Diana Wichtel: Another Father’s Day marks the passage of time

Diana Wichtel discovers her father's headstone is visited by "friends" he never knew. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

A daughter-in-law barbecued mussels in bacon. The 14-year-old grandson cooked sausages. The daughter baked a lemon cake. Sit down, we told three normally all-hands-on-deck dads of two generations. Have a drink. Have a day off.

The passage of time was marked by the increasing size of a family that, a few years ago, was shrinking as those who stood between my generation and the unavoidable contemplation of mortality moved on.

The changing of the guard. This year the oldest grandson has finally got too big to frighten the bejesus out of me by erupting into the room via the dog door. He’s passed that rite of passage on to his younger brother. The drawings on the cards from two of the grandsons, 3 and 8 and observant little monkeys, caught hilarious likenesses of their grandfather. We all acted like loons, competing to get the most dazzling smile out of the newest baby, who was passed around because he sleeps best in someone’s arms. I thought guiltily about how, back in the day, I couldn’t wait to get my little demand feeders, one I called the Jaws of Doom, into their bassinets so as to enjoy the guilty pleasure of tea and a magazine without a passenger on board. The baby snoozed contentedly on his uncle’s shoulder through lunch.

Father’s Day. It’s not easy for everyone. For ages it was difficult for me. My father had disappeared from my life when I was a teenager and the rest of us moved from Vancouver to Auckland. Later there was a stepfather who I knew would like to be called Dad but I just couldn’t. After he and Mum lived for a while in Japan, I settled on Papa-san, which felt like less of a betrayal.

We finally tracked down Dad, a Jew buried in the psychiatric hospital section of a Catholic cemetery in Brockville – where? – Ontario. What to do with the guilt, the too-lateness. We made a new headstone. When we gathered in Brockville in 2016 to unveil it with as much family as we could muster, my cousin told me it was Father’s Day in Canada.

Not long before this Father’s Day, a friend sent photos. She is a writer who lives here but is from Brockville. She’d read my memoir about Dad, Driving to Treblinka, and promised to visit him. She said, “I finally made it! And, so it seems, I am not the only one...” The photos show the new headstone, on which we set in stone something of the life the Third Reich tried - and almost succeeded - to erase. His children and grandchildren are listed so, as my daughter said, he didn’t have to be alone.

In the photos the top of the headstone is covered with stones in the Jewish tradition, some decorated, left mostly by strangers. There is also a cigar butt at the foot of the headstone. The cemetery’s groundskeeper told my friend a man comes by most days to light a candle and smoke a cigar. Did we know about that? she wondered. We did. My brother’s family lives not far from Brockville. My niece, visiting her grandfather, left a note for the mystery visitor. We met him on our last visit. He’d never known Dad in life. We hugged. I said, “Thank you for taking care of my father.” He whispered, “Your father has been a good friend to me.” Dad, a dedicated smoker, would enjoy the cigar.

Some of the visitors have googled Dad’s name and written to me. One woman said that during her Covid lockdown walk she was drawn to the Star of David on the headstone, glowing in the spring sun.

On Father’s Day I thought about all of that and how relationships end, sometimes tragically, but they don’t have to stop. Lord knows it’s too late to change the past. You can change the narrative that you have about it, or have it changed for you by the kindness of strangers. It’s never too late to try.