Artist, Funny Guy, Dad

The thing about funny people, that is, if they're really funny, they're funny 'til the day they die. Such was the case with my dad.

He died a couple of weeks ago, and if you think there's anything funny in that, there is, remarkably.

On the oncology floor of the hospital, Dad was king of the A jokes. His style was dry, his timing spot on, and every single joke killed. Even as the nuances of his delivery and subtlety of his facial expressions went over the nurses' heads, he kept us in stitches. We laughed for five days straight, my mom, two sisters, brother-in-law and me. Doubling over behind the fabric curtains, hiding behind hospital promotional packets, our bodies shook with muffled laughter. That is, when we weren't crying. Or trying to hide the tears. Or laughing through them.

Then one or two cancers morphed into three as we pried the truth from his doctors. When Dad figured out he was dying, he asked my sister point blank. She answered yes and he told her that he wanted to go home. So we unhooked, untethered and untangled him from the ICU, and off we went-- home again, hospice, jiggity-jig. We settled him into his favorite sun lit room, with his own sheets and favorite squishy pillow, down at the Jersey shore where he loved to paint the skies and sail his boat and watch his grandchildren swim in the ocean. He was now very, very home.

He continued to make us giggle although things were growing darker even as the sky outside was bright. Two of his dearest friends came for a visit and brought more mirth and thoughtful conversation. Even the minister had a great sense of humor. Very thorough and exceedingly honest, he spoke to my father with tempered delight which, in turn, gave Dad great comfort. Dad listened, saying, "Wonderful, wonderful," as he heard the wise words with closed eyes. After the good reverend left, Dad asked us repeatedly if we were OK. We lied and said we were.

That perfect day would be his last and he died the very next morning. He died quietly and without physical pain, in the bosom of his family. He always loved to say, "In the bosom of my family." And he would linger on the m as his mouth turned into a grin. That very same impish grin, as it turned out, would follow him out of his body and off into the sunset he so dearly loved to paint. We laughed and sobbed as we watched him go. Like a transatlantic voyager, which in a way I suppose he was, leaving for an extended trip. We tried to be happy for him, knowing that he'd pondered this trip his whole life-- had been perusing its brochures for eons. And now he was finally off and it was so hard to comprehend. It had been just seven days since he'd gone into the hospital and he'd only felt odd for two weeks prior. But as rushed as we felt saying so long and farewell, he left us with calm assurance and full closure. He died with his ducks in a row. He left us with a smile on his face.

Days later, my mother, sisters and I would circle the dining room table with his random stuff spread out like at a flea market. The mirror ball he installed in the ceiling 35 years ago hung over our heads, still. My mom had wanted to do this. "It has to be done," she said. So we surveyed his life and we laughed.

My one sister asked for the scrolling LED light up belt buckle that he wore with a smirk and reprogrammed for family holidays. My other sister asked for his other belt buckle, the one with the pink lips that we all remember him wearing in the seventies, with an even bigger smirk. I asked for his Michael Jackson "Off the Wall" album cover imprinted-onto-mirrored-sunglasses, which I can promise you, we all begged him not to wear out in public. (He did anyway.) And we each got a Buddha. It took a while, but finally, it was all divvied up and done.

My mom mostly watched. She had already kept what was precious to her-- his Soupy Sales autograph, his saved ticket stub from the Newport Jazz Festival. This round was for us.

So now I've got to find a place for his Swiss army knife and his grandfather's pocket watch. I'll pack away assorted bow ties for my son, should he grow up to be the sort of man who wears them. It's a crap shoot, I know, and he's only 5 1/2, but what the heck. They're his grandfather's ties. And books, and pipes and a trucker hat that reads Tolstoy in curly red letters across the front, which I'll wear intermittently with my South Park baseball hat when it rains and shines. And I'll keep his T-shirt that heralds the onslaught of the menacing "Med Fly" folded up with my "Free Pee Wee" tee. And maybe I'll set his little carved, wooden man-scratching-his-head statuette next to my framed photo of my sister mowing her lawn in Vermont, topless.

And I'll be reminded of his sense of humor, as dorky, cornball and endearingly hokey as it could be, when it wasn't masterfully sophisticated and clever. And I'll be glad that I have mine and my mother and sisters have similar. And I'll thank him for it. And remember.

