11.10.2017

Watching Stars on the Hood of the Car

Jackknives in the sock drawer and ermine in the freezer.

Three years ago today. 
Death is still terrible and confusing down here.  It's still almost-understood and right at times.

It's harder to write now than it was then-- then when emotion overwhelmed inhibition and the need to process was so great-- but I came across this in my blogger drafts.  A rush of fragmented prose from 5 months after Dad died that I typed into a blogger draft box because a need existed, but I had ripped up my last journal nearly a decade before.


April 9th. 

Six days before my 36th birthday.

A taste of spring in the air but still with winter's chill.
Gray day.
Typing my mother's Last Will and Testament
while staring at my father's Last Will and Testament
(and plagiarizing nearly the entire thing where appropriate).
Leaving spaces for my mother's initials and signature
while staring at my father's initials and signature--

the signature marked from a hospital bed in a city three hours away.
The will my uncle produced because the need was clear, and Dad had never written one.


I come by procrastination honestly.

On the familiar wooden clipboard of my father's
I secure two freshly printed copies of my mother's will, and, in so doing,
notice that tucked behind all the rest and waiting in the back is my father's last note. 
I know it is so because at the top my mother's neat handwriting names it "Dad's last note."


Fri. Nov. 7,-
*Social Worker-
(Insur.?)
1. "Life" Insur. Policies- Where & NYS Pension System?

2.   Keys-  Cars, misc., tractors, Ladders, Lawn tractors. 

Those sweeping lines and flourishes.
Asterisks, circles, lines, emphatic quotation marks.
All sloppier than usual because he was so very weak.


3. Car Registrations- Transfer to Nancy

I run my fingers over the ink.
Try to conjure him up.
His fingers on the pen
(from which flowed the ink)
and my fingers on the ink.



6 comments :

Abigail said...

I took this picture of Dad at Millie's 9th birthday party. He was telling a lame joke here, and I remember Andy making fun of him because he looked like an "Amish gangster." Still makes me laugh.

sarah said...

I still have my (very poorly kept up) journals, and when my dad died, I went through a period of lust-writing- things I wish I had said, things I should have done, thoughts I couldn't bear, but couldn't share...
Thinking of you with love, and a prayer of thanksgiving for your father.

cadie said...

Words don't seem like much, and hard to find meaningful words. I'm sorry for your loss... a picture like this brings to my mind what he looked like and what his voice sounds like, and what you all are missing (although I don't know the whole of what you are missing, not having known him as closely as you.).

Molly said...

Prayers have been said for peace as I know the pain, all too well. We never stop missing them and each special moment or occasion makes the longing even greater.

We continue to lift up each one of you in prayer and especially, your dear Mother.

Recently this refrain, from a beloved hymn, came to mind as I missed my own loved ones...

"I will cling to the old rugged Cross
And exchange it one day for a crown."

Much love.

Rebecca said...

'conjure him up'

The other day I dreamed a dream about my Oma and she was right there, speaking to me, in that voice that I try to hear in the daytime and can't quite get. I clung to her. And I felt such joy and such desperation as I clung and grasped, weeping ugly-beautiful tears. I woke up and immediately realized how I had missed the sound of her broken English and how devastating it is (to me) that I'll not hear that voice again on this side of heaven.

Large souls leave such gaping holes when they are gone.

Abigail said...

There's a kinship in the missing, isn't there? We all miss people, and that mutual missing helps us understand others, even strangers, who feel the same.

and
Sarah,
For the week before I posted this, you were in my thoughts and prayers. I wish you lived a whole lot closer!