Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories

By Pamela Ryder

Interconnected stories depicting the last years of a WWII bomber pilot, his relationship with his daughter as both child and adult, and his drift into infirmity and death.

When life dwindles to its irrevocable conclusion, recollections are illuminated, even unto the grave. Such is the narrative of Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories, whose title is taken from a remote airfield in the American Southwest, and while the father recalls his flying days, his daughter—who nurses the old man—reflects as well.
 
Pamela Ryder’s stories vary in style and perspective, and time lines overlap as death advances and retreats. This unique and shifting narrative explores the complexities of a relationship in which the father—who has been a high-flying outsider—descends into frailty and becomes dependent upon the daughter he has never really known.
 
The opening story, “Interment for Yard and Garden,” begins as a simple handbook for Jewish burial and bereavement, although the narrator cannot help but reveal herself and her motives. From there, the telling begins anew and unfolds chronologically, returning to the adult daughter’s childhood: a family vacation in France, the grotesqueries of the dinner table, the shadowy sightings of a father who has flown away.
 
A final journey takes father and daughter back to the Southwest in search of Paradise Field. Their travels through that desolate landscape foreshadow the father’s ultimate decline, as portrayed in the concluding stories that tell of the uneasy transformation in the bond between them and in the transcendence of his demise. Taken together, the stories in Paradise Field are an eloquent but unsparing depiction of infirmity and death, as well as solace and provocation for anyone who has been left to stand graveside and confront eternity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Alabama Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781573668743

Book preview

Acknowledgments

INTERMENT FOR YARD AND GARDEN: A PRACTICAL GUIDE

Beit Olam or a Home in the Earth

When a death is expected—as in the case of a family member, such as a parent—perhaps an elderly parent—or even more specifically, in the case of one’s father, for example—decisions must be made as to the means of final disposition of the body. For the urban Jew, this usually constitutes burial in a cemetery outside the city limits, but those in suburban settings may consider interment in a yard or garden. To that end, a journeyman Soil Shifter can be had for hire. As he makes his rounds through the neighborhood, he is alerted to an impending death when the well-known Death Angel mushroom, Amanita matzoa, sprouts on the lawn of the dying. This particular species of Amanita is, of course, named for the Passover Angel of Death who delivered the Tenth Plague to Egypt, requiring the Israelites to bake unleavened bread and descend into the Sinai (although he was probably responsible for the rain of frogs, lice, and locusts as well). In addition, a Soil Shifter will stop at any house of the dead or dying where a mitpachat is displayed above the lintel or the deceased’s tallit is hung over the mailbox. If a tallit is used, be sure to cut off a corner fringe to signify that it will no longer be used as a prayer shawl, and that the deceased is no longer required to pray (not that a particular daughter recalled her father ever praying about anything, except when he said Kaddish at his own father’s funeral, and that time he was audited by the IRS). And though the Soil Shifter will be readily available, it is considered an especially charitable mitzvah to forgo his services and, instead, dig the grave yourself. The deceased can offer neither reward nor gratitude for your labors, and because he cannot make his own beit olam, doing so for him is truly the final act of kindness. As it is written in Ruth 2:20: Blessed be he who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead.

The bereaved may have other, more personal motives in deciding to forgo the Soil Shifter and tackle the task himself. There may be old grudges and resentments regarding the dead, and amends that were never made. (If the deceased person was, for example, a father, then it is quite possible that the adult child, a daughter, for instance, may regret her actions during the father’s illness and last days. She may not have heeded the assertion of Proverbs 17:22: A glad heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps the strength of the sick. She would likely recall that her heart was hardly glad while caring for her father. She is likely to remember her impatience when he refused to eat, her revulsion when she scrubbed his dentures, her shame at holding his urinal or wiping his butt. She will recall the dietary restrictions she enforced to the point that there was little enjoyment left to him, i.e. Lox? Forget it—too much salt. She may have been angry with the father, believing he could have tried harder to exercise, to take his heart medications on time, to get off his ass and walk with his walker and try to get his strength back, etc. She may lament her lack of expressions of endearment, believing that there would be the proverbial more time to resolve her ridiculous resentments regarding his apathy and absence during her childhood, especially now that she is well into middle age.) But there will be no atonement in these matters, of course—no forgiveness—and it is best that such a person simply attend to digging of the burial hole as mitzvah for its own sake.

Grieving individuals often require instruction in grave excavation. Domestic Disposal of the Dead (Vol. I & II), Planning a Home Necropolis (no longer in print), and The History of Digging: Paleolithic Man to the Present (Vol. I–IV) remain the classic texts, although they are often daunting to the bereaved. Many find it impossible to wade through lengthy discussions and instructions after the death of a family member or even as death draws near. This is especially the case when the accompanying compulsion to be done with it is a common reaction if the dying individual—a father, for example—had endured lengthy suffering and/or humiliation, i.e. bladder and bowel dysfunction (what a father might call pissing and shitting myself), tremor of the extremities (what he called the shakes), and advice/remedies suggested by well-meaning bedside visitors (Gefilte fish? You want to kill him?). And as Jewish law requires that the body be interred within twenty-four hours of death, perusal of a multivolume text is not possible. Therefore, the bereaved will find Interment for Yard & Garden: A Practical Guide to be both practical and comforting.

