My father, the mineralogist Malcolm Ross, died on Nov. 30, at the age of ninety-six. A notice appeared in the Washington Post on Thursday. I was with my Dad in his final hours, and, although he had lost touch with the outer world, I played him some of his favorite music and recordings: Janet Baker singing Sea Pictures, Koussevitzky conducting the Sibelius Second, Benita Valente singing The Shepherd on the Rock (my parents were present for her famous 1960 Marlboro performance with Rudolf Serkin and Harold Wright), and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing “Ich habe genug” and “Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen.” I think he would have liked the fact that in last week’s The New Yorker I had an article dealing not only with Scotland — his great-grandfather Donald Ross immigrated to Nova Scotia around 1840 — but also with the geology-adjacent matter of megaliths. He was himself something of a metamorphic rock of a man: self-sufficient, unflappable, quietly steadying and supportive. When I came out as gay, he was, unusually for a man of his generation, immediately accepting of it, and helped my very religious mother come to terms with who I was. In time, my husband Jonathan became an unquestioned member of the family. The more time passed, the more I realized how fortunate I was to have such a father. I loved and admired him very much.
Previously: Grieving with Brahms