AN OLD MAN GONE
311
fonnal a word. I mean only that every fact belonging to the process
by which my father's body was disposed of seemed to require of me,
not only that I should in the direct sense experience it, but also, and
with a special force, that I should actively and conscientiously think
about it, even "take a position," as
if
there were some definite
"program" at stake that was every moment in danger of being
misunderstood or compromised, though indeed this "danger" existed
not quite on a public level but chiefly for me alone. I was anxious,
in fact, that my father's death should not prove a disappointment,
and I examined every detail for what it might have to offer. The
"problem" was: what could I legitimately hope to find?
This question, at any rate, is not pointless; it is said so often,
and with such obvious truth, that funerals are made to' serve the
living. And yet the issue always came back to the dead man himself;
if the funeral was for us, it was still his funeral,
all
the more his
fDr
its appearance of having been created
ad hoc;
and the chief
difficulty, for me, was to see some kind of "justice" done to an
image of my father, part mine and part what I believed to be his
Dwn,
that had not yet come clear and probably never would. I
found myself offended, for instance, by the tendency of some of
those around me to say that he had "passed away" when they meant
he had died; this seemed not only an evasion on their part (though so
accustomed a one that it could hardly have been effective), but
also an injustice to my father, who,
if
he was often incapable of the
right delicacies, was likewise incapable of the wrong. But I too, so
militant (inwardly) to assert the corpse's absolute deadness, was
to say later, with all suitable nodding of the head, that my father
"would have been pleased" with his funeral-what an absurdity!
My father himself, though he believed in the reality of death, put
an extra clause in his will asking in effect that
his
children should
think well of him and approve of his dispositions, and even sug–
gesting that he loved them all equally, which was not true: the truth
was only that he wanted them all to love him equally. And there
were times during his illness when he became a child and allowed
himself to be soothed like a child.
Indeed, I have already misrepresented him: he had not really
said "no nonsense"-that was my invention to give
his
funeral
"character." At most he had said that death changes a man intO' a
