November 2002			The Days of the Dolphins Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Bear? Annual Report 2001-2002 Annual Donor Report 2001-2002	E Line Sports Alumni Passages Books From the Field Classes First-Person Huskiana
		Grief and Greed Families can become battlefields after the death of a parent. By Herbert Hadad Although I thanked the doctor for his call that night, I resented he hadn’t saved my dad. He’d said they’d taken heroic measures, but it was my eighty-eight-year-old father, not the doctors and nurses, who had fought heroically. I gathered my family to tell them Grandpa had died, then went out by myself into the steady but windless snowfall. I faced the woods to pray for Dad’s soul in heaven, thanking God for giving me such a good dad and for allowing us so many years together, and cried. Then I made a round of snowballs, kicked open the kitchen door, and started firing. The children ran out to gather their own ammunition, and a snowball fight raged, indoors and out. My wife, Evelyn, who loved Dad, didn’t join in, yet her expression said something right was going on. My sister, brother, and I exchanged condolences by phone. Selma, my sister, asked me to write a eulogy; she and her husband, Clarence, would arrange for a funeral home service and burial in a Boston suburb. The next day, my office colleagues paid their respects and left me alone to write my good-bye. It was about Daddy’s collection of hats, which was vast, and which reflected his personality and character—stylish, dignified, practical, pious. I explained how his favorite hat was his yarmulke, how his devotion to God was second only to his devotion to his family. (Later, with the help of Israeli and Egyptian coworkers, I transcribed Dad’s epitaph—“Shepherd of His Family, Servant of His God”—into both Hebrew and Arabic.) On my way home that afternoon, I stopped at my favorite pizzeria for a few slices of white and some comfort. Nicky, the owner, and his staff were friends, and I knew they’d want to know about my father. When one counterman, like my father an immigrant from the Middle East, heard the news, his eyes moistened, and he began to rock in sorrow and tap his knuckles against his heart. Then he charged me for the slices. The stop was doubly significant. On a freezing night two months earlier, my son Charles Aram and I, staying with Dad at his Hyde Park garden apartment, took him out for what would be our last meal together. He asked to go to Pizzeria Uno because he knew it would please Charles and me. He ordered the chicken. Now our family sped to Boston, seemingly more numb than grief-stricken. At the funeral home, I was pleased to see several of Dad’s cronies from his housing complex and shul and some of my friends from the old days. (Mom was in a nursing home, unable to plan or participate in a funeral. It seemed cruel to tell her her Morris was dead, so we never did.) I was reviewing my notes beside the plain pine coffin that contained my father when Selma slipped into the aisle next to me and whispered, “Dad left nothing. Clarence will explain later.” In his wisdom, Dad had prepared Evelyn and me for this moment. For the past several years, every visit to Hyde Park brought hugs and kisses from Mom and Dad, food and drink, and a ritual. Dad would solemnly kneel at the small safe in his bedroom closet, ask for my key, pull out sheaves of paperwork, and say, “In case something happens to me, I want you to know about my financial affairs. I want you to have a copy of my will and know what I’m leaving you and your wife and your beautiful children.” Though his estate was modest, he intended to be generous and fair and thoughtful to everyone in the family. “My father loved hats,” I began, and completed the eulogy without faltering. A small motorcade and burial followed. My children were still in their early teens, and I was able to remain strong for them. We returned to my sister’s roomy house for a reception of bagels and pastries. My family contributed some of Dad’s favorite foods—hummus bi tahina, Syrian bread, olives, and baklawa—purchased from a Middle East grocery. Selma and Clarence, an accountant, brought up the estate again. “Not today,” I said. Since my sister and brother-in-law didn’t want to host the traditional shivah, the next morning my son Edward Salim and I set out early to buy cakes and drinks for those who would visit Dad’s apartment for the last time. Fortunately, we also bought some roast chicken and trimmings, for that afternoon a blizzard slammed into the city, a storm I interpreted as God’s sadness over Dad’s death, stranding us for two days. We finally dug out, donated the cakes and whiskey to the shul Dad had helped found, and made our way home to New York. When friends paid their respects, I asked whether they’d seen greed clash with grief after a parent died. Many had. Some were still upset; others had converted their bitterness into humor. Antonio and his wife, Dana, had a story. I’d first met Antonio at a track meet in junior high. I loved going to his apartment; affection and kindness seemed to abound from his parents, doting grandparents from Italy, and slightly older and therefore glamorous sister, Charlotte. But as Antonio and Charlotte grew into adulthood, things changed. The family owned a beautiful North Shore hideaway near the ocean. (In high school, a group of us had visited once, raiding the liquor cabinets and making it home by the grace of God.) Antonio grimaced as he told me how Charlotte and her husband, Bruno, had seized ownership of the house along with other family assets. They moved Antonio and Charlotte’s mom, Victoria, to the South, into a little house near theirs, and tried to block all communication between mother and son. It got worse. “My dad had died years earlier,” Antonio said. “One day, Dana and I decided to visit his grave in West Roxbury. To our shock, it was empty.” His sister and brother-in-law had apparently convinced cemetery operators that Antonio was dead and, as sole surviving family members, they wanted Dad’s remains to reside closer to home. “They stole Federico,” he said. Still, the last laugh, if not the estate, belonged to Antonio. When Victoria died one winter, Charlotte and Bruno began ripping through her cottage, thinking the rather eccentric woman might have hidden some riches there. After Antonio heard this, he sent Charlotte and Bruno an urgent message: “Don’t light the fireplace. Mom kept all her money in the flue!” The cottage didn’t have central heating; Charlotte and Bruno had most certainly used the fireplace for warmth as they searched. With a few well-chosen words, Antonio managed to send their greedy dreams up in smoke. In another family, two once close brothers, Benjamin and Barry, had grown geographically and emotionally distant. Still, they agreed to split whatever estate remained after their parents were gone. “Some years later, Barry suggested I sign some cards allowing him to move some money around,” Benjamin told me. “I did it without batting an eye.” But things turned bad. After Benjamin tried unsuccessfully to borrow some money to buy a house, Barry called him. “He revealed he’d taken total control of what was left, and my family and I were excluded,” Benjamin said. “I don’t know for sure how much was involved, but we saw records detailing transactions of more than a million dollars. “The funny thing is,” said Benjamin wistfully, “I don’t think he needed the money. I was more than willing to give him everything if he did.” Selma began phoning us. “Good news,” she said. “Clarence found an account, and there’s almost twenty-five thousand dollars for you and your family.” I told her that didn’t sound accurate. Subsequent calls added a few more crumbs to our legacy. After several months—and what I imagine were anguished discussions among Selma, Clarence, and their children—she phoned one night to offer the correct sum. “Send the paperwork,” I said. It came, and the estate was settled. Or so we thought. A year later, after no communication, they sent a mysterious invoice, stating we owed $125 for “incidentals” surrounding the funeral of our dad. But Daddy had told us all expenses associated with his death and burial had been prepaid. We studied the invoice and the accompanying note, and I suddenly realized there was only one explanation. “Remember the bagels and pastries after the funeral?” I said to Evelyn. “They want us to pay for them.” Herbert Hadad, a Northeastern graduate and award-winning writer, lives outside New York City.