My Life

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Heinrich Joachim obituary by Ari Goldman

My Cello (c)BrunoJoachim

I notice some leaves need raking as I walk silently around the backyard of the decrepit but stately property in White Plains. Trying to leave my father’s house, feeling extreme discomfort and anxiety - yet unable to break away from looking one last time through the cabinets in the living room. Like a child finding treasures, hidden in the back are Greek sculptures of Mythological Gods, in a perfect backlit display whose neatness belies the usual clutter of the environment. Beautiful vases, artifacts, shiny coins and scintillating jewelry, pottery urns and marble busts of Zeus and Athena. I deposit a few in shopping bags my father has thoughtfully left stacked in a corner. 

Elsewhere I discover several fragments of his life the way he left them: old books with dog-eared annotations, travel video guides to Greece (I imagine him watching them with his girlfriend Lynn while they sip brandy in the candlelit old living room while he sagely instructs her on the ways of the ancient Greeks); several stacks of cards and letters from his children; railway tickets to Ohio stamped 1954, his musician’s union card, fifteen paper Christmas plates, and the Santa Claus ornament my mother used to hang on the tree so long ago. Read the rest of this entry »