What's in a Nameplate?

It was made for him.

(Originally written on October 17th, 2020)

There was Murray Sawitch. Murray married Ruth, and they had two children, Michael (my uncle) and Alan (my father). Ruth died in her 90s, about a decade ago. My father died 28 years ago today, on October 17th, 1992. And his father, Murray, died decades earlier, when his kids were very young. There is also Bernie Solomon, Ruth’s cousin, now in his 90s. Names. Lots of names.

The unrelenting — and just plain rude — passage of time has left precisely two people living on the planet who knew Murray: Mike and Bernie. And again, Mike was very young when his dad died, and Bernie is very old now. What memories of Murray remain? Probably very little. And not just memories. What is also gone, nearly gone, is his name, Sawitch.

Ruth, my grandmother, remarried after Murray’s death to a man — the grandfather I knew — named Abe Friedman. My father then became Alan Sawitch Friedman, and Mike became Michael Sawitch Friedman. So there it is. The last of the Sawitches? I mean, other than most of my passwords? It just might be.

So, then there was Friedman. And this name is doing okay. Mike has a son and daughter, and his son, Dan, has passed the last name to his kids. Friedman is solid. But, not as solid as it could be.

My kids’ last names are not Friedman. It’s Lev. Because I changed my last name.

I took my dead father’s last name and just — poof! — disappeared it. Didn’t even keep it as a middle name. My wife and I decided that we wanted to have the same last name, and we wondered aloud if we really wanted it to be Friedman. I mean, it could be, but ... could it also not be? Turns out tossing out your old name — even your dead father’s old name — is as simple as some paperwork and a brief appearance in front of a judge.

We had a short list of possible names to choose from. Skywalker, apparently, was a non-starter. But Lev appeared early and stuck. Lev is my mother’s maiden name, handed down from her father, Aryeh Lev, who died just a few weeks after I was born, when my mother was in her late 20s. My mother’s last name, by the way, is still Friedman.

(In case you haven’t noticed, there is a pattern of early male death in my family. My mother’s father, my father’s father, and my father. So. Yay! But it was all from different things, so the only thing that seems to run in the family is dying, which I guess runs in all families. Still, I’m wearing a mask and keeping six feet away from everyone.)

Lev means “heart” in Hebrew and is the Russian form of “Leo” or “lion.” Basically, my name is now Alek Lionheart. Alek the Lionhearted. Sir Alek The Lionhearted of the Isle Manhattan, Late of The City of Angeles, Eater of Bagels, Watcher of Maddow, Batteries Not Included. But Betty when you call me, you can call me Al.

So to review: My father’s last name was buried into his middle name after his father died and his mother remarried, and then his new last name became my mother’s last name, she then burying her own dead father’s last name into her middle name, which I have now taken as my last name, jettisoning entirely my father’s second — and my mother’s current — last name.

I’m telling you all this so that I can now ask the question: Why don’t I care?

Because I don’t. I don’t care about either of my father’s last names. I had no hesitation at all in signing that paper and telling the judge that I was taking a new last name “for family reasons.” Oh wait, there’s more: I don’t care that Lev was my mother’s last name. I just like the name, you see. I like the sound. I like the meaning. I like ending in a V. That’s badass. Badasv.

But why? I mean, I might be vaguely cold and dead inside, but there’s enough life in there to know that caring about keeping my father’s name is, like, an option. It’s a thing people might care about. I get that. But I don’t. Care.

And then I found my dad’s nameplate. It’s from a desk from one of the banks where he worked during his career. He was hired, and someone in Human Resources sent his name to the engraving company they use for such things, and someone set some type or pressed some buttons (I don’t know how things are made) and a few minutes later, this one-of-a-kind plaque was born unto the earth, announcing the name of this new accountant on the third floor. Alan Friedman. Alan Friedman is his name. Was? Is? It must still be because there it is on that nameplate, on my desk. Alan Friedman.

Staring at that nameplate — and I do stare at it — I finally understand the whole thing. The whole name thing. (Not the meaning of life and death thing; I’m still working on that and I’ll get back to you about it if I come up with anything.) See, it’s pretty cool to have that thing. It was made for him. He touched it. But it IS just a nameplate. He doesn’t come back if I rub it three times (of course I tried) and I don’t love him more or miss him less because I have it. Again, I wouldn’t want to not have it, and I’m definitely gonna keep it. But it’s not more than it is, as much as I want — and sometimes need — it to be.

There is his name, right in front of me. And here is my name, and it is different. I don’t need to have his last name because... I don’t need to have his last name. That’s it. There is nothing that I need to have or to do or to say for the essential truth to still be the truth. I am Alek Lev, the son of Alan Friedman, and I loved him so dearly, and he loved me and now he’s gone and fuck cancer.

It might seem like I would want to or need to hold fast to a name, or a nameplate, but I don’t. The truth just IS, and his absence in my life is still so profound, and that loss, that hole, that chasm... you just... you just can’t put a name to it.

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