Daria Doering

Yesterday I had lunch with an old friend, and the subject of our parents came up. I shared that I never particularly grieved over my parents’ deaths … I cried for a day or two, but that was it. One reason is that they both lived very full lives, and in the end they had declined, and it was their time. The other is that despite the fact that I’ve always been an independent and even rebellious person, I was extremely close to both of them. My mother was a self-styled guru, and I was her follower for ten years, from ages 17-27. Or maybe I should say she was a life coach, before they existed. This is a whole story in itself, but she completely changed the trajectory of my life, in ways that I greatly appreciate.

I always had mixed feelings about my father and his three marriages (I was his oldest child from his first marriage), but after his third wife left him when he was in his eighties, I stepped in to manage his life – his complex medical, legal, financial and psychological affairs, and to run his financial publishing business. This brought me very close to him for five years, and changed my life as well.

So I feel like both my parents are so completely a part of me, and also that I knew them both so well, that there was just nothing left to grieve. They were both also “open book” type people, which I always felt was a huge gift. Even though they were not particularly talkers, they endlessly processed their lives, the good and the bad (especially the bad), and wrote about that, and I felt I knew about as much about their lives as one could know.

Despite all that, I have found ways to keep feeling connected to them … in ways that I never could have imagined.

It started with my dad. Songs would pop into my head, from a very long time ago, when I was 8 or 10 years old. I have vague memories of being in the car with him, and his singing along to songs on the radio. I have downloaded some of these songs – “Blame It on the Bossa Nova,” “Young Wings Can Fly” – fun songs from the sixties that make me feel connected to him, from a time in my life when my parents were still together, before all their other journeys began.

I also collect gold objects at times – gold coffee mugs, head phones, iPhone – whenever I can buy something in gold, I usually do, in honor of my dad. This is because he was a “gold bug.” He was always obsessed with investing in precious metals, and especially gold. I once asked him what got him started on his interest in gold, and he said he couldn’t remember. I think it must have been a person … a financial writer … but I guess I’ll never know who.

One more thing is that my father subscribed to probably 30 magazines. Every morning he would spend several hours reading magazines, and incorporate bits of what he read into his own writing. I always really admired that habit, and hoped to be able to do it myself some day when I had time. Lately I’ve subscribed to more and more newspapers and magazines, which I read on my computer. It started with the Washington Post, whose headlines always draw me in … then Israeli newspapers. It’s hard to allow myself to take so much time to read, but I tell myself that it’s my retirement privilege, prerogative or joy. So without exactly planning or intending it, I feel I’ve arrived at that same coveted place!

My mother was a fantastic musician – she played piano, accordion, guitar, and had a lovely singing voice. She had Alzheimer’s for the last maybe 15 years of her life. For the last few years, when she could barely function at all, she could still play the piano. But all she would play, for years, was the great anti-war song “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” (I’d ever dreamed before … I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war). With the current horrible events in Ukraine, her obsession with that song seems prescient.

Though my parents were not anti-war. My father had served as a bombardier in World War Ii, and published many stories of his time in the war. They also vehemently disagreed with people who denigrated US actions in dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. So at the time, I didn’t even take my mother’s interest in that song as peace related. But who knows.

My latest connection to my mother is that I don’t know how many times I heard her say, “P.G. Wodehouse saved my life when I was young!” My mother had a pretty unhappy childhood, and PG Wodehouse (pronounced Wood-house) was a British humorist whose books she absolutely loved. She literally felt they had saved her sanity. My parents gave me many books during my life, and I generally read them all. But my mom never gave me any Wodehouse books, and I never read any. I don’t know why. Maybe I considered them an outdated mom thing.

So recently, my international folk dancing class moved to Oasis, now in Grossmont Center. That has brought me into the world of Oasis, and also the La Mesa Adult Center, since there is a folk dancing class that I take there too. I love these morning dance classes … me and the other old ladies … not having to try to drag my husband into it, and not having to compete with hot young numbers. The classes are still quite challenging to me, and keep me moving.

Having made this odd transition to much of my life being lived in La Mesa, I am now branching into other Oasis classes, and loving them! So when I saw an online class on PG Wodehouse in the Oasis catalog, I knew I had to take it! To prepare myself, I found a BBC Radio dramatized production of PG Wodehouse – a compilation of many of his books – on Audible, and started listening to it. It was delightful! Of course all that’s needed to delight me is a British accent, but the stories are very amusing too.

The class itself was amazing … I learned so much! It was taught by two older men, one of whom is the researcher and writer, and the other the main actor, who carried on a dialogue between themselves. Wodehouse had such a fascinating life. One of the funniest things is that all his books are about the British upper class, who essentially do nothing with their lives – other than dressing impeccably at all times, having lunch at their “club,” collecting silver items for their collections, arguing with relatives, jockeying for their desired marriages, visiting other relatives’ country homes, that sort of thing. While the servants do all the work, and in Wodehouse’s books, have all the brains. One series of his books is about Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. Bertie is affable but a bit dim-witted, and the brilliant but always deferential Jeeves rescues all the rich but clueless relatives from their endless follies.

The irony is that Wodehouse’s own life was so much the opposite of this. He was a prodigious writer, e.g. always at work! In his lifetime he wrote a total of over 90 books, 300 short stories, more than 20 film scripts and collaborated on over 30 plays. He lived to age 93, with his last couple of weeks spent in a hospital. When he died, he was found sitting in a chair next to his hospital bed, paper in lap and pen in hand, working on a story! Much to the world’s betterment, and merriment.

I have found that Audible has over 200 recordings of his books, so maybe he will save me some day too.