Suzy Zucker and her brother Martin have sponsored the final concert of the Brott Music Festival, in memory of their father, Hamilton businessman and philanthropist Irving Zucker, for the past few years. This year, it will be Beethoven's Ninth, taking place tomorrow
Suzy Zucker with her father Irving in 1997 when he received the Order of Canada.
By Suzy Zucker
SPECIAL TO THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
(Aug 19, 2010)
The last time I saw my father alive was when he was being rolled into the elevator on his way up to the operating room. He was still taking care of us all, right up until the end, giving us tasks to do. He pointed at me.
"You hold on to me, Suzy."
"OK, Dad," I nodded, "I will." I had brought in a healer, and after she had worked on him, she told me that I could continue on with what she had done by "holding on to him." So I imagined myself holding him, keeping him here, as best I could.
We all knew it was a long shot. The day before the operation, the surgeon had met with me, my two brothers and my father's longtime girlfriend.
"I have to tell you now," she said, "that there is a only about a 20 per cent chance that he will fully recover."
We all stared at her.
"What do you mean?" somebody asked.
"The aneurysm is very close to his heart. First, he needs to survive the operation. After that, the following three days will be critical. But even if he makes it through, there will still be the possibility of brain damage."
There was a long pause.
"Oh."
I went home that night to my two-year-old daughter and my failing marriage. My husband and I had been in counselling for a year, to no avail, and the stress of my father's recent illness had our relationship completely unravelling. I vaguely remember us watching a comedy on television, but the words sounded garbled, nothing made sense. Everything was surreal, far away, gauzy. The only thing that I could hear with crisp clarity was 20 per cent, 20 per cent, like a loop.
The next day we gathered in the waiting room after my father was taken to surgery. I thought about the way he had been the night before: anxious, agitated, with a drawn, hunted look in his eyes. I wish I could go back now, and sit with him, caress him, tell him over and over again, I love you, Dad, I love you. Or even try to joke with him, anything to soothe his fear, my fear, the unspoken. But a virus had recently shut this hospital down, and I had started to feel sick a few days previous. So I had worn a mask, and stayed a good distance away from him. I busied myself by setting up the power of attorney papers, the only affairs he had not attended to, the ones signifying incapacitation and the relinquishment of control. Control had been a common thread between us.
"Everything under control on your end, Suzy?" he would frequently ask.
"Yes, Dad," I'd lie into the phone, protecting him, protecting myself. "How about you?"
"Yup, everything's under control over here, Suzy."
We stayed in that waiting room for over 12 hours, alongside all of the other families that came and went, huddled together, awaiting news of their loved one's fate. It was as if time stood still. I had noticed this phenomenon the last time my father had been in the hospital, 10 years earlier, undergoing a quadruple bypass. Hospitals seem to exist in a world unto themselves when a loved one is critically ill. You get up from your chair to go buy a coffee, then go outside for a guilty cigarette, only to return back. Over and over again. Life and death consume you; all else fades and is made inconsequential. Then there is, of course, the magical thinking. I start to make a deal with God that if he saves him, I will quit smoking. But then I stop myself, panicking. What if, when it comes down to it, I can't follow through with it?
Finally, his surgeon comes in and reports that there had been a lot of bleeding, and she thought that she had lost him at one point, but he had held on and was still alive. He was being sewn up right now, but in a while we could go see him, although he would be unconscious.
We filed into the ICCU and were led into his room. I looked at him, the fallen giant, strapped up to tubes and machines.
I had a job. I stood at the foot of the bed and pushed the sheet up off of his feet. I took hold of his ankles. "I've got you, Dad. I'm holding onto you," I said.
I was sure I felt his leg move.
Over the course of the next two days he never regained consciousness, but we kept up our vigil, orbiting around him, as we always had done. It was four o'clock in the morning, and I was at home trying to sleep, when the call came.
"I think you should come to the hospital. Your father is dying; all of his major organs are shutting down."
We convened around him. The nurse explained to us that after they put a heavy dose of morphine into his IV, the life support would be turned off.
Then he was gone.
We sat Shiva for seven days, saying the prayers every morning and every night. People came and went through my father's house in a blur, sharing their condolences and their memories, and eating the food that magically appeared every day.
Two of my friends came to visit. We went into the den and shut the door.
Shiny black suits, they were the Men in Black. I sat down on the couch in the same blue jeans and T-shirt I'd worn for days. Therapists, the two of them, they encircled me: a tag team, one in front, one by my side.
"How are you doing, Suzy?"
I burst into tears. "All I can think of is that I didn't hold on to him well enough."
I am wailing as they shoot closer.
"We love you Suzy, we love you." They embrace me; hold onto me, keeping me here, as best they can.
* * *
Seven years have come and gone since we buried my father. At first, the pain was unbearable. Crying every day, I tried to explain to my daughter why Mommy was so sad. She in turn became the ballast that I clung to. I would often gaze at the picture taken a month before my father died, a picture of him with my daughter on his knee, and it gave me great comfort. He had lived to see his grandchild.
I see my father in her: her energy and infectious smile, her zaniness and creativity, her warmth and generosity of spirit. Over time I have also come to see my father more clearly, including the challenges that he struggled with in his life, as we all do.
I realize that at 46, under the very best of circumstances, I am half way through my life. When the time comes, and it is my daughter's time to grieve, I only hope that she will know that she loved and was loved by me. We are all complex creatures who fall short in one way or another. And when you have a child, those failings do not magically pack up their bags and leave. We pass on the good and the not-so-good to our children. But now I think to myself that maybe that's OK, as long as we pass on a heavy dose of love with it all.
