One evening my mother and I sat up long after Michael had gone, poring through photo albums—a vacation in the Wisconsin Dells where Dad smiled out from under a ten-gallon hat as he sat next to a statue of the town sheriff; another at Yellowstone when Jill and I earned patches for being Junior Rangers. There were pictures of family outings and birthdays, anniversaries and graduations. Mom and I shed tears as we turned the pages of memories of picnics and dinners and holidays, but we smiled, too, at the sweet mundane days of my childhood, and laughed over images of Dad as a skinny Santa and Dad in his first pair of Bermuda shorts, proudly displaying his hairy legs for the camera. In most pictures my father had his arm around one of us, and a proud, luminous smile on his face.
“You girls were the pride of his life,” Mom said. She had dark circles under her eyes and her hair was uncharacteristically messy, curls spiraling around her head. Exhaustion had etched her face. “Whenever he took you somewhere people would say, ‘Here comes Harry and his girls.’ He was so proud of that.”
“He was a great dad,” I said, my voice splintering. Mom touched my cheek. “He was always there when I needed him. He always had good advice.”
“Not that you listened,” she said.
“That’s not true. I listened. I didn’t always follow it but I listened. And he was okay with that. He let me do my thing, encouraged me to think for myself.”
“He went a bit overboard in that regard,” she said with a wisp of a smile. She was the conservative one, wanting me to be safe and knowable. It had been a source of conflict between us when I was young, but they had balanced each other on the parenting scale.
“He never made me feel that anything I wanted to do was silly or beyond me.”
“He was less than thrilled when you applied for the Peace Corps,” she noted. “Or took up scuba diving.”
“But he bought me a customized wet suit.”
She leafed through one of the older albums with heavy black pages and white stick-on corners anchoring each photo. She smiled at a black-and-white picture from their first anniversary, Dad looking like a gangster in a pin-striped suit with a wide tie, holding a cigar, and Mom in a dress with forties-style shoulders and a pleated skirt with an orchid pinned to her lapel.
“Look how handsome,” she said, a finger caressing Dad’s Kodak chest.
“Both of you. You were a beautiful couple.”
She sat back, deflated, and her eyes shone with tears. “I don’t know how I’m going to live without him,” she said, pulling a tissue from her sleeve and wiping her eyes.
“I know,” I said. I didn’t know how I would either.
In another photo she sat at a table, a big birthday cake in front of her. She leaned forward, blowing out the candles while Dad grinned at the camera.
“My twenty-fifth birthday,” she said.
So many years ago, a canyon of memories filled since then. I sighed. “I wish I’d had what you guys had,” I said. “All those years together, all that history. I’ll never have that.”
“Well, you won’t be married fifty years but you’ve started a history with Michael, and you’ve got lots of time to make memories.”
“Sometimes I wish things had worked out with Jeremy and that we’d had a family. We’d have been married thirty years now. I could be a grandmother.”
My mother poured more chocolate into my mug and added a cloud of whipped cream. “It doesn’t pay to look back, honey,” she said.
“I know. But it’s hard not to think about it. Daddy was so disappointed when Jeremy and I got divorced. I think he thought I gave up too easily on that marriage.”
Mom pulled her sweater tighter around her knobby shoulders. “Perhaps,” she said, “but you have to remember we come from a different time, when people stayed together no matter what. But you know he wanted you to be happy. And he always trusted you to do the right thing.”
“I know. But still. I envy what you and Dad had. It must give you some comfort now.”
“It does. I had fifty-two years with a man I was crazy about.” She daintily licked whipped cream off the spoon. “But it wasn’t all peaches and cream.”
“Well, no relationship is. But you were so in tune, so … united.”
“We were. But don’t idealize it, honey. And don’t use it as a scale to measure your own success or failure. It was human. Real life.”
“Of course it was. But it was still an enviable relationship. I want that. Jill managed it, why couldn’t I?” I was sounding like a pouty little girl but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“You and Jill are very different. You wanted different things. She’s more like me; traditional, unassuming, wanting peace. You’re like Daddy, more of an adventurer. You like to mess things up a bit.”
“That’s true, but he still had the love of his life,” I said, unable to let it go, “and the great relationship. I just sometimes wonder why I couldn’t manage that. It seems so basic.”
“Libby, stop now. Michael can be your great relationship. Just don’t expect it to be like ours or Jill’s or anybody else’s.”
I thought about her words later as I lay in bed unable to sleep, feeling like a forlorn little girl in my childhood bed, wishing to go back to my childhood for just one day. I suppose I did compare my life to theirs. I did always think I’d grow up and get married and have a family and duplicate the template they’d created.
* * *
The funeral was on Thursday. I put on a black and gray checked coatdress with black buttons, and brushed out my hair. It hung in soft shiny curls, a good hair day. But it looked like happy hair, so I pulled it back and tied it with a black velvet ribbon.
Michael and I picked up my mother. She walked to the car with her back straight, her hair perfectly done and her blue suit pressed. She hugged me and we held on a little longer than usual. And then she got in the backseat and pulled her skirt down over her knees.
