This Spot Reserved For Studs Terkel

From 1993 - 1998, I saw the Archers of Loaf about thirty times. I can't quite remember every show but I remember a good amount of them. With the reunion tour and reissues putting the Archers back on the radar, it has made me nostalgic and damn excited to reminisce.

I had this poster up on my wall for a long time. Then my sister had it. It might be somewhere in her old room. I'd love to find it.

1993
I'm pretty sure I only saw them once in '93 but it was a good one. It was part of the six band "World Series of Rock n Roll" that I put together for WXJM. It was the second show that I had booked. The bill was The Technical Jed (signed to Spin Art that night!), The Nightblooms, Throw that Beat in the Garbagecan!, Slant 6, Small Factory, and the Archers. I don't remember much about this show other than running around a lot, having a good time, and thinking the Archers were great. I'm pretty sure I was more impressed with Small Factory though.

Poster design by the late Jesse Rosenberg. I found this online because it was uploaded by the incomparable Ben Finkelstein.

1994
January
The second time I saw the band was as part of The Working Holiday weekend at the Black Cat. I was right up front with Jeremy for their set. They completely and utterly blew me away. Perhaps it was being able to actually watch the band rather than worrying about running the show? Or perhaps it was the great sound at the Black Cat over the crap sound at the P.C. Ballroom. Who knows? It was a blistering set and it remains one of my all time favorite shows. From the first song, Fat (which included a most excellent Eric Bachmann lunge of at least six feet to make it to the microphone to sing the first line), to the last second, this show blew me away.

April
There was that great show at the first MacRock. Where was that? Was it ODU? It was an incredible 2 day or so bill if memory serves correctly. Superchunk, right? Polvo. Archers. Helium. There were at least 20 of us from the radio station there. Maybe more. And there was a huge huge party in one of the hotel rooms one of the nights.

The Archers played a brand new song The Greatest of All Time and everyone thought it was about the recently deceased Kurt Cobain. As in he had been dead for like 3 days or something.

I think Nicole Curry bought the awesome What Did You Expect? 7 inch at this show. How the hell do I remember that? Did that really happen?

Summer
They played at the 5th anniversary of Merge Records at the Cat's Cradle. I went down there with a few friends. My girlfriend at the time and I stayed at Eric's tiny apartment while he stayed at a friend's place. The building we stayed in ended up being on the cover of the first Barry Black album.

I think it was during this trip that I began to hatch my plan to move to North Carolina after graduation. Or perhaps that was later. Either way, it was a fun weekend.

Fall
They played a great packed show at Tramps at CMJ. The Vs. The Greatest of All Time EP had either just come out or was just about to. Either way, they played all 5 songs and they sounded absolutely unreal. I think they had played a couple at the Mergefest show but hearing them in NY right as the EP was being released was great. Biting the hand that feeds.

I booked them for the 2nd time in Harrisonburg. They played at the late (not so great) Joker's. I had Raygun Theatre open. After the show, the band stayed at the Planetarium and I remember staying up way too late hanging out with Eric on the porch. I'm pretty sure I skipped my morning classes the next day. No wonder my grades weren't so good senior year.

1995
Vee Vee came out and the world went crazy for the Archers. Well, at least the indie rock world that I lived in did. Sometime during this year, I took my 12-year-old sister to see them at the Black Cat.

Winter
Saw them open for Weezer and then hung out with the band backstage instead of watching Weezer's set. The next day, I met up with them and got in the van and headed to their show that night in Richmond. Jamie and Marc met me at that show and almost died on the road both on the drives there and back because of deer on I-64.

Spring
I booked them for the last time. This time it was at the aptly named Little Grill. It was so crowded that a crowd gathered around outside watching the band through the window. They always were loud but seeing them in such a tiny space completely amplified the craziness. This was easily my favorite show that I ever booked.

Summer and Fall
I must have seen them at the Black Cat at some point this summer, right? And then I moved to Durham and saw them many times. I also saw them in September I believe back at the PC Ballroom.

1996/1997
The shows run together. I was in NC until 8/96. All the Nation's Airports came out in Fall of '96. The Chapel Hill shows I saw at this time were great as they worked on refining the songs that ended up on Airports. It was also during this time that my dad convinced Eric to name an instrumental (Bumpo) on the album after his favorite late cat. But that's another story for another time. Long story short - it was kind of an emotional blackmail tactic if you ask me. One of my favorite shows during this time was a surprise show under the name Amy Carter. The one song I remember absolutely killing it each and every time was Distance Comes in Droves.

