One even assured me, "We'll see that he has the best doctors look after him. We'll raise the money. Nothing is too good for him."

When he was at home in the later months, he would sit quietly in the living room, smile grimly if the occasion demanded it; sit with his head cocked sideways, to make the indentation in his throat less conspicuous.

At first, the first year of his cancer, he struggled to give up smoking. At this juncture, after his operation, he decided there was no point and soon after began smoking again although not as much as formerly.

Then there reached a point where he spent most of his time in the bedroom, upstairs. My parents by then were living in their second house, this one on Brunswick Avenue. My father had, a few years earlier, bought a small shop colloquially called a 'convenience' store on Bloor Street, next to the Brunswick Hotel. It was a tiny store, a break-even business. Now, my mother with the help of my young brother tried to run the shop and look after my father as well.

The bedroom always seemed dark; even during the day a half-dusk prevailed and there was a palpable odour of medication, of sickness, a hint of death. My father's muscular bulk had gradually declined, his skin turned an unhealthy grey. His flesh hung from his bony arms, his cheeks were gaunt, much more so than the picture of a half-starved youngster just come to Canada. My mother fed him a partially liquid diet; easier to get down.

My father had graduated over the years, to collecting coin sets and the bedroom was scattered with coin sets sitting on all available surfaces; they and the medicine, books, glasses of water. Now, conversations were desultory, awkward and halting. What was there to say? When I brought my children over - just toddlers - they were cautioned to be quiet, not to bother grandpa. He looked at them but I wondered if he saw them. They seemed small comfort to him now.

Finally, he was admitted to Baycrest Hospital. There, in a large room with other terminal patients, all elderly, all seemingly near death, he lay in a shrouded bed. His nose, once patrician, now stuck bonily above his flesh-depleted cheeks. He would flicker a faint attempt at recognition, attempt to mumble a few words in response to a whispered query.

There was no more writing now, no reading, just a long agonizing wait. His eyes looked bruised and dark in his shallow face and his breathing was laboured. Under the sheet his form was so slight, perhaps that of a sickly youth.

I wondered if his thoughts were bitter. If he was resigned. The mechanical task of breathing was done by his body's machinery. In a way he had ceased to exist. Still, I was unable to believe my father was dying. He did, though. When no one was there, no friends, no family, he slipped away.

About What It's Like to Die -- Part I

My father had no patience with vanity. It wasn't that he was so intolerant a person, he simply had no time for frivolities. He was too busy living; earning a living and living to learn. When he wasn't working he was reading - omnivorously, anything he could get his hands on. He passed that legacy - not for work but for love of the written word - on to his children. I was the oldest.

Because he professed never to care for external appearances I was surprised after his operation to realize that he was reluctant to have anyone see him, that he considered himself, his appearance, repugnant. He had cancer of the throat.

He had always feared sickness, operations, and it was later that I was told he was given the option of an operation to prolong his life for another year or to simply let the cancer run rampant, undisturbed. By the time his cancer had been discovered it was too late to stem the tide of its inexorable growth.

He was unprepossessing in appearance. A short, broad, muscular man with black wiry hair when he was younger, his hair turned a steel grey as he grew older. This sign of age, the grey hair, had distressed me terribly; that outward manifestation of man's perishability. And his once-hard stomach gradually distended with the weight of the years which sat upon him. He was only five feet tall but when I was a child he appeared a respectable height.

My father's friends noted my fierce attachment to my father with amusement. They enjoyed teasing me, for the reaction. They would say something like: "What's so special about him anyway? He's just a little guy". And I'd reply hotly, "he isn't! He's big and strong and he's smart." Which was true. And I hated them for appearing to doubt it.

And although my replies generally brought forth gales of adult laughter, none of my father's friends disputed the fact of my father's intelligence, even as a joke. They came to him often for advice, or to have him explain a situation beyond their comprehension.

