The day I watched my father die

Often when I log on to Facebook I get the "Lawrence, we care about you and the memories you share here. We thought you'd like to look back on this post from 4 years ago." message. Generally it's something that makes me smile and thankfully not some rant about how awful my life is. It could be worse, it could be one of these 21 Annoying Facebook Status Updates that Need to STOP.  

We didn't have Facebook 30 years ago, we didn't have cell phones and if I remember correctly we had only recently started using ATM cards in South Africa. I was insanely jealous of my friends Janine, Elian and Mandy who had a cordless phone like the one they had on Dallas. Our phone numbers consisted of 4 to 6 digits. We lived in a small town in the Far Northern Transvaal in South Africa, called Pietersburg. My family had moved there from Johannesburg; my mother worked at the local hospital which in those days had a "white side" and a "black side" and my dad was involved in various businesses. I don't think that we had much money but we had a big house with a garden, pool and tree house. The tree house was a wooden floor at the top of a ladder in a tree. There were no walls. We routinely climbed up there dragging blankets, food, books and anything else our hands could carry and often left everything there. My parents would likely be accused of child endangerment in today's world and we would probably be discussed on HLN's Nancy Grace or dissected by Dr. Drew. We had a miniature Poodle named Snoopy and a Boxer, of course, and I rode my bike around most afternoons, went on treasure hunts designed by Janine's mom and walked to school and back. Our parents were at work while we roamed around freely and without any worries. 

The 1st of December 1985 fell on a Sunday, 2 days after my 12th birthday. My sister was 10 years old. My mom was 39, my dad was 54. It was summer and we had one week left at school; in fact I think I was going in to my last year at Primary school. My mother was on call and had to stay at home, close to a telephone so my dad took my sister and me to the grocery store to buy chips (crisps) to take to school that week for the end of the year parties. We drove to Checkers, parked and went inside. True to my nature (Keith will attest to this) I ran ahead and off down one of the aisles. I remember being one aisle over from my father and wanting to ask or tell him something and so I ran over to where he was, next to the flour, and as I approached him I watched him fall to the side and then to the ground. His face had a funny gray/bluish tinge to it and I started screaming. A lady ran over and started doing something to him that I didn't recognise at that time as CPR. Pietersburg was a relatively small town so it was no coincidence that someone there knew us, and my sister and I were quickly taken away by Aunty Bessie. I remember walking out of the store and noticing someone that I knew from school laughing at me because I was screaming and crying so hysterically. We were driven home; there was no option to quickly call my mom on her cellphone, and I ran up the driveway shouting to my mom that my dad had fallen down. 

A few hours later my mom came home with the news that my dad had died. I was later sitting in a chair in the living room and someone was looking at me sorrowfully, shaking her head, telling me that I had to now be the man of the family. People started arriving, food appeared and my sister and I played outside with our friends oblivious to the 360 degree change that had just hit our lives. A few days later Bessie and her husband drove us to Johannesburg to bury my father. My mother claims that he had some kind of premonition a few months earlier when he had woken up in the middle of the night and made my mother promise him that if anything happened she would bury him in Johannesburg. My sister and I didn't go to his funeral; we were apparently too young and so we stayed at home with my Grandmother. More people, more food and then back to Pietersburg. 

I often tell people that I have little to no memories of my childhood which is in stark contrast to those friends who can remember doing something at 3 years old. My mind is blank, what I see are photographs in albums or picture made up from stories that my mother has told me. Life went on after my father died, we went back to school and my mother sometimes went to work. Her major depressions started around then, or at least that's when I noticed them. I remember her crying one night when I mistakenly set the table for four instead of three. For some reason my sister and I were sent to a therapist and I remember lying in his chair, listening to him speak and feeling an intense floating sensation. Today I assume that he was putting me into some state of suggested relaxation and I suspect that in an attempt to help me deal with the horror of watching my father die in front of me in a grocery store he somehow wiped away my memories. It's the only explanation other than me doing it to myself as a coping mechanism or result of the experience. I have since undergone hypnotherapy to try and find those memories but they aren't there. And that's OK. But my life is shaped by everything that happened after my father died, because I know no life before. 

I have suffered great losses in my life, certainly no more or less than many people, but it is these that have shaped in a significant (and positive) way who I am as a person today. I am by no means the only one. Anderson Cooper said "I think that anytime you experience traumatic loss early on it changes who you are and drastically affects your view of the world". You can read about it here.

@andersoncooper gr8 show re girls abandoned. Yr comment on being defined by loss resonated - I lost my father & sister too at a young age.

— Lawrence Reiter (@LawrenceReiter) September 18, 2011

While I may not have the memories, I have some stories but it's taken me to my forties to understand the importance of knowing where I come from. My father was born in Romania, fought in the Israeli 6-Day war, lived in Spain, married in Rhodesia, lost a spouse and a child during childbirth and re-married (my mom) in South Africa. The younger me didn't take the time to ask questions and when I think to some stories my mother has told me I realise that they are often frightfully fabricated. My mother is a story-teller, my previous posts have alluded to her manic and depressive episodes, and she pretty much alienated whatever family we had. Despite all that I remember everyone on her side, I know their story, I picture their faces. My father's sister lives in Israel where there exists a huge family of children, grandchildren, cousins and friends of whom I know none. This is partly due to my mother and partly due to my younger self that didn't think it important to keep the connection. Till now. Suddenly I want to know about my father, I want to know what he was like, what he liked and hated, where he went to school and who his friends were. A few months ago I googled his name for the fun of it and happened across a family tree that included me! It was being maintained by my family in Israel and I made some updates and reached out to my father's sister. I received an incredible response not only from her, but from a cousin and a niece that resulted in trading emails and photos and a promise to visit Israel. I am planning to go next year. 

30 long and very quick years have passed. Today I honour the man that I know I resemble, who I hope I am somewhat like, who I wish I could have known, who I accept could not be here, who I plan to learn more about, who is remembered. 

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