Only the gleaming black hearse was in the parking lot when we arrived. The funeral home was quiet. Two enormous floral arrangements stood on each side of the glossy casket, and rows of chairs lined up like soldiers. The funeral director was a beefy guy whose muscular arms strained the sleeves of his tasteful navy blue suit coat. He looked like someone who would beat the crap out of you at the slightest provocation, yet he spoke to us in gentle, efficient tones with eyes full of compassion.
Jill and Mark came in, then Sophie, Pete, Danielle and Tiffany, then other friends and family in a steady stream, offering hugs, hands, comforting gestures. Men my father had known since he was in law school hugged me and told me what a good man he was. People I didn’t know at all told me how much they would miss him. I felt as if I were playing a role in someone else’s life.
“Thank you,” I kept saying. “Thank you for coming.” Michael stayed by my side, watching me carefully as if afraid I would break. His solicitousness would have normally put me on edge but I felt so insubstantial that his attention seemed to be all that was holding me together.
As I stood to read the eulogy I’d prepared, I looked out at the assembly of friends and family. I wasn’t sure I could get through it but was determined to say good-bye to my father. Michael stood behind me, his hand resting on my waist. He’d promised to take over if I couldn’t finish.
“When I was three my father took me to his barber for a haircut, unbeknownst to my mother,” I read. My mom smiled. “That was my first Buster Brown haircut and it was my signature hairdo until I was ten. Dad always claimed he invented the cut.
“When I was seven I had a concussion and broke my arm in three places when I hit some rocks on my roller skates, and Dad scooped me up and ran with me, on foot, to the emergency room and then stayed by my side until I went home two days later.”
I wiped my cheeks with a tissue. Michael whispered, “Do you want me to read?” but I shook my head.
“When I ran my first marathon my dad stationed himself at four different spots along the route to cheer me on with a sign that said,
GO LIBBY—THAT’S MY GIRL! and his was the first face I saw when I crossed the finish line.”
I broke down then, seeing him in my mind, the pride that had painted his face, his excitement for me, and I gave up the page to Michael. He read on: “He was my biggest fan, and it’s unimaginable to me that I’ll never again be able to have a conversation with him or hug him or kiss his cheek. He was a good, kind and caring father, and an honorable man, and his greatest pleasure was his family.
“What he has given me is beyond measure, just by being who he was. He taught me about honor and tolerance and acceptance and love. And about commitment and responsibility and goodness and generosity, lessons I am still learning. He will touch me for the rest of my days and I will strive to be more like him. I have cherished every single moment that he was with me. I am so grateful that I’ve had him for the fifty years of my life.”
Michael kissed me and took my hand and we went back to our seats.
I stared out at the expanse of ashen sky as we rode to the cemetery. We were quiet, the air seeming to have been sucked out of us. The earthy smell of the new leather seats mixed with my mother’s White Shoulders cologne. Dad had bought her a new bottle every year for their anniversary, for their entire married life. She held my left hand and Michael held my right.
The hearse passed another burial as we drove into the cemetery. People milled about with handkerchiefs, many in hats, pods of mourners entwined in their grief. I felt tender toward them and wondered who they were burying; a parent, a sibling, a child? The word “death” was real now in a way it had never been; it had an entirely altered meaning to me.
Michael’s arm was comforting on my shoulder as the casket was lowered into the gaping hole where my father would rest. I could hear the faint sound of a buzz saw somewhere in the distance, and then the whir of the lowering device drowned it out. The smell of the earth was overwhelming. I longed to leave this place and take a deep breath of fresh air that smelled of grass and sunlight. I hadn’t run in more than a week and I burned to lace up my Nikes and do a ten-miler through the forest preserve. Or maybe a fifteen-miler. Or twenty. I wanted to run far away from this hole and the casket with my father inside and this new life that I’d have to live, without him.
Twenty
Michael and I started planning our wedding right after the funeral. I was grateful to have a focus, something to fill my time and occupy my mind. There was so much to do, so many details to decide, so many places to visit, so many dresses to try on. I welcomed the busyness of it all. I felt my father watching me, knowing he’d have been happy, pleased that he wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore.
Jill and Sophie were both alarmed at the shotgun speed with which our plans progressed.
“Why don’t you slow down a bit, hon,” Sophie suggested. “You don’t have to rush it. It’s not as if you’re pregnant or anything.”
Jill said, “It’s too soon. Dad just died. Maybe you should give yourself some time to deal with that. There’s lots of time to plan a wedding.”
“It’s okay,” I told them. “I understand what you’re saying but I’m all right. Dad would want this; he’d be glad I was going forward with it. And Michael’s been so wonderful. I know he’s the right man for me, the one I should spend my life with. It wasn’t clear to me before, but it is now.”
I had convinced myself completely, pushing my grief to a separate partition in my brain, and if Jill and Sophie weren’t convinced, they were sure that I was. I was fifty years old, after all. So they both backed off and threw themselves into the spirit of planning, wanting to be supportive. Sometimes I think they should have tried harder to talk me out of it, but when I look back on that time I know that no one could have talked me out of anything.
Patrick e-mailed after the funeral with his condolences.