1998
The end. White Trash Heroes came out and people didn't really seem to care. The album was pretty uneven but it did have some truly great songs on it. I saw them on a Saturday night at Tramps. It was a good show but nothing incredible. The next night, they played an unannounced show at Brownie's. And THAT show was great. I saw the writing on the wall. It was pretty clear that this was the end. I had a great time and savored every song knowing that it was probably the last time I'd see them. "This isn't fun anymore. It's not as fun as it was."

2011
Yes! The time was definitely right for a reunion. I watched every song that surfaced on YouTube from their surprise reunion show in January. Sujan got me tickets for four of the shows this summer. And I went to all four. They were even better than I thought they would be. They sounded fantastic. I would have liked a little more variation in the song selections but the songs they did play were good ones. I love that they wrote their reunion song (Nostalgia) 16 years before they really needed it.

Jeremy wrote about the two New York shows in an e-mail.

brooklyn - music hall of williamsburg - sat. june 25

it was sold out so there was no room to skank due to wall to wall hipsters. the crowd was rabid and knew every word, shouting along to every song including what did you expect. it was kind of amazing to see so much passion 13 years after their dissolution and the band was visibly taken aback by the hero's welcome. the started with audiowhore and ripped through the rest of their set with an intensity and energy that shocked me. they all looked so happy to be up there and so healthy. matt and eric johnson looked as fit and trim as they were 15 years ago and while mark and eric bachmann show their age a bit more they both never flagged in energy and together they made such a wonderfully cacophonous sound. they played most of the hits and i was amazed anew at how amazing their songs sound live and how revved up they are. they had a short midtempo section of 2 or 3 songs but even those had the crowd in a frenzy and then they finished it up with two encores, the second of which was the perfect ending to the night - smokin pot in the hot city followed by bacteria. some were annoyed by the chanting crowd, mooky dudes giving high fives and clueless ladies in little black dresses who appeared completely out of place but dan and i didn't care. it was great but not simply for nostalgic reasons, it was simply an amazing show.

manhattan - webster hall - sun. june 26

a larger venue featuring beautiful chandeliers and $8 bottles of budweiser. the crowd here was more subdued and the sound wasn't as cruching but it was still an amazing set and the crowd was so excited to be there. they didn't sing along with every word, i actually noticed no one singing along to waht did you expect, but the band was excited to see the size of the crowd and their enthusiasm. they started this show with strangled by the stereo wire and then launched into a similarly paced and energetic set. there was a lot of overlap between the two nights but when you get to hear harnessed in slums live two nights in a row you don't complain. in brooklyn, they played 4/5 of greatest of all time but here they played the whole thing ending encore one with all hail the black market and setting my heart a flutter. the final encore of scenic pastures and form and file left me wanting more and a better final encore but that's a minor quibble. what's next for the band?

Webster Hall
The Black Cat show was great. Mike Lyxx, of Raygun Theatre fame, was with me. We were really close to the stage (not 1994 close but 5th row close). We were so close and it was so loud that I was able to sing along to every song without even hearing myself. It was perfect. The next night at the Trocadero in Philly was a bit of a letdown because it was so damn hot and we couldn't get too close to the stage and were stuck under the balcony. But it was fun to go with Sujan for the 2nd time and I'm glad my sister enjoyed it. She was able to snag a balcony seat which definitely added to her enjoyment.

The band was exactly the way I remembered if not a lot less drunk. Matt still was the wild card with one funny comment and story after another. After the Manhattan show, I ended up catching up with Eric and their manager Shawn (who I interned for for a few months back in '95). I also spoke a little to Mark who remembered me as the guy who introduced him to Space Ghost. I love that. There are worse things to be remembered for.

Sam and Otis have become obsessed with them. They have moved on from Harnessed in Slums to Web in Front as their favorite. They call that one Backbone, of course. Their other favorite is Underdogs of Nipomo which they call The Beep Song. For the past three months, the only songs they want sung to them at bedtime are Archers songs. Who needs the ABC's when you have Throat Song?

The Rabbi's Eulogy

Of all the things we can say about Matt Raphael, one stands out in my mind. Matt Raphael was… his own man. Even if he would call you on the telephone and pretend to be someone else… he was, wrapped in sharp wit, a great sense of humor, solid integrity balanced with a sense of mischievous menschlikeit… he was his own man.

