Maximum Capacity

On my cell phone, there are three contacts I refuse to delete. It's a weird thing of mine, but deleting them is akin to erasing them from existence. I guess people who keep address books have the same issue when upgrading. If someone has died, do they continue to put their information into the book as a new entry, or do they choose to replace the data with that of another? I've never had my own address book, so I'm not sure what my process would be. With a cell phone, however, the act seems too permanent. Too final. As if the act of dying itself is not permanent and final.

Today is the 2nd anniversary of my father's death. Anniversary is a crappy word to use, really. I'm not the first person to say or feel this. I'm just not that original. Anniversary implies celebration, joy, happiness. The anniversary of the dead is supposed to be a celebration of life. While we started the day doing something my father enjoyed when he was alive--eating breakfast at Teddy's Diner in Elk Grove Village; enjoying, like he did, pancakes, sausage, and eggs--the day was mostly filled with contemplation.

I can't rewrite history and claim that the relationship I had with my father was perfect. It wasn't. Far from it actually. But that doesn't mean I don't miss having him around. One of the things we used to do was go to the movies together. I enjoyed doing that with him. It's become one of the things I now do with Frederic.

He and I went to "visit" my dad today at the cemetery. I'm not a big fan of going there; something I inherited from my father. It's just not something I get much out of. The whole process is jarring. Walking from the car to the grave site, doing the cemetery shuffle, and then having to see the bird poop, weeds, and other debris that has made a home of the place where my father eternally sleeps, begins the depressing scene. Jewish people have a ritual where they place rocks on the gravestone to let future visitors know there were others who arrived first. It's always a pain in the ass to have to find scattered rocks to announce my presence. You can't just take one off of another gravestone and claim it as your own.

There's a bench right next to my dad's headstone. It belongs to another family, but I always use it when I'm there. Convenient. Frederic and I sat there for a moment, in silence. He had been there before, so he didn't have any questions like the first time we went. "Does Papa need a blanket down there?" or "can we dig up the dirt to see him?" were replaced by no words at all. It was like he was giving me the thing he thought I needed most at that moment.

I've never been able to talk to the dead. The act of going to a cemetery seems almost pointless to me. It's not like the people in my life that have died are not in my constant thoughts. But we've made this part of the grieving ritual.

After a moment, Frederic and I shifted the focus from sadness, loss, and grief, to looking at the dates on headstones around us. We wanted to find one from the 1800's, and we did, quickly. We wanted to see how far back the dates went. 1860 was the earliest. I told him that there were some famous people buried in this cemetery. He wanted to know who.

"Jack Ruby," I said. I almost said Al Capone, but then I remembered that he wasn't Jewish, and that he was buried at Mount Carmel; the place where the other side of my family's dead go.

"Oh, I know that guy," he said. Certain he really didn't know, I pressed him to continue. "He's that guy. Well, okay, there was this one guy--I don't remember his name--that everybody says shot John F. Kennedy."

"Lee Harvey Oswald," I said, encouraged he was heading in the right direction.

"Yeah, and then Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald." I praised his knowledge. "I read it in a book. Where's he buried at? Can we go see the grave."

All of the times I have been to the cemetery, I have never seen Jack Ruby's site. I have a hard enough time finding my grandparents and cousin, let alone find a guy who's famous for shooting a possible suspect.

We continued looking at the dates on the headstones, walking further and further away from my dad. When I realized this, I veered us back in that direction. We stopped for a moment, once again, in front of my dad.

"Do you want to say anything before we go?" I asked. Like father, like son, like father, like son, Frederic became very shy and standoffish about the request. He shook his head. He had nothing to say that he wasn't already thinking of privately.

As time goes on, the memories Frederic has of his interaction with my father will fade. They will be replaced by imagined memories that are created from looking at pictures and seeing old video footage. Memories, like entries in an old address book or in a cell phone, get replaced because we need the space.

I just don't think I'm at maximum capacity yet.