Missing Marshall

Two years ago today the person who probably most shaped who I am left this world. On November 23, 2023 I lost my dad, Marshall Zakarin. He died on Thanksgiving morning — a holiday he famously hated — a very Marshall-like final statement on a day he found contrived and centered on unappealing cuisine. His holiday exit from this realm made the logistics of his death even more complicated for me, his only child. This was also an exquisitely Marshall-like move.

I miss him terribly.

Grief is a funny thing. It’s about holding someone’s absence and presence all at the same time, which I am finding to be a disorienting experience. It leaves holes in the narrative of your existence. When you have shared so much with one person, anything that happens after their death contains the question mark of how you would have experienced it with them. “What would Marshall have thought of…” is a constant refrain for me. And there sure has been a lot of content these past two years to elicit that wonder.

After my mom died over 11 years ago, I got into the habit of checking in on him daily. My mom died suddenly, just weeks before my dad was scheduled to retire from his mildly insane existence as a produce distributor at the mildly insane Hunts Point Market in the Bronx (my dad being a featured actor in the cast of characters there, by the way). And then a month after my mom died his only sibling, my force-of-nature Aunt RoseLee, also died suddenly. So he went from having a bonkers schedule to suddenly having loads of time on his hands, without two of the most important women in his life around for him. So in I stepped.

I called him every weekday morning as I was getting ready for work or commuting to my office. Once he became adept at texting — a painful process, to be sure — we had a daily group text with me, my husband and kids, and Grumpa. Yes, my kids called him Grumpa. Or Marshall, like everyone else including me. Anyway, you get the idea. There wasn’t a day that went by without me hearing my dad’s musings on the world, him asking lots of questions about my work, and of course, him wanting to know every single thing my kids were up to. He had opinions and thoughts about everything, and they were all quite strong (yes I know, apples and trees). But to his credit, he was willing to wrestle with things he wasn’t comfortable with, and he could take a critical eye to some of the assumptions he had.

It made for a lot of lively, and at times maddening, conversations to start my day.

Now, two years since his death, I still find myself imagining these conversations. I think about the torrent of salty words my dad, a lifetime New York and forever hater of Donald Trump, would have used in discussing the election and all that has happened since. How he, as someone who worked with immigrants from around the world, would have despised Trump’s campaign of terror against immigrant communities. I imagine how happy he would have been when my organization led the advocacy to get comprehensive gun safety legislation passed in Massachusetts. How he would have made me print and mail (yes, snail mail) him a picture of me with the governor at the bill signing so he could show all his friends at synagogue. And most importantly, how he would have celebrated his grandkids’ graduation from college and their multitude of accomplishments since.

The absence of these conversations is the biggest hole in my present narrative. The presence of my constantly imagined morning calls doesn’t quite fill the hole. And this is just one way the absence of him sits alongside his forever presence in my life. Truly the wildest thing about grief.

*****

Since my dad died, the room he used in my house had boxes of his stuff piled in it. It was time to do something with the space. So my husband and I went through the boxes and cleaned out the room. Last month we painted it and got a new rug. And a few weeks ago, we moved my work desk and bookcase from our living room to their new location. Now the room is filled with books and outreach materials about gun violence prevention and all the trappings of the work he was so proud of. On the days I work from home I am so literally sitting in the space he occupied that his specially-procured easy chair is visible in the background of my zoom screen. He is absent from the room but so completely present at the same time. I think he would have loved my decision to move into that space — his space. It feels like one of the best ways to honor his memory, to do this work from the room that was his. To do the work he raised me to do.

He used to call me his chief rabble rouser. So raise rabble I will, his chair visible over my left shoulder. Absent but present all at the same time.

I am missing Marshall, but also deeply aware of his impact on my life. And I suspect there are many others holding all those same feelings as we enter this holiday season.

May your memories of your loved ones bring you comfort and a smile to your face. And may their presence be felt as strongly, if not more so, than their absence.