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I wrote the following for the Writer's Circle Mario started up this year. I had some trouble moving out of autobiographical writing style (too many years journalling, I guess) and into fiction.
Technically, it's untitled, but it's saved as,
"His ashes are still in a box..."
His ashes are still in a box in Mom’s closet.
My memories are a crazy mosaic – images from his final illness jumbled randomly with times when he was younger, when I was younger, and he was so big...
I remember him refusing to let the paramedics come to the house, even though he was so sick he couldn’t get back into bed off the floor, even with me helping… Then I flash on how he looked when he coached the teen softball team I used to be on: shirt stretched over his paunch, tipping the cap back to scratch through and finger comb his hair. The slow walk out to left field, those stupid sandals. Throwing the ball, hitting it for infield practice. Flagging one of us to go ahead and steal third base, urgently gesturing, come on, c’mon!
Then back to the diabetes: finding candy bars he’d squirrel away under the seat of the car. Refusing to drink water, ever, for pete’s sake! And how he’d try to convince mom to prick his finger (oh, that paper-thin fragile skin on his fingers!) for those goddamned blood sugar tests.
The last weeks in the hospital, the doctor asks Mom if they can do a liver shunt. She asks if it will help him – lengthen his life, allow for more time to be conscious, lessen pain? The doctor replies, “No, your husband’s liver is so hard from cirrhosis that the shunt will probably only increase the function slightly. But it won’t do him any harm, and we’re a teaching hospital. This is a procedure we don’t have the chance to do very often...” Mom says yes. She’s my mom, what else would she say? She knows it’ll help somebody, even if it won’t help my dad.
As a teenager, I used to transcribe letters for his law practice, and remember one letter in particular. At the time, he was helping my aunt Catherine, his sister, with complications from her divorce. I dimly knew that the ex-husband was being a jerk, but didn’t know the man personally. Deciphering his chicken-scratches on the yellow legal pad, I gradually realized for the first time that my dad was a genius with language. The letter, written in perfectly polite legal terminology, was a work of art. No individual phrase could be faulted or found threatening, nevertheless it conveyed perfectly, that if Dean didn’t do right by Catherine, my dad was going to make his life a living hell in ways that hadn’t even been invented yet. I wish I’d kept a copy of that letter.
I miss how he used to laugh, silent and mischievous, with the tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth. I miss his deadpan, one-eyebrow-raised humor, and the way he’d look up at me over the top of those half-moon glasses, half-smiling. I miss him sitting in that lazy-boy style recliner, playing chess, reading the Bee, and watching every sport he could find on the weekend TV. I miss hugging him, with his scratchy cheek, even with the cigarette smoke smell he always had – Silva Thins and Old Spice.
Sometimes I see or hear him in my family or myself. Scott has a cock of the head, a hunch of the shoulders, that’s just eerie. I hear myself saying something in his voice – dry, humorous, mildly sarcastic, or using a typically “Fred” turn of phrase. I see the locks of silver starting at my temples, just as they grew bright at his, every day of his life till the last one, stiff and staring and empty in the hospital bed.
I wrestle with anger at his ghost, raging silently – you were only 54! You never met our spouses, you’ll never know your grandchildren. If you had only – only what? Taken better care? Stopped drinking sooner? I don’t even know what the “if only” is...
And that’s what tears it. He did many, many good things, but the things he didn’t do still wound us, 9 years later.
Mom doesn’t date. Last night, I asked her if she missed having someone to hug and kiss on. She talked about how nice it is to have her children and children-in-law so nearby, and that cuddling on the grandbaby is just the best thing ever for fixing when you’re feeling lonely.
But she didn’t talk about Dad. I’m gonna have to ask her again.
more anon. Still waiting to hear about when the SN&R is publishing that poem o' mine.
Technically, it's untitled, but it's saved as,
His ashes are still in a box in Mom’s closet.
My memories are a crazy mosaic – images from his final illness jumbled randomly with times when he was younger, when I was younger, and he was so big...
I remember him refusing to let the paramedics come to the house, even though he was so sick he couldn’t get back into bed off the floor, even with me helping… Then I flash on how he looked when he coached the teen softball team I used to be on: shirt stretched over his paunch, tipping the cap back to scratch through and finger comb his hair. The slow walk out to left field, those stupid sandals. Throwing the ball, hitting it for infield practice. Flagging one of us to go ahead and steal third base, urgently gesturing, come on, c’mon!
Then back to the diabetes: finding candy bars he’d squirrel away under the seat of the car. Refusing to drink water, ever, for pete’s sake! And how he’d try to convince mom to prick his finger (oh, that paper-thin fragile skin on his fingers!) for those goddamned blood sugar tests.
The last weeks in the hospital, the doctor asks Mom if they can do a liver shunt. She asks if it will help him – lengthen his life, allow for more time to be conscious, lessen pain? The doctor replies, “No, your husband’s liver is so hard from cirrhosis that the shunt will probably only increase the function slightly. But it won’t do him any harm, and we’re a teaching hospital. This is a procedure we don’t have the chance to do very often...” Mom says yes. She’s my mom, what else would she say? She knows it’ll help somebody, even if it won’t help my dad.
As a teenager, I used to transcribe letters for his law practice, and remember one letter in particular. At the time, he was helping my aunt Catherine, his sister, with complications from her divorce. I dimly knew that the ex-husband was being a jerk, but didn’t know the man personally. Deciphering his chicken-scratches on the yellow legal pad, I gradually realized for the first time that my dad was a genius with language. The letter, written in perfectly polite legal terminology, was a work of art. No individual phrase could be faulted or found threatening, nevertheless it conveyed perfectly, that if Dean didn’t do right by Catherine, my dad was going to make his life a living hell in ways that hadn’t even been invented yet. I wish I’d kept a copy of that letter.
I miss how he used to laugh, silent and mischievous, with the tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth. I miss his deadpan, one-eyebrow-raised humor, and the way he’d look up at me over the top of those half-moon glasses, half-smiling. I miss him sitting in that lazy-boy style recliner, playing chess, reading the Bee, and watching every sport he could find on the weekend TV. I miss hugging him, with his scratchy cheek, even with the cigarette smoke smell he always had – Silva Thins and Old Spice.
Sometimes I see or hear him in my family or myself. Scott has a cock of the head, a hunch of the shoulders, that’s just eerie. I hear myself saying something in his voice – dry, humorous, mildly sarcastic, or using a typically “Fred” turn of phrase. I see the locks of silver starting at my temples, just as they grew bright at his, every day of his life till the last one, stiff and staring and empty in the hospital bed.
I wrestle with anger at his ghost, raging silently – you were only 54! You never met our spouses, you’ll never know your grandchildren. If you had only – only what? Taken better care? Stopped drinking sooner? I don’t even know what the “if only” is...
And that’s what tears it. He did many, many good things, but the things he didn’t do still wound us, 9 years later.
Mom doesn’t date. Last night, I asked her if she missed having someone to hug and kiss on. She talked about how nice it is to have her children and children-in-law so nearby, and that cuddling on the grandbaby is just the best thing ever for fixing when you’re feeling lonely.
But she didn’t talk about Dad. I’m gonna have to ask her again.
more anon. Still waiting to hear about when the SN&R is publishing that poem o' mine.