I know it’s not easy. I lost my folks twenty years ago in a car accident. The hardest part was that they were here one day and gone the next. Just like that. Just ripped from my life without any warning.
My heart went out to him. I cried as I read.
You must feel something like that since your dad hadn’t been sick or anything. I guess all we can do is be happy for the time we had with them and keep their memories in our hearts.
My thoughts are with you, Libby.
Love,
Patrick
His words calmed me, as if he’d put his arms around me. It was comforting to know he understood what I was feeling. Love, Patrick, he had said.
Patrick,
Thank you for your kind e-mail. It’s horrible that you lost both your parents at once, and in such a shocking way. It’s unimaginable. I don’t know how you would get through something like that.
Losing my father is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. He’s my hero and such a large part of my heart. I miss him so much. People keep telling me it will get easier but right now I don’t see how. Now it is so raw and difficult and impossible, and I can’t talk about him without crying. Wouldn’t you think at 50 I’d be able to control myself?
Libby
A reply came back almost immediately.
Lib,
It doesn’t matter how old you are—this is your father. Don’t feel like you need to control yourself or keep from crying. You need to feel what you’re feeling to work through it.
I went to a grief counselor when my folks died. I don’t hardly tell anyone that—it seems such a wussy thing for a guy to do—but it really helped me. I tried for a while just to deal with it myself, but I have to tell you I just wasn’t doing it. I’m sure there’s something like that in Chicago. Maybe you could look into it. Death is a tough deal. I think the first time someone close to you dies it’s sort of unreal and hard to get your mind around.
If you want to talk I’m here. Or you can call me just to cry if you want. If you need to do that, just do it.
Love,
Patrick
* * *
Ironically, for our wedding Michael and I decided on the Palmer House, the place where Patrick had stayed when he came to Chicago for our lunch date, the place where we made out at the bar.
We had considered the Drake, the Peninsula and the University Club but Michael and I both liked the Palmer House’s Empire Room the best, the grandness and tradition of it. And it was available seven months from now on my father’s birthday, which was the day we’d chosen. We would have a brief ceremony on the little balcony at the side of the room with a hundred or so guests gathered around, followed by an elegant reception with high-top tables scattered throughout the room.
“We can create an aisle that will lead from the double doors to the stage so you can make an entrance,” Angela, the wedding coordinator, said. Tears filled my eyes when I envisioned walking down an aisle without my father. “Well, we don’t have to have an aisle,” she said as the tears streamed down my face.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Michael said, pulling me close. He explained about my father and Angela magically remembered an important errand that would only take her five or ten minutes, giving the weepy bride a chance to collect herself.
“It’s okay,” Michael said again when she’d gone, and handed me a handkerchief. “It’s an emotional time, I know. Try to focus on the details and not concentrate on your dad not being there. He’ll be there in spirit.” I wiped my face and handed back his handkerchief, wondering briefly if he’d already blown his nose into it.
“Would you want my dad to walk you down the aisle?” he asked.
No, I wanted to scream, I want my own father to walk me down the aisle!
But Michael was just trying to help, so I said I’d think about it.
Twenty-one
When Bea Rosatti came back from her cruise she called to see how I was. She needed some alterations done but assured me it was nothing she couldn’t live without. “Whenever you’re ready, dear,” she said. “You just let me know.”
“Thank you. But I need to work,” I told her. “I can come by in the
afternoon if that works for you.”
“If you’re sure. I have the whole afternoon free and a luscious chicken salad in the fridge. Come for lunch.”
The chicken salad was luscious. It had grapes and almonds in it and she served it on nests of crisp lettuce with sliced tomatoes fanned out on the side of the plate.
“This is delicious,” I said. “I want this recipe.”
Bea’s laugh was a bright, tinkling sound. “Okay, but you’ll have to call Whole Foods and ask them because that’s where I got it. I did slave over the lettuce beds, though.” She wore a bright pink sweater with ruffles on the collar and sleeves, and matching pink dangling earrings. She looked like cotton candy.
“How is your mother doing?” she asked.
“She’s okay. As well as can be expected, I suppose. She’s a strong lady. I stayed with her before the funeral. And a couple days after. But then she told me to go home.” I swallowed. “I guess she didn’t need me anymore.” That was when I started to cry. All I did was cry these days. “I’m sorry,” I said, using a napkin to mop my face.
“Don’t be sorry. Cry.” Bea put a box of tissues in front of me and poured sherry into small etched glasses. “It’s not that she doesn’t need you anymore, Libby, you know that. I’m sure she felt guilty that you were spending so much time with her. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be a burden. And she probably feels she needs to be strong for you.”
“But she doesn’t,” I said. “It helps me to be there for her.”
“Just tell her that. Now it’s especially important to talk to each other.” I blew my nose. “Who’s there for you, honey?” Bea asked.
“My mom. Jill. Michael.”
“What’s happening with Michael?”
“He’s been wonderful. Very strong and supportive.” Bea sipped her sherry, played with an earring. “We’re going ahead with our wedding plans,” I said. She raised an eyebrow. “We’re getting married on my dad’s birthday. In seven months.”
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