I have since learned things about my father that I hadn't known earlier, when he still lived. He had been born in Poland just after the turn of the century. Actually, about 1910. We never did know the correct date, nor did he. His family had lived in a small town not far from Warsaw. His father had been a scholar of sorts, a rebbe, but both his parents died before my father was twelve. His relatives lived nearby but they were almost destitute as were most of the country people there, so they arranged for my father to be taken care of in the local poorhouse. Soon after, an undernourished boy too small for his age, he ran away to Warsaw to try to locate his older brother, who had himself run away, years earlier.

He had no success in his search and wandered the streets of Warsaw unkempt, unfed and unhoused. He was only one of many such vagrants, children who begged for sustenance in the streets. Eventually, a Jewish philanthropic organization attempted to gather these wanderers and to provide for them. There, among other boys bereft of family, my father found companionship. Several years later the boys were sent en masse to Canada. On arrival, they were dispersed to various farming communities and my father and several of his friends found themselves working on a farm in Georgetown, Ontario, to pay off their passage. All through his life these orphan children remained steadfast friends, an extended family closer to each other than most genuine family members often are.

In the family album there was one photograph that I often looked at although it made me vaguely unhappy. The picture was that of a group of about ten young men, boys really, and the background was the farm in Georgetown. The boys wore what appeared to be leggings of some kind and underwear-type long-sleeved shirts. Some held rakes and manure forks, reminiscent of the famous American Gothic painting. The boys' heads were uniformly shaven and their cheeks were gaunt. Their eyes seemed hollow and painful; haunting. My father was the smallest among them. At first he had to point himself out to me, for I could not recognize him in the photograph.

I suppose it was because of my father's initial poor start in life and his later malnourishment as a youth that he became prone in middle age to a variety of illnesses. I recall hushed talk of Burgess' Disease and hardening of the arteries, although I'm not quite certain he had any of these. I do recall though, that once, when I was about eight years old, he was bathing and discovered that one of his big toes had turned a purple-black colour. My father rarely went to see a doctor but for this my mother insisted that he visit the family doctor, an old medical practitioner whose office stood on a corner of College Street. It was discovered that the big toe was gangrenous, or just beginning to be so, and measures were taken to save it. In retrospect, although he was never so diagnosed, I am reasonably certain that he had been an undiagnosed diabetic and it was Diabetes Mellitus which led invariably to those other disease symptoms and thereafter, his legs always gave him trouble from poor circulation. His feet were always sore and painful. Still, it wasn't the untreated diabetes nor the other ailments that took his life.

Unlike most of my father's friends who in time became quite well off,my father always had to struggle to make a living. Some of his friends ran small businesses of their own, became musicians, professionals, tradesmen, entrepreneurs. My father remained a labourer for most of his life. The earliest I can recall is that he worked at a factory, Fashion Hat & Cap, on Chestnut Street in Toronto, as a steam presser. His job was to mechanically work a steam press to block caps and that is what he did for many years.  The factory was hot and dry, dimly lit and poorly ventilated. His arms and hands became so muscular from his work that years later nurses at the hospital found it impossible to check his pulse at the wrist. He used to laugh about that. He once brought home an orange that he had forgotten to eat from his lunchbag and had placed on top of the steam presser.  The orange was light and hollow, all the moisture gone, preserved like an Egyptian mummy.

Both my parents were staunch trade unionists and voted for the CCF Party. Political talk was common around the kitchen table. I would sit quietly and listen, fascinated at the heated  arguments that often ensued, between my parents and some of their friends as my father continued to uphold the socialist ideal and others might dispute its need and even legitimacy in this country.

In his spare time my father spent as much time as he could manage at the United Jewish Peoples' Order, the headquarters of which, years ago, was on Christie Street across from Christie Pitts Park, north of Bloor Street. There was a great number of books kept there and for a while my father volunteered his time as its librarian. He prided himself at that role; he, an unlettered man who had really never had a formal education. I used to go to that same building every day after school to be tutored in a small classroom along with a handful of other children, in Jewish history and Yiddish. I had begun going to the Morris Winchevsky school when an old house on another street had been utilized for classroom purposes, before the acquisition of the Christie Street property and I can remember there were always kerosene lamps handy in case of a blackout as these were the war years.