Because if there's ever a time to be grateful for a sense of humor...

Banter Addict

Let's say, for arguments sake, that a person could be addicted to snappy banter. What might the addict do to quell her craving?

I had plenty of time to think about it after the subway doors closed and the simmering, bubbling conversation I'd been enjoying ground to a halt with the sliding doors' bing-bong. I was pretty sure Penn Station's maintenance crew couldn't give me what I needed, and New Jersey Transit's conductor crowd wasn't worth it's weight in straight answers, much less snappy banter. So I came up with a plan.

After I've put my son to bed, and poured myself half a beer, I'll lower myself onto the floor and set up a Fisher Price bar.

I'll use two overturned beds for the bar, maybe three, and make the bald man with the little curly cue on his forehead the bartender. Then, the one with the black Prince Valiant hard-hair, I'll set in his chair, and I'll put myself nearby but not too close. Must appear elusive.

"What'll you have?" the bartender asks.
"The usual," I answer and spin once around in my yellow plastic chair that molds to me perfectly.
OK, maybe I won't spin around, dumb idea, but I'll sip my cocktail as Hard Hair Guy sidles over. I need a glass of some sort. This'll do: I'll use a teensy Lego gear shift as a stem glass which I can just reach if I slither down onto my stomach. It's at this point that I wish I wasn't the girl with the helmet of yellow plastic Pippy Longstocking braids, so I trade myself in for a Princess Leia pez dispenser. Now we're talking. Taller, leaner, lighter on my foot.

"Hello," Hard-hair says and I tip him forward in his chair ever so slightly towards me.
"Hello yourself," I say with a tall, brunette, pezzy nod in his direction.
"Sorry I'm late," he says with a grin.
"Day late and a dollar short, pal," I say in Carrie Fisher film noir-eze.

The bartender asks Hard-hair what he's having. I rip off a tiny corner of a gently used Kleenex left on the coffee table for him to use as a bar wipe, and find an errant dust-covered dime near a chair leg to use as a coaster. The perspective is off, but it's all I can find within arm's reach and I am not about to get up off the floor. Besides, the over sized coaster thing is all part of this swanky bar's shtick. And I am a swanky, over sized gal.

Hair Guy says, "What's a girl like you-"
I cut him off, "Doing with a face like this?"
"Well, now that you mention it-"
"I just did."
"You might have," he says. "but you didn't answer my question."
"What was the question?" I ask.
"What does it matter?"
"How could it not?" I take another sip.
Then I look at him squarely for the first time and smile ever so slightly. I pause for effect but I'm way too tall. So I turn my self sideways and lay down a bit to get right in his face. My pez head is too big. Big coasters, big head. I suppose that's my shtick, too, but I'm stalling.

I sigh. These four sips of beer are really going to my head.

Banter is just not the same using hard, wooden children to talk to plastic candy dispensers while leaning on my elbows. Not the same as being a live adult sitting up straight, fingernails tapping a thickly varnished bar. Sure, I could do the bantering "for us-- for all of us," as Ingrid said to Humph, but I'd rather go to sleep. So I haul my tired, sorry ass off the ground and up the stairs and will myself to dream of conversations that skip across the water like a smooth, flat stone.

I know they're out there. My sparing partners crop up from time to time for coffee or lunch and we occasionally IM on facebook. They are men and women who, like me, can get giddy from snappy banter when it's taught and brisk the way I used to get giddy jumping double dutch for much longer than I'd ever imagined possible. But then someone has to get going and some door eventually shuts and there is a resonant buzz that floats along side me until it quietly, eventually fades. I feverishly look to the man in the crosswalk, waiting for the go-man signal, wishing we could pick up where I just left off, but something about his brown suit tells me it's not gonna fly.

Every so often I'm pleasantly surprised. A tired, detached postal worker behind the counter asks if she can help who's next. "I'd like a table with a view," I say as I pile my neatly addressed packages onto the counter and get out my credit card. She answers, "All I have is the one near the kitchen," as she weighs them one at a time.
"As long as the food is decent," I say.
"In this place?" and she raises an eyebrow.
"True," I say, "but I come here for the ambiance." And we smile as she asks me if there's anything perishable in my packages.

It's nice to be reminded that snappy banter is out there. Elusive, like Princess Leia, perhaps, but out there.