And although he might, or might not, have been… troubled by the traditional prayers we recite on this sad occasion… I think he would be…amused in his own way, by the stories we will share, and the obvious love of family and friends around him.

Over time and many conversations I thought I had gotten to know Matt somewhat well, but I learned over the past few days and in descriptions of some alarming adventures that I had seen only a small side of him. For some of you, perhaps, in these words you will have your own sense of this man broadened a bit as well.

Matthew Raphael was born in 1944 in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest of two children of Fred and Elaine Raphael His father worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and must have had some kind of government clearance in order to do so, despite certain… left-wing tendencies in his own life. Actually Fred and Elaine met at a social gathering of like-minded socialists, and they almost didn’t meet at all – the train Fred needed to catch to reach his fellow Trotsky-ites took a long time to come, and he said to himself if it was not there on the count of 30 he was going home. At “27” he saw the lights coming, waited, went, and met Elaine.

Matthew did not remain in Brooklyn for long, although he did have an early memory of feeding the ducks in Prospect Park. The family moved to West Palm Beach, though, when he was very young, and before Rosemary was born.

Matt did say, very clearly, to his sister that she ruined his life by being born. And that she should have been born on Pearl Harbor Day, instead of just near it, since she was such a disaster. He called her a crybaby, she would burst into tears, and he would say “see, see!” And when the two of them shared a room he would toss things over the divider between them, to distract her or get her attention. There was a time when Elaine was distracted enough by her children’s interaction that, when driving, she turned around to scold them and promptly ran into a tree.

Despite this superficially inauspicious beginning, however, all was not as it seemed, and Matt and Rosemary got along very well. They were very close; losing their mother at such a young age brought them even closer together. If the fights were real at all they got it out of their systems as kids; they never fought as adults, and even recently, at a time when Matt was convinced he was not going to make it through the day, his words were “I want my sister.”

Matt was quite the reader – over the past year he and Rosemary shared a Kindle account, reading the same books, reminiscent of the days when she would go into his room and dive into whatever he had read, whether it was age-appropriate for her or not. Thus at a young age did she devour Catcher in the Rye, and Tropic of Cancer.

From his earliest years Matt loved baseball. He would play APBA, the first baseball card game with dice, invented in the 50’s and set up so that, based on a roll of the dice and last year’s statistics, you determined the probability of your chosen player getting a hit.

And music. Alice, Matt’s aunt, tells the story of when Matt was around four years old, and he loved the juke box in restaurants. Once when he family was out to dinner, he played so many songs he ran out of nickels, and asked his family for more. But they wouldn’t give him any. So he walked around the restaurant, asking nickels of all the other customers.

Matt’s grandparents eventually threw out all of his collections, his baseball cards and comic books, and his old ’45 records as well. But Daniel has, framed, the first album he ever bought, a Buddy Holly record.

Matt had polio in his legs when he was young; he could not walk for a year. But being in a wheelchair did not stop him from going out, or from getting in trouble. One day he was out playing with friends, shooting rubber tipped dart guns towards a nearby road. One of the darts hit home more than intended, perhaps; it went through an open window of a passing car, which pulled over and came after the boys. Everyone ran off… all his friends ran away, except for Matt, who could not move that fast. So he promptly stood his ground… and ratted them all out.

Later there was an incident with his friend Duffy’s car. Or Duff’s father’s car, to be precise. A brand new car, which the kids took on a joy ride, drank more than they should… and Duff got sick, all over his father’s nice new car. Worried about the reaction and the trouble which he would – and did – get into, Duff recruited Matt to help him out, scraping at the seats with Popsicle sticks in a vain effort to clean everything up.

Matt and his friends also went mansion hopping in Palm Beach. This meant visiting the empty estates of families whose primary residence was elsewhere, but whose beachfront homes all had pools of their own. So Matt and his friends figured it was a shame for such spots to go unused for so long, and they obliged by putting the pools to good use. Matt also recalled once swimming in the ocean off one of these private beaches, and a manatee brushed up against him. Thus began the Legend of Matt swimming with manatees.

In high school Matt was painfully thin; he had a unibrow, as his family described it, which Rosemary picked at and cleaned up for him. It was an enmeshed family… and an engaged one. Rosemary describes endless discussions over the dinner table, arguments over politics and patriotism, criticism and citizenship, international relations and the world, a proud immigrant grandfather holding a vastly different world view than a leftist father.

