The Last Tango

He was not a spiritual man, my father. In fact, he was cynical about organized religion and rituals commemorating anyone or anything. So it was no surprise that he emphatically stated he wanted neither a funeral nor a memorial service at the time of his death. The only two things he requested were to be cremated and to have an obituary placed in the New York Times. After my mother, sister and I honored his two wishes, we cleaned out the room he had lived in for the previous seven years of his life, throwing out medications, a couple of portable urinals, egg-crate foam pads and bed wedges. We made piles of unopened oral swab packages, disposable adult diapers, several unused heel protectors and tubes of Vaseline petroleum jelly to donate to a local nursing home. After the hospital bed and wheelchair were removed, we rearranged the furniture, changing the room back into a den.

As a boy, my father dreamed of becoming an airplane pilot. He took flying lessons at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, not far from his parents’ house in Jamaica. Just eight years before he started his flight training, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field for what would become the world’s first solo transatlantic flight. My father wanted to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, so he read every article he could get his hands on about Lindbergh’s extraordinary accomplishment. But in 1936, in his second year of flight school, there was a terrible plane crash on a runway at Roosevelt Field. My father’s flight instructor was killed during a failed take off. That was it for my grandmother who was always fearing for my father’s safety. She put her foot down: no more flying for her son. She applied some pressure and steered him toward a career as a physician: a Jewish doctor son for my grandparents, who had emigrated from Poland and had spent their lives struggling to make an adequate living. The power of Jewish mothers is like no other. Off to medical school he went.

Despite the jokes that must have been made, my father, Dr. Daniel Hartman, became a cardiologist. He had a practice in Manhattan for over 35 years. On the day he retired, he told me that he had never liked being a physician. I guess he did it for his mother (never a good idea). In 1980 my parents retired to Southampton on the south shore of Long Island. He was bitten by a deer tick in 1983 and ignored the bull’s-eye rash that developed. Sometimes physicians are terrible patients. He attributed the ensuing joint pain and fatigue to his osteoarthritis, a condition that had caused him, many years earlier, to have both hips replaced. When he finally went to an infectious disease specialist out on the Island, he was diagnosed with an advanced stage of Lyme disease. He lived with those symptoms for years, despite many rounds of intravenous antibiotic treatments.

The Lyme disease caused a severe case of neuropathy in his feet, and one day he fell from a standing position onto a stone floor. He broke one of his already replaced hips, which led to another hip surgery. He became angry and depressed, refusing to follow through with physical therapy and rehabilitation exercises. He never walked again. He spent seven years in bed, and was in and out of the hospital for various respiratory problems. He died at home in February of 2001, seven months before 9/11, at the age of 86.

After my father’s body was cremated, his ashes were sent to Brockett Funeral Home in Southampton. My mother picked them up in April and asked me what I thought she should do with them.

God, Mom, I don’t know what he would want us to do with them. Probably would have said to just throw them away, I stated without thinking too much.

Gail, please. That’s ridiculous — and disrespectful! Putting his ashes in the garbage!

Well, I just mean he didn’t care about things like burying bodies — or ashes, for that matter. Or scattering them somewhere. At least that’s the impression I always got from him, I said, trying to defend myself.

I think he would like it if we would take his ashes out to sea, she said in a dreamy tone of voice.

Out to sea? You mean out into the ocean? Mom, he hated sand — he never even went to the beach!

I realized, at this point, that reason has no place when it comes to honoring the dead. It becomes more about the psyches of the survivors than about the dead person. My mother needed a ceremony, an event, a plan. So I told her that anything she decided would be okay with me.

In mid-May, she told my sister and me that she had responded to an ad in the local paper, advertising the sea burial services of a retired Unitarian minister named Edward Downing. The Reverend Downing (or Ed, as my mother was already calling him) was the owner and captain of a schooner, a floating funeral chapel of sorts, which could be chartered for the purpose of scattering the cremains of a loved one out in the Atlantic Ocean. She sounded buoyant about this find, almost as though she had come upon an exciting travel opportunity — like a cruise to the Baltic Sea or the Indian Ocean. Ed had informed my mother that he could conduct a nondenominational service out at sea if she would want one. She explained that her husband was adamant that there be no service of any kind surrounding his death, and she needed to honor his wishes. My mother reported that Ed was understanding. She then went on to suggest to us some possible dates in the summer; we settled on one and proceeded to buy plane tickets to Long Island in mid-July.

