Last summer my father bought a series of six Metropolitan Opera tickets. I took it as a very hopeful sign. He was making plans for the autumn and winter.

The opera was very important to my dad. Especially during his illness this past year. Last spring when he was feeling up to it, he went to the opera frequently. It brought him pleasure. And it wasn’t too much of an extravagance: he would call the Met’s special senior citizen line and get same-day tickets in the Family Circle.

An adventurous appreciator of art of all kinds, I know he went to see Phillip Glass’s Satyagraha last spring. He also loved Italian opera.

In 1976, my father went to the original performance of Einstein on the Beach by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson at the Met. The experience thrilled him; he was a great judge of the new and knew when the new was worthwhile. We went together to see it at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984. A thrilling night, as well.

(Speaking of hot tickets: my dad had two tickets to Woodstock, which he ended up selling to a cousin of ours. He also had tickets to see the Rolling Stones on Thanksgiving 1969. He took my sister and me; it was the show with Ike and Tina Turner, Janis Joplin and BB King documented by the Mayseles in Gimme Shelter).

When he was in the emergency room on August 25th I think he understood that he didn’t have long to live. He said something like, "I guess you guys are going to have to use my opera tickets."

We didn’t really let him go on that way. Maybe we should have. It was just too sad to think that he wouldn’t live to use those tickets. I couldn’t bear to have those conversations; now I’m sorry that I censored them in a way.

Soon after he died on September 7th, the subject of the opera tickets came up. "I think it’s important that we use those  opera tickets," my stepmother said. I agreed with her. Of course we would go. Using those tickets would be a perfect way to memorialize my dad. But it would also be very, very sad. 

My stepmother went to the first opera, Salome, with a good friend and neighbor who had been incredibly helpful during my father’s illness. That seemed like a nice way to thank her for everything she’d done.

Last week I wondered if my father had tickets to Dr. Atomic, the new opera by John Adams about Robert Oppenheimer. But I kept forgetting to ask my stepmother. She told me yesterday that she was going that evening with a friend.

My feelings were mixed. I admit I was sorry not to be going to see the Metropolitan Opera premiere of this much-talked-about new opera.

I also felt excited that my father had the hottest tickets in town. Of course he had tickets; how could I have doubted him. t was just like him. To know exactly what was worth seeing in New York at any given time.

Even after he was gone.

Finally, I felt waves of sadness that stayed with me for hours. Irrationally I wondered, how could the opera go on without my dad. There would be new things he will never know about. There will be old classics performed that he’d want to hear again and again. I know that’s silly. But somehow, he is synonymous with art in so many venues in this town.

They say people live on in memory. But my dad lives on through music, through art, through literature, through opera and of course through the hottest tickets in town.

Wherever they are.