Note: I've changed some names in this article out of respect for the living, who are still grieving.
A few days ago, Maddie asked me again about my dad, who she refers to as Grandpa Steve, despite having never met him. In lieu of answering the same questions with the same answers yet again, about his cancer, why she didn't meet him, etc., I offered to show rather than tell her who he was by throwing in a DVD I made for my family for Christmas a few years ago starring Dad, circa 1967-2000. Every time I watch that video - which isn't often - I notice something different, I react differently. When I made the video, it was all tears and smiles, but buffered by the focus of editing it together in time for the holiday. Now I tend to see it as those for whom I made the video saw it the first time - objectively. I'm annoyed by my own influence in it at times. And this time, when I saw it again just two days ago, it was Dad who annoyed me. Dad, with his drinking too much, panning women's bodies with the camera - namely, bodies belonging to his cousin and his best friend's wife. It sounds horrible on paper - er, in cyberspace - but my dad truly had this enfuriating charm that enabled him to whistle at teenage girls on the street and comment on his best friend's wife's ass without actually offending anyone. As though he were truly only appreciating their beauty, with no threat of any kind to either the object of his musings or to the people associated with them. It usually went something like this:
Dad: "Hey, baby! Why don't you swing that thing over here where I can see it!"
Mom: "Steven."
Dad: "What?"
And then he'd bust out laughing. He honestly didn't see anything wrong with what he'd said. And once you figured that out - that his intentions were truly innocent - you had to just roll your eyes, maybe apologize on his behalf to the person being embarrassed, but in the end, just let him get away with it.
Twice in the movie, he pans our friend Margaret. Once in 1967, and once thirty years later. I repeat, thirty years later. A whole generation of people grows up in front of this man's eyes, the women's breasts have begun to sag, and still he's ogling these women like a teenager, trying to brighten their day. In his own, patented, crudely affectionate way. Unbelievable.
I talked to Margaret on the phone last night for the first time since Dad's funeral six years ago. Her husband was my dad's best friend for 30+ years, until they had a falling out that they never quite got around. Attempts were made, but there was this stubbornnes, this unwillingness to just let it go. They did bump into each other once, shortly before Dad died, and while their meeting wasn't the tangle of hugs and tears and "I'm so sorry"s we'd all been hoping for, it was two grown, stubborn old men's way of calling a truce. A sad, late-in-coming truce, but they made a kind of peace as best as they could at the time. John passed away about three years ago, and I think I've mentioned before on this site that, through the grapevine, I'd heard that one of the only lifetime regrets vocalized in his last days was not forgiving my dad sooner.
When I originally called Margaret after watching the video, I got her answering machine, which still announces, with that uncomfortable tone that says "I'm talking to a machine...?", that you've reached the home of John and Margaret. She told me - rather, admitted to me - when she called back last night that all of his clothes remain where he left them, in their dresser drawers.
"I know it sounds sad."
Well, it is sad. Losing someone is sad. And the things we do to hang onto the memory of them, to try to conjure them back into our walking and breathing lives are sad. Or the things we simply do without noticing that's what we're doing - conjuring. Like the fact that I suddenly noticed myself on the phone with her, drinking Pabst and smoking a cigarette in the backyard, just like Dad used to do. But these things are necessary. Part of the grieving process. And as long as you're not curled up beneath those dresser drawers every hour of the day, denying the fact that you still have a life to live, then it's okay. There's no time line on grief. And everyone has their one little thing they just can't let go of.
I told her that for me, it's my dad's Air Force jacket and a few of his old work jackets. They hang in my closet, right next to the clothes I sift through every day, as though one of these days I might throw one on over my own work clothes and apron. And I have once or twice. But for the most part, they hang in the closet. Three jackets that will more than likely never be worn by any human being ever again, and yet they hang, ready.
The first time I noticed my mother had moved my father's boots from the back stairwell to the front yard and filled them with soil and flowers, I knew she was letting go. And even she still has her treasured items, after six years of widowhood and remarriage.
"Listen to me," I said. "Whaddo I know. I've never lost a husband. He was my dad. It's not the same."
Margaret was surprised by the jackets, surprised that I'd hung onto such seemingly insignificant objects. Those jackets, along with a few other things - his watch, the coins he'd picked up along his travels as an Air Force pilot, the giant metal "T" that hung on my parents' house since at least the early 80s - aren't necessary for me to remember, but they help. No one becomes a saint until they've died, and I've tried my hardest to keep myself from remembering only the good things about Dad. I like to remember the not-so-good things, too, to keep his memory in check, to remind him from my corner of the universe that he may be dead, but he's still human (minus a body) to me. Because I'm stubborn. Because it makes the grieving easier. Because I'm just like him and he would be okay with that.
Margaret's working at the hardware store Dad frequented when he was alive. His last driving experience was to that store, in the dead of winter, jacked up higher than a kite on morphine but determined to drive - paaaainfully slowly, as my sister can attest to, like, fifteen miles an hour, and giddy about it the whole way - to pick up some lottery tickets on the off chance he would win millions just before kicking the bucket because he, in his wisdom, knew that God would get a big fucking laugh out of that one, and so would he. Illinoian man wins 6 million and dies instantly, leaving family to grieve... from the comforts of their luxury suites at the Fillintheblank Luxury Hotel in DAZZLING, BEAUTIFUL faraway private island! CONGRATULATIONS, THORVALSON FAMILY!
I told Margaret of how my sister and I struggled with the sale of our dad's house, how Jenny had asked me, "What're you gonna do - move back to Rockford?" And in my stubbornness, my unwillingness to just let it go (hey, wait a minute...), I'd said firmly and with conviction, "YES." Margaret laughed a bit at that, and then said in seriousness, "There's nothing to come back to. [Our old neighbor across the street]'s the only one left. All the other neighbors... I heard Lucille's going into a retirement home."
After getting over the initial shock that Lucille is still alive in that house with her tiny little dogs and the ceramics kiln in the basement - christ, she was old then; she's gotta be ancient now - and the realization that the dogs and the kiln are probably long gone, too, I agreed with her.
"I miss those guys," she said, and I could hear the choke in her throat as she said it, long and slow and painful.
She gave me her son's phone number and told me to check on him. He lives a few blocks away from where I work. "Don't tell him I put you up to it, though. He'll think I'm being nosy." Maybe not this week, but sometime soon, I'll call him up and pay for his dinner where I work, buy him a beer and exchange our stories and marvel and wince at how much we are like our respective dead dads.
***
There's a big metal "T" hanging on our back fence, and I don't know exactly where it's going to next, but I do know it's coming with me.
Garden work today. Digging in the mud created by last night's rain. Arguing in my head with Dad over how I'm not doing it right, how the hole needs to be bigger and there needs to be more potting mix in ratio to the soil, and ultimately winning the argument (the unsatisfying bittersweetness of arguing with the dead: you'll always win) with a triumphant, "Yeah? If I'm not doing it right, then why don't you do it yourself. Oh, yeah - that's right - YOU DON'T HAVE A BODY. TAKE THAT." And he laughs and says, "Alright, Squirrel."
Digging in the mud. Preparing for the next transition.
You can't take it with you. But a bit of soil sticks under the nails.
Look at you, a little blogging machine...
Posted by: tracey at May 9, 2007 05:59 PM