My father sat on my bookshelf for the past three and a half years. Until last week. He was my best friend, my rock, he was a stoic old-school gentleman, from the UK born and raised. Moved to America after a tragedy. After finding the love of his life in London, marrying her, and then watching her be killed by a drunk driver in the passenger seat of their car as he drove, 42 days after their wedding. The funeral was in the church where they had been married just 5 weeks earlier. She was buried in her wedding gown. I write about this because it's why he's no longer on my shelf.
My mother died two years before my father and I, freshly and painfully divorced, relied on him to be the anchor of my little family of me and my two young sons. He and I were both in deep grief. I later told him he'd saved my life during that time. He told me I'd saved his. He would stay with us often, driving down from his home an hour away. I'd cook him his favorite dinners. He would throw a football and play chess with the boys. And make us laugh. Cheer the boys on at their football games. Tell me I was doing a great job as a working single mom. "I don't know how you do it all!" It felt good to be seen. One day out of the blue he called, confused. By that night we were in the ER and had a diagnosis. Glioblastoma. Three of them. Brain tumors, the most aggressive kind. Always fatal. As the neurologist said, "this is going to end badly, and it going to end quickly." Exactly one month later he was gone. My siblings and I provided 100% of his care, in his home, my siblings flying in from OR and TX. We took turns. With a once-weekly visit from a hospice nurse, for one hour, showing us which meds we would need and what signs to look for to tell us when we'd need them. There were alarmingly few medicines. Two in fact. We felt undersupplied, but the actual act of dying requires little medicine. Just for comfort. There were a lot of practical things - banking, lawyers, and the long beautiful, excruciating days waiting for death. We were blessed beyond belief that he was up and dressed and living on brie and crab cakes and ice cream and, with just some minor telltale signs, was dressed and sipping chardonnay and talking until two days before he suddenly took a turn and died with us at his side.
When the second parent dies, it is very different. We were suddenly adults. In our 40s and 50s, but it is true that you become a full adult only when both parents are gone I think. At least, if they've been good parents. We had to plan a funeral, clean out his (luckily army level organized and minimal) house and sell it. Dive into the quagmire of an estate. All throughout that time, my siblings, and father when he was alive, had not laughed that hard, true belly laughs, in years. It was such a bizarre mix of grief and elation. Like being that close to death makes everything clear and, in some way, everything alright. In the death-has-the-final-say no matter what kind of alright. We joked that "we put on a mean funeral." And thought maybe we should hire ourselves out. Beautiful hymns in a tiny stone church in Maine. Heartfelt eulogies, and then at the end of the service, the church door opened and there was a bagpiper in full regalia playing Amazing Grce. My father was Scottish, been in the army in full kilt, and became more and more proud of that the older he got. At the gravesite, we had him "piped into the ground" as they call it, the bagpiper holding the space of timelessness, of ritual, of permission to be emotional, of pride, as my brother's shoulders shook with sobs and he gently placed the little wooden box of ashes into the ground, next to where my father had placed my mother's little wooden box two years before. On a hill overlooking the sea in the tiny village in Maine they had retired to from London, New York and finally New Jersey.
The other half of his ashes were on my living room bookshelf. Waiting to be with Sarah. He had waited 60 years to be reunited with his first wife. That story hidden away in our childhoods, a strange generational, or maybe British, way of dealing with it. So as not to hurt my mother. But in a way, I'd think it was more upsetting, Sarah's picture in my father's closet next to his suits, no one talking about her. Like he'd cheated rather than been windowed. Like someone had done something wrong. Though we would visit her grave in summer on our trips to England, slightly confused as to where we were. But it was out of good intentions she was tucked away.
Then, finally, the day arrived. I took the beautiful little blue metal urn off the shelf where it had sat for three and a half years as right after his funeral, covid made travel impossible, and then schedules and coordinating with siblings. By the end, I swear I could hear him clearing his throat and saying, "When are you taking me to England as I asked you to!?" In that stern fatherly voice that made one sit up straight. The urn had provided me comfort. I put a glass of port in front of it Thanksgiving and Christmas. We both loved port. I would look at it all the time. I would talk to him. He was still in my house, even if it was just as ash with tiny flecks of bone. I had to decant him into a plastic bag which broke my heart. I wasn't allowed to travel with him in the metal urn. But I got all the certificates - death, cremation - and the ashes and managed to get us both to London, then a train to the town where he and Sarah were married, and where she was buried. My sister and I met up there for this sacred task we had been asked to carry out. Our final act of service to a man whose whole life was about acts of service. Sarah's only living brother, nearing ninety and in ill health, drove up with his wife several hours to get there. They had moved years ago. And his brother's widow drove down from the Lake District. We had expected it to be the carrying out of a task. But in the end, it was profoundly emotional and beautiful. Sarah's brother, John, could have been my father. Looked like him, talked like him, was the same combination of British gentleman who wouldn't put up with any nonsense, combined with sweetness, sensitivity and a hilarious sense of humor. Just like my father. He even looked just like him. We all said we instantly felt like family. The following morning we went to church where the union and then final separation had taken place, then to the grave. We had to dig around with a stick in the dry earth on her grave to make a hole. We pulled up things on our phones - me a reading I love by John O'Donahue. My sister a poem. And John, on the spot, wanted to read a psalm. And we cried. We cried and cried. I hadn't expected that. I had cried till I couldn't cry any more at my parent's funerals, but this was complicated. This was laying him to rest with a woman who wasn't my mother. But, as in all things in death, nothing small mattered. It was only beautiful. We truly felt, palpably felt (even my agnostic sister) my father's contentment, his final sigh, at having the remainder of his ashes laid with his first love. It was more powerful than I think any of us expected. And more tragic. And more perfect. And it was the end, the final goodbye after three years of being in some strange ashen limbo. It was done. As per usual with Brits, after all the tears and wiping noses and grief, John said - Now...lunch. And off we went to his nephew's gorgeous old home in a tiny village 5 minutes away, surrounded by thatched cottages and a massive estate from the 1800s that looked like it was from a movie, a long walk with sheep all around us and a beautiful big lunch with lots of wine in the hot sun in the garden. Full of laughter and making new memories and we all parted saying we would stay in touch and that we felt we had made new family. It was an unexpected gift. My sister and I then took the train to the southern coast of England to stay with my father's sister and our cousins who are absolutely wonderful and hilarious and loving and kind. Then we came home.
And now there is what I have found, burying both parents and divorced from the father of my children, divorced in a very tough way - there is a part 2 to grief. But part 2 is profoundly lonely. No one really notices. Or even cares really. In fairness, part 2 comes later and people have their lives. They're all busy too. This is the grief of the big hole in your life where these people were. And it's permanent. Now I sit and look up at an empty shelf in my living room. Where the urn was. My duty done. It feels right. It should be empty. But I miss having him here. Even just a few tablespoons of him. There's a new hole now in my heart. And it is equal measures heartbreaking, and beautiful. It really is. But the empty shelf looks sad. When I'm ready I'll add a framed family photo. And maybe something of my parents'. They had beautiful things. But first I need to sit and look up at the empty bookshelf for a while. And let it be.
Happy Father's Day Daddy. I know now you are truly fully at peace. I could not have asked for a better father in any way. You were the lighthouse in my life. I love you.
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