This family tradition of… sharing opinions with each other… could be embarrassing as well Matt went to the University of Florida, and Fred visited his son on campus. There, he discovered that Matt’s dorm room was so horribly messy – partly, to be fair, his roommates’ fault – that he got upset. When Matt defended himself by declaring that everyone else’s rooms looked the same way, off Fred went, marching up and down the hall, knocking on every other door to see the rooms and compare them himself.

ROTC was a requirement at the University of Florida, so Matt chose Air Force ROTC, the criterion being the assumption that there, he wouldn’t have to carry a gun.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, given his family’s background, Matt studied political science. Finishing at Florida, he came to DC, to GW for graduate school. And it was here, on Valentine’s Day in 1969, as Amy tells it, that Matt went to a Single’s Club called Wayne’s Luv. At one point nature called, and Matt was at this club for the first time, so he approached a young woman talking to a lot of other people as if she were familiar with the place, assuming she worked there, and asked her where the rest room was. Marilyn was, in fact, familiar with the club; she was there with casual friends that night, not the close friend she usually went with. The two of them started talking, and Matt never proceeded on to his originally intended destination. Instead, at Marilyn’s invitation, he followed her and the acquaintance she had come with back home so they could drop the other woman off, and wound up at Pop’s Pizza in Wheaton.

Matt asked Marilyn out again, for the next night, but he was so late Marilyn thought he was standing her up. Turns out he had gotten lost. But he did show up, and their first planned date was, of all things, a Truffaut double feature, Jules and Jim, and Don’t Shoot the Piano Player. It was an ironic choice given that Matt would be as likely to tease anyone else as a pseudo-intellectual for going to such films. But that was Matt – with layers underneath the surface.

Marilyn’s father was not that impressed when he first met Matt; here was a man who spent all his money on records, but showed up with holes in his shoes. Marilyn, though, knew what to look for. And she knew Matt was in love… when he didn’t spend all his money on records any more.

Matt would occasionally deny this, because he was not typically impulsive, this was not like him, but he informally proposed to Marilyn two weeks after meeting her, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They kept that conversation secret for a long time. And maybe, Amy said, maybe her father married her mother because she laughed at everything he said… he loved making people laugh.

Matt and Marilyn were married in March of 1970, a year after they met. Their honeymoon was… less than ideal in a number of ways. They went to the Bahamas, went to the beach on the first day, and Matt boasted “Oh, I’m from Florida; I don’t need sunscreen.” He got so sunburned that day he could barely walk, and they spent a fortune at the gift shop on every sunburn remedy they could find. Their return flight had an adventure of its own; both of their sibilings decided to meet them at the airport… Stephen with his beard at the time and Rosemary with her long hair, and in greeting them they looked so stereotypically suspicious – they so whatever profile the authorities were using at the time – that they were all hauled in to make sure they weren’t smuggling drugs or something.

But Matt was not only not doing anything nefarious, he was actually ready to settle into a fairly respectable life. He spent his career with the government, in Labor Management relations with various departments. He called himself a bureaucrat. Amy, who once went to work with him, had no idea what he did before she spent the day at his office… and she had no idea what he did after she spent the day there, either.

We will hear more, from Matt’s family and friends, in just a moment. I want to add just a few final comments of my own.

The first is to say that those conversations I had with Matt… took on a pattern of their own. A known spiritual skeptic, Matt would wonder what I was doing speaking with him in the first place, until I came to learn to announce at the outset that I was there to not pray for him. Matt did consent, eventually, to have his name included here in the prayer for healing. It was only after a discussion when I explained my own fairly liberal theology and my views regarding the non-magical purpose of reciting that prayer in a non-Orthodox setting that he allowed us to do that.

Matt was also not known as a stoic. He did not handle ordinary pain well. He would stub his toe and cry out: “Oh my God, oh my God!” – an ironic exclamation from an avowed atheist. But Amy, and others, have noted what an incredible hero he has been in facing his illness, what bravery he has shown, what grace. This past year… this whole struggle was so hard… And he taught, even as he fought.

