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.