Occasionally, there I would pick up some literature written by Dr. James Endicott and read it, impressed by the fervour of his arguments for a better, more equitable world. Once, my father pointed out Paul Robeson to me, a tall dark man, walking down a corridor of the building we frequented, and this man, this famous man, was a guest of the U.J.P.O.

The basement of the building - which was, I believe, originally an old converted church - housed a functional cafeteria set around with small round tables and wire-hooped chairs, at which there generally sat a crowd of men - talking, playing dominoes. The fragrance of coffee and doughnuts, accompanied by the click of dominoes and the murmur of bantering voices so well describes the ambiance, the homey comfort of the place.

On V-E day my father celebrated what was an especially poignant time for him by giving me a large green-covered book of short stories that I still treasure. He was forever encouraging me to read. As soon as I was old enough to understand he gave me books to read that most would consider too difficult for a child. But with these books and my father's explanations I was made sensitive to the world as it is. My father described in great detail the circumstances of the Holocaust. In this way I became extremely aware of just how special Jews are in this world; the exquisitely frail equilibrium that exists between life and death; the monumental horror of prejudice; the abomination that is war.

My father had me read Tobacco Road, introduced me to Howard Fast and John Steinbeck; tried to imbue in me a sense of fairness to other people. One of the few books he bought for me was called Palaces on Monday; it had been bound irregularly, the cover put on backwards and upside down, and I suppose he was able to pay less for it. The book described the building of the underground rail system, the subway in Moscow, seen through the eyes of a young boy and girl whose American father was an engineer on the project. Nor did he neglect the adventure writers like Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson; he wanted me to read everything.

Despite the fact that our family lived in a small flat - two bedrooms between two adults and three young children; a tiny kitchen that seated us only because we were all so small, the adults and the children; and a bathroom shared with another family and a boarder - my father was determined that I would receive other kinds of stimulation normally reserved for people with money. One of his good friends was a house painter and an amateur musician and agreed to teach me to play a musical instrument. The oboe; I still have that oboe. Ancient and faded now, it must have been quite old even then. My music teacher was a kind and patient man but I was a frivolous child and had no inclination to learn, even to please my father. Oboe reeds cost $.25 each then and they were a luxury my parents could ill afford. Every time I heard the ridiculous squeaks my puffing elicited from the instrument, I would break up laughing, my teeth clamping on the delicate reed. Finally, my father decided I was not meant to express myself musically.

Another memory I have though, is confirmation that he was quite capable of musicality himself. I have a hazy recollection of sitting high in the balcony at Massey Hall with my mother and peering down at an orchestra on the stage below. There was a man sitting on the right-hand side and back of the orchestra and on his lap was an immense glittering, gold-belled instrument. My father played a tuba, an instrument almost as large as he himself. Not long ago my mother told me he had also played a fiddle, but I had never heard him play one.

Although he could never afford to become a real collector, numismatics fascinated him and he collected foreign coins. The coins held an attraction for him and when he came across an exotic coin my father would add it to his collection. He kept a metal strong box in a cupboard which he would sometimes open with a key. The box contained a few papers, a few brown daguerreotypes, and the prized coin collection.

One of the old faded photographs in the box was of a dark bearded man; another was of a young boy standing beside a wicker planter. These depicted my father's father and my father himself - and there were a few others. Once he picked up one of the photographs and showed it to me. The picture was of an oval-faced dark browed young man with black hair. The man had a thin mustache. I detested mustaches. "Who do you think that is?" my father prompted.

"Hitler", I said positively. "It must be Hitler."

A pained look crossed my father's face. He said nothing, merely took the picture from me, turned away, shut himself away from me.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "What's the matter?" Thinking about it now, I'm not certain whether my reply had been impish or whether at that tender age all mustaches were synonymous with the hated Hitler; reason compels me to believe I was just being mischievous, for why, even then, would I think my father would cherish a photograph of that hideously detestable monster?

Later my mother told me it was a photograph of my father's brother. My father, for years after the war, believed his brother was still alive. He wrote endless letters to agencies and individuals looking for information about his brother. There was no information to give, none was received. Without doubt he, like other millions of hapless innocents, provided fuel for the ovens at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka.