"Zippers"

During dinner with my parents and sister Eileen on Sunday, I mentioned that I finally talked with the only other local Buddhist member who had had a heart attack, a couple years before mine. It turns out that all he got was stents!! How disappointing. Not a "zipper" like me, I told my parents.

My mom didn't know what a "zipper" is. I was shocked. My father had a double bypass almost twenty years ago, and he never used that term, she had never heard or overheard it in any talks she had with him or visits at the doctors or with him and his friends?

My dad told her what a zipper referred to.

So, in the eighteen years since he had his heart attack and open heart surgery, all the days and weeks after when she helped him and bathed him, he never said "zipper"?


It struck me that my father wants to ignore his heart attack. Totally. Wants to make it didn't happen. Nancy Mischler in her pastoral visit with me at the hospital said as much; my father refused, or claimed to refuse, to change his diet or his lifestyle. This is the man who raised me; no wonder I have such difficulty changing and facing reality.