The boat was called The Last Tango, which was better, I suppose, than the names my sister and I made up (Mourning, Noon & Night, Wing and a Prayer, Blessed Be, Good Grief, Last Laugh). The schooner was docked in a slip at Three Mile Harbor Marina in East Hampton, about a 40- minute drive from my mother’s house. She invited a close family friend and my father’s nurse to join us at the house on Friday, July 20, 2001, at 9:30 a.m. Given that my husband and two children, and my sister’s two children were going to be in attendance, we decided to drive two cars to the marina. My husband offered to drive my mother’s car, transporting my mother, her friend, the nurse and our 22-year-old daughter. My sister volunteered to drive the rental car that carried me, my 18-year-old son and her two children, ages 13 and 9. As both cars pulled out of the driveway, I made a quick mental inventory:

Is everyone in the cars?
Do we have jackets, sweaters, sunscreen?
Do we have a map?

It suddenly occurred to me that we had forgotten one thing. I raised my voice and said, Hold it! We forgot Dad! My sister started laughing loudly as she slowed down. I rolled down the passenger window and waved to the other car. They rolled down their windows and I could tell my mother was irritated with the thought of a delay. She had a look on her face that was not curious, but rather annoyed.

We forgot something! We don’t have Dad! I yelled out the window. Again, my sister and the kids in the back seat started howling, which made my mother furious. I got out of the car and ran across the lawn with my arms up in the air, hamming it up for the benefit of the kids and my sister. I opened the front door and picked up a shopping bag that contained my father. He was in the hall closet; I think my mother never considered that he needed to come along with us.

I ran back across the lawn carrying the shopping bag in my left hand while my right hand was making a thumbs-up sign. My sister was still laughing. The people in the other car (other than my husband, who looked happily entertained) had stern and exasperated looks on their faces, not enjoying the irony and humor all playing out in front of them on the lawn before we took off to meet the Reverend Edward Downing on The Last Tango.

He was awaiting our arrival when we pulled into the marina in East Hampton. There were about 100 slips on multiple floating docks, mooring yachts and sailboats of all sizes. My mother had been given instructions to go to slip 51 on Dock A. We walked down a series of piers looking for The Last Tango and its captain. When we got to Dock A, the Reverend Ed Downing came toward us wearing a striped sea cap and yellow waterproof pants and a jacket, looking like an ad out of an L.L.Bean catalog or some store on Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard. He introduced himself as Ed Downing — so from then on, we all dropped the Reverend. For the rest of the day, we called him Ed, following my mother’s lead.

She was charmed by him — a tall, handsome man, with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, kind eyes and a minister’s gift for articulation. He was charming and at the same time, reserved. His voice was deep, a baritone no doubt, and it penetrated the loud clinking and jarring noises of the boats and rigs bobbing against the docks.

Ed, I want you to meet my children, Gail and Alison, my son-in-law, Peter, my grandchildren, Emily, Alex, Jake and Adam, and my friends Nina and Virginia, my mother said in a rather formal way.

Ed proceeded to shake hands with each of us, saying our names slowly as he looked dolefully into our eyes. He helped each of us onto the boat and pointed to where we should sit for the first part of the trip out to sea. Once we were all situated on various parts of the deck, Ed navigated The Last Tango out of the slip into the bay of the Long Island Sound.

It took a good half hour of sailing to reach Montauk at the tip of Long Island. Ed pointed out various landmarks and mansions of rap singers and movie stars. At this point, it felt more like a tour than a memorial service excursion, but since my mother had told Ed we would not be wanting a religious service, I guess he decided to go overboard in the secular department.