There were real things that Matt was afraid of. Because he lost his mother so young, perhaps, he was afraid… of being forgotten. So the promise I will close with is this: that Matt Raphael will live on, in and through… all of you. When a young friend of the family says that she sometimes re-reads semi-sarcastic material “in a Matt Raphael voice,” he will live on. When Daniel says he is going to gather voices and reflections about his father, he will live on. And in all of the stories we share, the smiles they bring amidst the sting of the tears… Matt Raphael will not be forgotten. He will live on.

Aunt Chris's Eulogy for Stone Groove

Remembering Matt

My mother once told me you always remember the people you laugh with.
Matt Raphael—brother-in-law to Stephen and me, “Uncle Mattie” to our children, was one of those people.

For many, many years, our family made long car trips to visit Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt “Maryland” and Uncle Matt, Daniel and Amy, every Thanksgiving and every February to celebrate the birthdays of Grandpa, Daniel and Elizabeth. (Matt and I once protested that there ought to be a family celebration of the three April birthdays, too—but perhaps because we were in-laws, second string, and the only heavy hitter on the April team was Grandma, who never wanted a big deal made about her birthday—or said she didn’t, anyway--the idea never got off the ground.)

Those car trips—from New York and later from North Carolina—were frequently stressful (could it really be possible for Michael to scream for the entire trip because he hated being trapped in his car seat? Yes, it could) and exhausting. But knowing that at the end of that long ride there would be Grandpa, eager to sit down on the rug and play games with the children for hours, and Grandma, making brisket and kashi and rum cake, helped to keep us going.

And there was Matt to look forward to. Matt, who played George Burns to Marilyn’s Gracie Allen. Matt who early in our relationship formally consulted with me about how we should greet each other so as to avoid those awkward moments at the front door (we settled on a kiss on the cheek—but a real kiss, no “air kisses” allowed); who was eager to talk about the latest novel he’d read and to find out what I’d been reading; who could locate any song I wanted to hear in his vast music collection—including “Needles and Pins,” by the Searchers, which I hadn’t heard in decades and which turned out to be one of his favorites, too.

Matt, who discovered that Bumpo the cat would fetch but only if you tossed him a piece of used chewing gum wrapped in foil. Matt, who never let me forget that the cute white kitten I’d innocently given to him and Marilyn grew up to be Winnie the World’s Worst Cat, peeing all over everything in the house. Matt, with whom I nearly came to blows over the Monopoly board because he drove such a hard bargain. Matt, who almost brought me to tears one morning when he thanked me for sectioning his grapefruit and said nobody had done that for him since he was a little boy.

Matt, who despite his own health problems, nursed Marilyn through her hospitalizations and recoveries with loving devotion; who adored his twin grandsons, Double Trouble, Sam and Otis; his son Daniel and daughter-in-law Sujan, with whom he shared a passion for music and baseball; his daughter Amy Elaine, the light of his eyes who was so often at his side in his last days, named for the mother he lost when he was only ten.

Matt, who could be as tender as he was grouchy, as kind as he was hard-headed, as sensitive to others as he was outspoken. Matt, who was smart and funny and always, always made us laugh.

I saw Matt for the last time in late June. I was going away for a month to Wyoming and I think we both knew we might not see each other again. He was still taking some pleasure in life at that point, listening to the Orioles and reading and eating a few things he liked. He handed me his Kindle and asked me to download some samples of books I thought he might enjoy. Later, I sat by his bed and asked if I could hold his hand. Of course, he said. I told him that I hated that he was going through this. He was philosophical: “Everybody has to die sometime,” he said. “I know,” I said. “But I don’t want you to go.” I told him I loved him, and he said he loved me, too.

We had fun, I said. He laughed and said yeah, we did: remember when we smoked pot at the beach?

I said I did, though that was thirty years ago and the memory was, unsurprisingly, a little hazy.

I told him I had a confession. For years he’d been asking me to make him a Greek specialty he loved, avgolemono soup. I finally got around to it, I said; I had made the broth the night before and packed it in a cooler with the cooked chicken to bring up in the car. But guess what, I said. I forgot the damn cooler. It’s sitting at home in the middle of the living room rug. I guess it doesn’t matter, though, I added, because Amy mentioned today that you don’t like soup anymore. Well, he said, glowering a little, not about to let me off the hook so easily: I might’ve made an exception for that.

He told me he wasn’t afraid to die. I said I was pretty sure it wasn’t the end. Either way, he said, there’s nothing I can do about it.

We’re going to miss you, I told him. You’re going to leave a big empty place in our lives.

Write a good eulogy for me, he said. But none of that Jesus stuff, O.K.?

