To the end, he nourished his loathing for my mother’s family. When he was eighty, he had to go for prostate surgery, and everybody was worried, it was very scary. Eventually, he was wheeled out of the operating room, and the surgeon said he’d come through very well, but my mother wanted to make sure. “I need to go in and see him.” So they let her into the recovery room and she came out a few minutes later, crying
“My God,” I said, “what happened?”
“He’s cursing my brother Nat,” she said.
“What?”
“He’s cursing my brother Nat. What does he want from my brother Nat? Nat’s been dead for forty years.”
So I went in and asked him, “What do you want from Mom? Why are you cursing her brother Nat? Nat’s been dead for forty years.” And my father said, “Dead don’t make you better.”
Alan King. Name Dropping