A Life of Reading

by

Paul Clark

Three years ago, my father and mother went off to the city on a Sunday afternoon to see an obscure documentary that was playing in only one theatre. My parents, both 79 at the time, led an active life—playing tennis, attending plays and movies and the symphony, actively participating in their church, keeping in touch with their large family and circle of friends. In the parking lot of the movie theatre, my dad tripped over the curb, fell and hit the sidewalk, sustaining a severe head injury. 

He underwent immediate surgery, spent a couple of weeks in intensive care, and then a month at a rehabilitation hospital before being discharged home. Over the next few years, before he died last year, my dad went through a series of ups and downs as he and my mom dealt with the physical and mental side-effects of his brain injury.

I come from a large family, and any of my brothers and sisters would have their own stories to tell about what they missed most about my dad as his health declined. But one of the saddest things I witnessed early on, when I visited him at the rehab hospital, was watching him try to read.

It was a bright fall day—warm enough to bring my dad out in his wheelchair to a gazebo on the hospital grounds. I sat there with my mom, talking mainly with her. My dad sat with a newspaper in his lap—he turned the pages but never spent more than a few seconds looking at any one story.

When we think of people who have been important in our lives, we usually think of a couple of objects or movements that sum up the person in an instant. When I think of my dad, I immediately think of his sitting down at the piano every night after dinner, playing out of the Great American Songbook—Gershwin, Arlen, Mercer, Porter, Berlin—as we kids did the dishes. However, I also always think of reading when I think of him.

I grew up in a house where books were always present. Small built-in bookshelves filled the living room and the parlor adjoining the living room. Each bedroom had shelves, filled with books. There was always a small pile of books, interspersed with magazines, at the side of my parents’ chairs in the parlor. As a child, I was particularly interested in the books on my parent’s shelves; they were a key into what being an adult might be like. What was on my parents’ shelves? Collections of poetry, some probably holdovers from college days in the 1940s. One or two hot titles—fiction and nonfiction—of the day. Many titles somehow related to the Catholic church: histories, biographies, collections of sermons, reflections on the Gospels. In addition, my parents subscribed to several magazines—Newsweek, Time, the New Yorker, Life and several Catholic newspapers and magazines.

I have fond memories of going to baseball games with my dad at Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park. I would carry a pencil and a scorecard. He would have a small stack of magazines—Commonweal, America, National Catholic Reporter—so he could catch up on his reading between innings. I thought my dad was the only person who brought reading material to a ball game until years later when, over several summers, I sat in the bleachers at Wrigley Field near Studs Terkel, who always carried an armload of books as he stopped at the ball park on his way home from the radio studio.

So watching my dad sitting in his wheelchair and holding but not reading a newspaper was a stark reminder of how devastating his injury had been. At home, if my dad was not at the dinner table, the piano or in his garden, he was sitting and reading. I actually have more memories of him reading magazines than books. My parents had nine kids so finding the spare time to read anything longer than a magazine article was probably impossible for most of the 1950s and 1960s. But reading was always a possibility, because there was always something at hand to read.

I had brought with me to the hospital a small paperback edition of the verse of Ogden Nash. Nash was a favorite of my dad’s. Over the years, my dad had written several song parodies or short poems for special occasions for family or friends. Nash, along with S.J. Perleman and Groucho Marx, were particular inspirations.

My dad took the book and placed it on top of the newspaper. He opened it and paged through it but like with the newspaper, he didn’t concentrate on any one page. He placed the bookmark I had included somewhere in the middle of the book and closed it.

When my dad returned to his house, I started bringing books over for him or my mom to read. I hoped the books for my dad would inspire him to read again. The books for my mom were given so she would have something to read during the long days sitting in the parlor next to my dad.

One of the first books I brought to my dad was Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories. I figured it would be easier for him to get through a story than an entire book. He asked me to read to him. I picked up the book and randomly opened to “Rothschild’s Fiddle” by Chekhov. It starts, “The town was small—no better than a village—and it was inhabited almost entirely by old people who died so seldom that it was positively painful.”

Uh-oh, I thought, wrong story to start with. But my dad smiled, as did my mom, and I continued with Chekhov’s tale of Yakov the coffin maker and how his fiddle ended up with Rothschild the Jew, whom Yakov hated. My dad paid rapt attention throughout my reading, laughing where appropriate. When I was done I left him with the book. I read to him at other times over the next several months, though never from that book, which stayed in the same place on the small table next to his chair alongside the copy of Nash’s poetry.

A few days before my dad died, I visited him at home with my son and youngest daughter. Conversation was difficult with my dad at this point—he spoke very softly and mainly in one or two word responses to questions. We were sitting around a round table in my parents’ living room. There were other friends and relatives there, and, as always when more than two or three members of my family got together, there were two or three conversations going on at once.

My dad’s caregiver wheeled him up to the table next to my daughter. She had brought her copy of “Little Women” with her. My dad reached out and grabbed the book with both hands; he didn’t ask about it or even try to open it. He held it tightly in both hands, flipping it from side to side. It was as if he had come upon some talisman of his past, something he once knew the meaning of but could no longer comprehend, other than to know it was important. I think the only people in the room who noticed what my dad was doing were my daughter and myself. She looked more startled than anything, wondering at the fervor displayed by her grandfather. Then, with a sharp movement of his hands, he thrust the book back down on the table, confusion and frustration mapped on his brow.

My dad died on the first day of spring last year. About a year later, when visiting my mom, she handed me a plastic shopping bag filled with all the books I had dropped off for her during the almost three years of my dad’s slow decline to death. I was surprised at how many books I had given her. The collection of stories and the Nash book were at the top of the bag, bookmarks on the same pages placed by my dad, years ago.


By day Paul Clark edits a variety of print and online business and legal publications. By night, he sometimes writes for pleasure, though he keeps these writings under a bushel, and the bushel he keeps in a dark shed outdoors. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


Coda: The other books I brought to my mom over the years included the following:

Bandbox by Thomas Mallon
By the Lake by John McGahern
Wheat That Springeth Green by J.F. Powers
A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry
Echo House by Ward Just
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson