Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorite writers, is credited with saying, “Every man has two deaths, when he buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.”
I don’t know that Papa actually said or wrote those words, but they may be how I found myself standing over my dad’s grave at West Lawn Cemetery in Racine, Wisconsin, during my most recent trip to my hometown.
It had been years since my last visit to this place.
I wasn’t sure I would remember where dad is buried, but once inside the gates of the cemetery I was drawn to his headstone like a tractor beam pulled me in.
Sights and sounds of that long ago day in December 1990 flashed by – driving mom to the graveside service because she didn’t want anything to do with the funeral home limousine, my maternal grandmother urging us to hurry up because everyone was waiting to get the show on the road, dad’s parents inconsolable in their grief.
I came bearing flowers.
A small pot of mums for dad, a bouquet of fall blooms for the grandparents.
The pot I easily placed on dad’s stone. While his is a double header (mom’s name will go on the right side when her time comes), there is no handy-dandy vase like my grandparents’ stone has. If a headstone can have a selling feature, like new car smell, the brass vase is it. A circular handle sits just above the marble centered near the top edge of the stone. Turn the handle, pull up the vase, then set it upright. Viola!
It took a little effort to pull the vase out. Clearly it had been a minute since someone visited the grandparents, too.
(DIGRESSION: When dad’s stone was placed, mom’s name and birthdate were emblazoned on a bonze plaque mounted to the marble next to the one with dad’s information. All it needed was a death date. As if dad’s plaque wasn’t traumatic enough, there was mom’s waiting for her to kick off. All four of us kids protested the plaque’s very existence, and it was removed. You can see a scar on the marble from where the plaque was removed. The scars on our hearts are much deeper.)
God, I hate cemeteries.
I mean, who likes them? I’ve read that back in the day families held picnic lunches in cemeteries, enjoying a repast while surrounded by the spirits of their dead loved one.
Sounds dreadful. Especially if you’ve spent most of your life convinced the people in the boxes below hated you.
Truly.
The day my dad died, I didn’t mourn. Not really. I was … well, relieved. The name calling, anger and emotional subjugation I had experienced most of my life had ended. Or so I thought. Thing is, that shit lives in your head like tape recorded messages, defining who you are and impacting how you behave until you do something to change the messages.
It took seven years of therapy to unspool the damage. Thank God for a good therapist and the love of an amazing and graceful woman.
On a past visit to dad’s grave I brought a letter.
During the therapy process I was nudged awake one night by what I’m convinced was the voice of God.
It was time to let some shit go.
I got up out of bed and I wrote. Fourteen pages or so of me spilling out my anger. Incident after incident of pain inflicted with words, deeds or inaction. I forgave dad in that letter. I had come to realize a truth: he didn’t know how to be a dad.
Or, he didn’t know how to raise a kid who was as vastly different from him as I was. He, the high school football player, Navy fireman, builder of tractors, great hunter of the woods, bore a son who was creative, artistic, smart-ish, musically inclined and didn’t much like to get dirty.
He didn’t know how to be a father because his father didn’t know how either. There was no example for him to follow.
We were on the road to repairing our relationship, spurred on by massive heart attack and sextuple bypass surgery when, on December 8, 1990, we ran out of time.
I held on to anger for a long, long time. Too long, to be sure.
My anger has since been replaced by empathy. I wish like hell we could talk about it.
Some people talk aloud to their loved ones. I’m not one of those people.
Dad and I communicate in dreams and telepathically.
Here’s an example: not long after I was diagnosed with cancer dad came to me in a dream. He didn’t say a word, but I understood that he knew what was happening and that he was there, with me every step of the way.
That realization gave my heart a measure of peace.
So did taking flowers to dad’s grave.
I don’t know that I can explain it. Maybe it’s an age thing.
Dad did the best he could. I know that now.
I hope he’s proud.
I can’t wait to see him on the other side.
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