Alternatives to Interment

The dead must be placed in the earth. This is Jewish law. G-d’s directive to Adam was unequivocal: You shall return to the earth, for you were taken out of it.—Genesis 3:19. And yet, non-observant, uneducated, or spiritually bereft Jews may consider other methods—namely Sky Burial, Carcass Conflagration, or Burial at Sea. Therefore, these alternatives warrant discussion here.

1—Sky Burial (in which the body is placed above ground for vulture consumption) was practiced by ancient Israelites during times of flight from persecution, when the process of digging through the rockbound desert soil would delay the escape of the living. Sky Burial remains in use today, but due to declining numbers of Corvus corone (i.e., Carrion Crow) species, there are fewer birds to feed on the body, and flesh removal is delayed. Sky Burial also brings with it the nuisance factor of birds (referred to as Sky Schnorrers) continuing to root and circle long after the corpse has been consumed. Observations of the lingering birds (Schnorrer Sightings) reveal that they retain an interest in familiar earthly events, croaking announcements in the voice of the newly departed/recently ingested person: Candle-lighting at 6:23 tonight—or voicing criticism regarding sights on the ground below: "This you call a Sukkot tent? (In the case of a father, for example, whose bird might be circling in skies above the neighborhood at dusk, his remarks are likely to be more secular: Who left all the goddamn lights on?")

2—Carcass Conflagration (with subsequent wind dispersion of char/ash) is clearly forbidden by Jewish law. This method is an especially abhorrent reminder of the extermination crematoria of just one generation ago. In addition to its obvious desecration of the body, reports of abnormalities in songbirds in the forests around Treblinka and Ravensbrück were well documented. Such deformities (avian caul, soot wing) have been so observed around present-day crematoria and are believed to be caused by tooth fillings which volatize during the intense heat of incineration and are spewed into the atmosphere as mercury vapor. (Not a factor, for example, in the case of a father who had no fillings—just badly neglected teeth, broken to the gumline under his dentures—as a result of a childhood fear of the family dentist and third cousin Morton Plotkin DDS, who smoked a cigar during dental procedures, was known to drop hot ash into the patient’s lap, and gave a discount on extractions every Friday before Shabbos.) Despite the connotations, reduction of the body to char and ash is still regarded as a means of disposition by uninformed Jews or those influenced by the funereal practices of gentiles. In addition, the topic of carcass conflagration may be bantered about by simply irreverent persons (case in point: a dying father who—when asked about his wishes—was fond of saying, Dead is dead and Who gives a crap?—though near the end he reminded his adult daughter about the existence of a cemetery plot he paid good money for and in truth, had absolutely no inclinations toward a fiery end anyway). Nevertheless, even if the deceased had left instructions for conflagration, it is the obligation of those caring for the body to disregard such wishes and to provide a burial in accordance with the laws of the Torah.

Lastly, Carcass Conflagration can occasionally result in the troubling spectacle known as Ash Reorganization. During this phenomenon, airborne particles spewing from crematorium smokestacks rise, regroup, and hover in the shape of the deceased—sometimes for several days—before eventual dispersal (or when wind velocity exceeds thirty mph).