Once we were past Montauk, the Sound opened up to the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a breathtakingly beautiful day, only a few cumulous clouds in the otherwise endless blue sky. The sun was bright, but out at sea we all wore heavy shirts or jackets under the life preservers, since the sea air was chilly. It was about 11:00 a.m. when Ed did something he called “heaving to” — it was as if the boat just parked itself and bobbed in place. It was suddenly quiet, no noise coming from the sails, the wind, the water. Instant peacefulness. No forward or sideways movement. We could have been on a toy boat floating in someone’s bathtub.

Ed stood up and said that this would be a good place to start the process of spreading the ashes. He suggested that as we each took a handful, we might think of telling a story or a memory of Daniel Hartman. Or, he said, we could read a poem or just be silent. The shopping bag containing the plastic urn of my father’s ashes was next to my mother. Peter stood up, took the urn out of the bag and then helped my mother stand to take the first turn. My mother had a poem scrunched up in her pocket, which she took out to read. It was the first three stanzas of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas. She held onto Peter as she read:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

After she finished the poem, she took some ashes from the urn Peter was still holding and she tossed them over the side of the boat. We all stood up and watched them on the surface of the water. They seemed to almost sparkle, which was not in sync with my father’s personality; perhaps he had transformed in the process of cremation. Maybe all that dark, heavy anger and fury were burned away. His ashes looked more like shards of rock, shale perhaps, some big pieces mixed with smaller ones. I guessed they were bits of bone. I looked for metal pieces from his hips, but there were none. They were probably disposed of during the incineration process.

Next up was my mother’s friend Nina, who, by the way, grew up in France. She sprinkled some ashes into the ocean while reciting a prayer in French. Then the nurse, Virginia, followed and said, You are free now, Danny, as she scattered a large handful of ashes into the sea. The grandchildren took their turns next. Alison’s sons did not say anything, but were fascinated with what the ashes looked and felt like. The nine-year-old looked sheepish as he took two handfuls — my sister reassured him that it was fine. And then my daughter, who was crying, took a small framed photograph out of her bag. She held it up so we could see it: it was a picture of her grandfather holding her when she was about two. They have identical expressions on their faces. I put my arm around her and helped her stand so she could take her turn with the ashes. Then my son stood up and took an object out of his pocket. He said: This is a compass Grandpa gave me once. He said it was from his time in the Navy. He told me he wanted me to have it so that I would always know what direction I am going in — but the compass was broken so I guess I‘ll have to find my own way. Everyone laughed, which was needed, and he took a handful of ashes and tossed them into the water.

Next, Peter spoke. He said that my father had been a great father-in-law and that it had been Peter’s privilege to spend time with him in the last months of his life. He took a small amount of ashes and dropped them overboard. Then my sister told some funny stories about my father. One was about how he used to fake deathbed scenes with her. Each of them had a part they knew well:

Alison (sounding rushed and urgent): Dad, Dad, where is the money?

Dad (lying in bed pretending he is almost choking, close to death): The money
is … it’s in the … in the …

Alison: Yes, Dad … where? Where? Where is the money?

Dad (sounding as though there is not enough oxygen): It’s in the … right side …right side of the … the …

Alison (leaning over toward his face): the right side of the … what, Dad?… the right side of what? …

Dad (with almost no energy left): the right side of the … in the back … right, in back … of the … His voice trails off.

Then Dad pretended to die. And they would both crack up with peals of laughter.

Next was my turn. I had been thinking for days about what I would say when I scattered his ashes. I could perform, telling some appropriate story; I could read a poem or a passage about death. But you see, my father was the most difficult person in my life. I had spent much of my childhood afraid of him. He called me terrible names; he shamed me constantly; he let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I was a disappointment to him. Eventually, I escaped his chokehold and developed strength that would serve me the rest of my life. But as a child, I did not know that there would be this silver lining. I lived with him for 18 years and then, as soon as I could, I left. And I never went back, except for visits now and then. Over the ensuing years, I learned that his anger was more about him than it was about me. I was his target, the object onto which he displaced all his vitriol. This knowledge allowed me to understand him as a person who had not always been my father, a mixed up angry man who never lived the life he wanted to live.

