On the Death of My Father - January 2, 2024

There will be no more car magazines.

Of course, there will be. In some form. But nobody will erase the car pictures and redraw them. We’ll never know what a Cybertruck would look like with a rumble seat and fins. We’ll never see a Volkswagen Beetle SUV or an electric Studebaker minivan.

There will be no more children’s books.

Of course there will be, but they won’t be like the ones he wrote for his grandchildren. There will be no more William Walden Wilde or Roy N Renta. Merlin Minos Mot cast his last spell. Piffle Poffle baked his last waffle. And N.E. Wair is nowhere.

There will be no more English professors. No more Moby Dick or Hester Prynne or Walden Pond. Young Goodman Brown resides in Hell. Billy Budd hangs from the gallows. All the world’s diaries are on fire.

Let them burn.

Never again will someone give me feedback on my writing. Not like him. Yes, they will point out flaws I missed; they will encourage me with praise and sadden me with disappointment.

But he could upend everything with a few words. When I sent him a draft, I’d set aside two weeks because I knew any negative feedback would make me stop writing that long.

When he was in the hospital last, he’d asked me to read him my novel. I hate that novel. Four years. Fuck that thing. But he asked, so I read it to him as he moved in and out of his delirium. I thought he’d fallen asleep. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But he turned to me and whispered one word.

“Better.”

He said “better,” and it really was.

No one else could do that. No one else ever will again.

I’m sorry. This should be a time when we celebrate his life rather than bemoan his loss. I should talk about the Packard and parades. How he’d plan family trips with 800 nearly-identical options you’d have to choose from. Then there’s the questionable food choices: flako and postum, schav and gefilte fish, cheap caviar and expensive coffee.

And pretzels. So many pretzels.

I should talk about how Simon called him Feefadder because he couldn’t pronounce “grandfather” and how it stuck. Once, a waiter in a loud restaurant couldn’t get his attention until we got him to yell FEEFADDER!

But all I can think about is how the world is broken. Yes, the sun will rise tomorrow, despite what Trump says. The Earth will continue to turn. But it won’t do it the same. It won’t do it right.

Because there are no more Feefadders.

Parents will still name their kids Steven. And they’ll still name their kids Earl. God forbid. And judging from his grandchildren, there will be more than enough Kagles.

Who knows? Maybe there will even be another Steven Earl Kagle some day.

But he won’t be a Feefadder.

He might be a grandfather or a grampa. He could be a Pop Pop or Opa or Zaide. But try as he might he’ll never quite fill the Feefadder-sized hole in the universe.

There will be no more Feefadders, and everything is worse because of it.