3—Burial at Sea is sometimes requested by individuals who are wistfully enamored of the ocean. They decide that upon their demise, their charred remains be dispersed (or what is more commonly referred to as scattered) upon the waves from a scenic seaside overlook or the railing of a boat. This practice is clearly contrary to Jewish law. But what of the more complex problem that arises when a Jew happens to die at sea, as ships will not alter their course when a death occurs. Such a situation is not unusual during a cruise vacation, when the elderly (a sizable percentage of cruise passengers) are more likely to succumb to onboard hazards: the chazeri served at the twenty-four-hour, all-you-can-eat buffet; the diarrhea and subsequent dehydration caused by the aptly named Bon Voyage Virus; the falls that inevitably occur when old folks careen around in their cabins in rough seas; and the third-rate doctors cruise lines employ (which might be exactly the worries of an adult daughter, for instance, when her elderly father had been cajoled into a week-long Epicurean Cruise of the Caribbean by his big fat selfish so-called girlfriend and world-class kvetcher who never really gave a whit about him anyway, and was mainly interested in working her way through the aforementioned buffet and desert display at a pace fast enough to work up a good schvits). And although the daughter worried that the exertions of the trip—schlepping the luggage, the aforementioned dreck that cruise lines call food, the very real possibility that the to-and-fro motions of the moon-driven sea might cause the big girlfriend to roll over on her father while he slept and cause his suffocation, he made it back alive—thanks be to G-d he did. He made it back and nothing that bad happened, nothing really bad—although his favorite hat blew off his head by the brisk wind off the stern—the cap he was awarded that time he made a hole-in-one at the Del Ray Country Club on the sixth hole—which is a downhill 250-yard, par-three with a dogleg left—and he watched from the rail as the hat sailed up into the smokestack steam, briefly disappeared into the mist, reappeared again overhead, spun almost back to him on a starboard gust, was taken again by a spume of sea, and finally lost in the foam. If something bad had happened—really bad, G-d forbid—such as any of the things a father was prone to, including stroke, blood clot, burst aorta, or infarction of the heart—he would have been buried at sea. This would free the big woman to disembark at the next scheduled stop without the old man along, i.e., without George slowing me down (as she often remarked), and to suspend her grief for a duty-free stint of spending (perhaps another bracelet from the Cartier in Freeport, a few touristy tchotchkes as gifts, and it’s always a good idea to pick up a dozen big bars of Swiss chocolate when you’ve got the chance). Deposition in the earth is not an option at sea, of course, unless the decision is made to delay earth burial and place the corpse in the ship’s cold storage with the pork tenderloin, khazer-fisl, and assorted treif for what may be an extended period of time—clearly a desecration of the body. In such circumstances, Burial at Sea is preferable. There will be no grave-marker and no place of remembrance, but the deceased can rely upon G-d’s mercy: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.—Isaiah 43:3. The shrouded body is simply placed upon a board. The board is set upon the rail and tilted seaward. The body slides away, slipping beneath the waves and into the foam like an old hat.

After notions about the alternative methods of corpse disposition are dismissed, and the choice is made to obey Jewish law, the bereaved must then decide: burial with or without a coffin. A Jew’s coffin must be a simple wooden box, constructed without nails or metal hinges to ensure that it will—like the body—return to the earth in its entirety. However, burial without a coffin is certainly permissible, even recommended. Interment of the body wearing only a soft white shroud is an ancient Jewish practice that honors the dead, and the sight of an actual body in the burial hole helps awaken the living.

Excavational Patterns

Shovel acquisition is the next task. According to a notation in the Jewish Magical Papyri of the Second Temple Period, the shovel used to dig a hole in which to place a body must not be a new one. Maimonides, in an apocryphal chapter of his Guide for the Perplexed, explains that a new shovel is inauthentic and cannot be utilized as a functional talisman. The digger therefore should obtain a shovel previously used for digging a burial hole—though use in any other type of excavation will do.

This is not a problem in more rural or country settings where hole digging is nearly habitual. In such areas, a peek in any barn, outbuilding, or shed, will reveal a variety of useful implements—half-moon hoes, soil scuffles, mulch scoopers, and of course, shovels. But when a death occurs in more suburban districts, cries of Where can a shovel be had? are common.

Suburban Jews rarely dig or engage in yard and garden maintenance (possibly a result of the ancient exodus from original agricultural exploits to urban occupations). And when they must, they are often exceedingly inept. (Case in point: an adult daughter may fondly recall the father’s antics in attempting to mow the lawn: the cursing that ensued as he repeatedly ran the power mower over the electric cord, and the pathetic repair of the breaks with adhesive tape. Or the time he nearly amputated a finger with the hedge clippers.) However, during the relatively brief period between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, physiological changes take over. A combination of photoperiodism and circadian rhythms trigger pituitary secretion of Digging Induction Substances, which, in turn, result in the three Excavational Patterns:

1—Atavistic Agronomy: The suburban homeowner is stimulated by agricultural tendencies that flourished before the displacement of the Jewish farmer: he decides to grow his own food. He falls prey to the color photographs and descriptions in seed catalogues, i.e. "Big Boy Carrots—crisp and colorful, perfect for a holiday tzimmes and Potato Mezzo Luna—truly tantalizing tubers for pancakes or kugel." He purchases seed, shovel, and spade. He tills the garden plot, mulches and composts, and carefully sows according to seed packet instructions. (Or, as in the case of a certain father, spreads a bag of topsoil on a sunny spot, tears the seed packets open with his teeth, and sprinkles seeds willy-nilly. He then soaks down the whole thing with the garden hose for the first and last time, relying on sporadic rainfall thereafter.)

While Atavistic Agronomy results in shovel acquisition and some degree of cultivation, it quickly becomes obvious that a vegetable garden requires tending: weeding, spraying, watering, pinching, fertilizing, thinning, mulching, composting, and pest removal. Sprouting plants are often consumed by local wildlife (rabbits, whistle pigs, and the like), crowded out by weeds, or killed off during dry spells. Eventually, the would-be gardener concedes defeat (or—for instance—a father realizes that his wife would never serve up fresh vegetables anyway, and would continue to do nothing more than open a can of Green Giant creamed