So I took a handful of his body, now in the form of bony ash, and started to speak:

My father was the most difficult person in my life. So as I let go of these ashes, I am giving back to him all of his terrible words that have echoed in my brain all these years. They are your words, Dad. They have nothing to do with me. And even though you have always hated sand, I hope you make peace in the salty sea.

And with that, I let the ashes slowly trickle through my fingers into the water. I leaned over the boat, stretching my arms so I could wash my hands of his incinerated body or maybe of the relationship; and then, like a self-administered baptism, I cupped my hands, letting water flow into them and then raised them to my face, wetting it with cold sea water. I stood back up and looked at my mother. She was looking down. I then looked at Peter. He came over and embraced me. I leaned against him and sobbed into his shoulder.

Ed’s deep voice broke the intensity of the moment, thanking us all for sharing what we did. He suggested we sit in silence as we emptied the remainder of the ashes into the ocean. The grandchildren did the final honors and we all sat quietly, watching the ashes twinkling on the ocean’s surface. We could hear the boat rocking in the water, as my father’s remains gently descended into the darkness of the sea.

On our way back to the marina, Ed continued his tour of the south shore of Long Island. There was a sense of relief in our little group, with people gawking at houses and laughing about the extreme extravagance. I sat quietly. I feel allergic to this part of the world. I never fit into New York — even as a small child. It was not my milieu. On this gorgeous afternoon, with salty air and warm sun bathing us, I knew what I was looking at was beautiful. I just felt, in every cell in my body, that I did not belong there. I was like a peach sitting on the shelf in a hardware store. Right thing, wrong place.

We thanked Ed warmly and profusely. He hugged my mother and then my sister and me, and helped each one of us step up onto the dock when we got back to Three Mile Harbor Marina. As we walked to the parking lot, my mother announced that she was going to take us all to lunch at The Lobster Roll in Montauk. This was a favorite restaurant of my parents, a very laid-back place, one the most famous restaurants on Long Island. It was the kind of place you went to after swimming at the beach all morning or afternoon; there was sand on the floor, red and white paper tablecloths on all the surfaces. They were famous for lobster sandwiches, steamers, calamari, mussels and fried clam strips — and onion rings.

It was the late side of the lunch hour by the time we got to the restaurant, so we were able to get two picnic tables outside on their deck. The cousins sat at one of them, and the adults at the other. The day remained balmy, a wind coming from the east, spraying sticky sea air over everything. The atmosphere was charged with memories: the way my body felt in the presence of my mother and my sister, the food, the smells, the temperature, the light — above all, the Long Island sunlight at the beach, the way it refracted in the salty-humid air. Yes, it was the light on the deck of The Lobster Roll that brought me back to some time I could barely remember. Through it, I saw my father claiming invincibility, as was his way.

While we were waiting for the food we ordered, I got up and walked to the sandy area off the deck. I needed some space, a little privacy. I looked at the sky — the light filtered, it seemed, by wispy gossamer. I heard an airplane flying low to the ground. I looked up and saw a small propeller plane flying east. I remembered there was a tiny airport not far away, farther out toward the tip of Montauk Point. My father had taken me there a few times over the years after stopping at The Lobster Roll. We would stand behind a weatherworn cedar picket fence and watch planes take off and land on its singular runway. Looking back, I think my father went there to dream about the life he did not choose. He had wanted to be in the air, commanding an aircraft, being an expert in aerodynamics - not saving people from heart disease. At the time of these visits, I did not know the story of his flight instructor, or even of his wish to be a pilot. I only knew he got uncharacteristically quiet while we were gazing upward.

And now at this very moment, he was floating down into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean — at least his ashes were. When I returned to the table to eat my lobster roll, I felt a calm relief that he was no longer living a life defined for him by his mother, his wife, his children. Maybe he was rising up, in some other form, some energy that was taking him aloft. Maybe he was evaporating, along with all his bitterness, into the atmosphere above the water, into the weightlessness of air.