Vestiges

My friend's father died a little more than a month ago, and I went to his memorial service on Saturday. His death had not been unexpected, but he was young, only 70. He had been ravaged by an unusually brutal form of Parkinson's--Parkinson's Plus--that left him a shell of who he had been in less than two years. Death in some ways was true relief.

I only had the pleasure of meeting him a few times when he was still vibrant; I sat by his side several times in the nursing home in the weeks before he died. He enjoyed having you hold his hand and talk to him.

He as a man of great intellect and, it would appear, of the Old World in many ways.

I first met my friend in 2007, and she said that she was half-Turkish. She, like so many others, wondered if I were part Middle Eastern or Jewish. This was, of course, before I had found my family. Her father had immigrated to the United States from Istanbul, she said, and was a polymath. Was quirky. Spoke three languages fluently. He sounded fascinating to me.

I remember meeting him at one of her daughters' birthday parties and talking a little bit about old Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk, and Byzantine art; I spent the better part of a week in Istanbul once and had a wonderful time becoming lost in it, just wandering. I wished I could have spoken to my friend's father more about his family and growing up in Istanbul of the 1940's and 1950's. He was a rather shy man, though: an engineer, more at home with ideas than expressions of private concerns. He would much rather launch into excursions on Saint Augustine than talk about his feelings. My friend almost never spoke with him about his family or her family history.

That said, he was amazing about showing that he cared for her, even if he didn't say it explicitly. She always felt his unconditional love. He was the parent who went to every single sporting event without fail. He was the parent who helped her raise her daughter when she decided to have a child at 19 and never said a single word in judgment. He made a place for his granddaughter in his office so that he could help his daughter continue her studies. He took his granddaughter proudly to Rotary Club meetings. He was the parent, as my friend said at the memorial service, whom she would call if she had one phone call in jail. Because she knew he would support her always, 100%, without question.

Then there were the surprises. A letter from my friend's aunt revealed that he had been an actor in college; that he had lived in Italy after attaining his credentials. His ex-wife, my friend's mother, had not even known these things.

We saw images of a gloriously handsome young man on the screen, with Ray Bans and tousled black hair. He was educated by French Jesuits. As a young engineer, he helped build the first bridge to span the Bosporus. He came from an illustrious Ottoman family that had served the Sultan as physicians. He came to the United States on a lark and never returned "home" because he loved his children and knew that they were Americans.

His many friends at the service used the word "cussed" to describe him. Apparently he would offer up unsolicited criticism of the priest's words each week, saying, "I read something recently that would have strengthened your argument..." He loved to play Devil's advocate. He filled roles that no one else would fill; he taught Sunday School. He found a home in Christianity although raised in Islam because he said that it was the same God, after all. He brought a gift to every single event. Why? Because he was raised in Islam, although no one seemed to register this.

I recounted what I had learned of the remarkable life of my friend's father to Thomenon yesterday, and how his loss weighed so heavily on me. He responded, "Muppie, that's because the Old World is gone. This man came from the Old World. People like that don't exist anymore. Horribly sad."

My pain became more personal as I sat at a table with my friend and her family, and her in-laws. As the photographs would flash by on the screen, people would say, "Look! There's A! There's B! There's so-and-so!" All in different family faces, or in the baby pictures of my friend's father. As it should be. But of course this struck me all the more because belonging is foreign. We adoptees are relegated to another place where we do not fit, or if we fit it's too late; or it's too much; or it's too bothersome; or we must navigate the narrows with great care and skill. We miss out on history, on shared experiences, on so much. We have likenesses, but what else? What tests must we pass? There is incredible loss.

I was honored that I was able to share the memories of Ilhami Karaca, and I am all the more distraught that I missed out knowing my own father. The nearly 20 years since his death are so long ago, a wide gulf.