Dust to Dust, Ashtray to Ashtray

All the recent celebrity deaths make me wonder about the loved ones they left behind—and how many of them have issues with the people they lost.

My father wasn’t a celebrity, but that didn’t stop me from having issues. It will soon be the sixth anniversary of his passing, and I guess I’m still a little pissed off that he smoked as long as he did. My mother doesn’t really know that I have father issues. Smoking isn’t the only one—but it’s one of the biggest. (She doesn’t know I have mother issues, either, but that’s another story.) In fact, mom doesn’t know all that much about me—things like my hopes, fears, regrets and plans for the future. She just knows I’m still her little (56) boy, and as cute as ever.  

You know what else she doesn’t know? How much stuff I threw out from her basement right after dad died.

You see, when I was a teenager I fought hard to convince my mother not to throw out anything from the basement: toys that were broken, records that were scratched, microphones that never worked right in the first place... I wanted to hang onto everything as long as I could. But when dad died, I urged mom to throw out everything. Of course, the tables had been turned by then: all of the stuff down there was hers, not mine—but they were as useless to her as a fractured Mr. Machine was to me back in the old days. In her basement, among the extra bridge chairs and boxes of light bulbs, were plastic wedding favors that far outlived the marriages they had originally celebrated, once-classy bar accessories that haven’t been used since Sean Connery stopped shaking and stirring, ashtrays lifted from nightclubs where Vic Damone used to sing "On the Street Where You Live" and where Totie Fields told jokes about a guy who was a rat’s ass… hundreds of items that my mother had a very hard time parting with.

When dad died, mom was suddenly alone in the house for the first time in 51 years. Before long she arranged to leave the house and move into a small apartment in a senior complex nearby. Part of that process required me to slowly get rid of as much stuff as possible, to make that transition a little smoother. But that wasn’t easy. There was a lot of stuff in the house—much of it in the basement—and mom uttered a defiant “no!” to almost everything I picked up that I wanted to throw in the trash.

Certainly there were some emotional reasons behind it. For one thing, with my father gone, mom wanted to hold onto as many memories as possible. For another, maybe by throwing out too much stuff she felt her own mortality to a degree she was not ready to consider. I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just a cute son (with issues).

Dad was 78 when he died. He smoked for 50 years (though not for the last eight). While he had slowed down in recent years, he had still been a major force in the lives of everyone in the family. He was still telling stories about his childhood, going to restaurants and concerts and singing all the time. But he started to lose his balance, and a blockage was discovered at the top of his spine. An operation was performed. Then it was one thing after the other. Infections, weakened organs. He died late one night.

Officially, smoking was not the cause. But I have my own opinion. I believe that the 700,000 or so cigarettes he smoked over the years compromised his entire system and made it much harder for him to endure the initial operation and subsequent infections. I don’t think he stood much of a chance. I despised his smoking ever since I was playing with Matchbox cars. I considered it a selfish weakness that would one day crush not just him, but the rest of us. How could someone who loved to laugh and sing so much stoop to such stupidity? If it weren’t for his smoking, my mother and I wouldn’t have had to fight over a topless two-inch tall Hawaiian doll whose green grass skirt barely covered her crotch, which mom and dad had bought on a trip to Honolulu 39 years ago.  

So mom and I went down to the basement one last time. I wanted to throw out as much stuff as I could. Mom protested up a storm. Then the phone rang and she went upstairs to answer it. Here was my golden opportunity. In one glorious whirlwind of realization and achievement, I threw out every ashtray I could find, no matter what exotic port or long-abandoned Catskill hotel it came from. There were lots of them.

Actually, I don't give a rat’s ass if my mother finds out.