O.K., I said. I’ll do that. And Matt, if you’re listening:

I’m really sorry about the soup.

Christina Askounis Pogoloff
August 23, 2011

Amy's Eulogy for Stone Groove

There are endless things that could be said about my dad. All who knew him, even if they met him only once, even if they only heard stories of him from others, had a chance to experience his unique and often bizarre sense of humor. For example, his love and unflagging amusement by the Oriole “Bird in a dress." Originally simply a Baltimore Orioles bobblehead, my dad took a dress off of a pilgrim beanie baby and adorned the Oriole bobble head in this lovely blue dress. Known after that as simply “the bird in the dress," my dad never ceased to be amused by this silly bobble head bird attire.

Another example of his sense of humor was when he would be flipping channels, and land on the Spanish-speaking station. My father, having failed Spanish in college, would make up his own absurd dialogue to the programs.

My father did not often say sentimental things or speak strong feelings directly, often turning these emotions into a joke. But, he showed these emotions in other ways. Like when I was a kid and would wait for him to come home from work everyday, and I would run out the door and hug him around his legs and he would give me a big hug back. Or when my grandfather, David died, and at his burial, my dad took my hand and held it tightly while we both tried our best to keep it together. Or when I graduated from college, walking across the stage and seeing him standing on the other side of the stage with a proud look on his face.

Or after his kidney was removed when his cancer was initially diagnosed. He was recovering at home and could not sleep. In the middle of the night, seeing that my light was still on, knocked on my door to see if I wanted to watch TV with him. We stayed up through the night, watching Friends, Seinfeld, and most memorably The Graduate. My dad would recount that night fondly over the years, often joking that he would wake me up during the night so that we could watch The Graduate together again.

Or when I was living with my parents for a couple years after college and watching the Gilmore Girls with him, an often quite sentimental show. I would always know exactly what sentimental moments in the show would get to him; at these moments I would look across the room to him in his La-Z-Boy to note his “cry face”, which he would always, of course, deny.

Or his initial stubborn refusal to let me get my dog Lucy 3.5 years ago. I luckily didn’t listen to him and he quickly became one of Lucy’s biggest fans. And how much she comforted him in his last days, repeatedly remarking, “Lucy is such a good dog." Lucy stayed with him, under the bed, on the night he died, and she refused to leave the room after he passed away.

On the night he died, I held onto his hand and rested my head on his arm. A memory came to me of my dad taking me to see The Little Mermaid when I was 6. When I was scared of the evil character Ursula, I sat on his lap, and he wrapped his arms around me and I knew at that moment that I was safe. As he lay dying, I felt a sense of panic that my dad was soon not going to be there anymore to protect me. But, I soon realized that his essence will always be with me, and that I was going to be okay.

I am like my father in a lot of ways; not just my looks (which he would always remark how lucky I was to look so much like him); but I also knew him so well that I know he will always remain with me. He passed on to me his sense of humor.

A couple of days before he died he told me how proud he was of me. I am sure he was referring to the accomplishments I have achieved thus far in my life such as earning a Master’s degree and starting my career. But, I think one of his proudest moments of me was when I prank called him. My father was notorious for making prank phone calls. He would often go upstairs with his cell phone and call the house number. My mother and I, seeing who was calling on the caller ID would ignore the phone call. He was so amused with himself and would laugh before he could get through the message. After leaving the message (which my mother and I could hear him leaving upstairs), he would nonchalantly come down the stairs and say to us “Hey guys, I think someone called and left a message." Again, we would ignore him as he giggled to call the voice mail and play his message on speakerphone.

Later, I got the ultimate prank call payback. In the last year, when he was in the hospital, about to be discharged to the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington, I called his hospital room. He answered the phone and I said, “Hello, I am calling from the Hebrew Home to find out about your dietary preferences for your upcoming discharge here. I just have a few questions; do you like matzoh ball soup?” He answered no. “Do you like gefilte fish?” Again, he answered no. “Would you like us to leave a yarmulke for you on your pillow?”

A few seconds of silence followed and my dad finally said “Ohhh, Amy!” He was so proud of this prank phone call, he was bragging to all the nurses and visitors to his hospital room. I was so close to my father, and knew him so well, that he passed on the essence of his personality to me. While I know he is not physically with me anymore, the best parts of him will always remain with me, and that makes me certain that I will be okay without him.