My father would have been 84
today.
As I look for his traces in the world,
I stop and the mirror shows him to me.
My current choice of reading material, Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Inc.,
is a book I would have loved to discuss with him. It is a book I can hear him quoting. How I would have loved to hear his thoughts on our current political dystopia.
When his intellect was intact, he was always ahead of the curve.
Last week I spent many hours, many
rocks and 800 lbs. of top soil extending a rock wall on the south side of our
screened in porch. I even enjoyed this
process. I am now planning to get a
covering layer of mulch and set up a foundation for my compost pile behind the
garage. What could be more Dennis-like
than this?
I look at my dog, once only Paul’s
dog but now our dog. My dad loved Elsa
and remembered her name much longer than Paul’s. Elsa is now a spry at-least-fifteen years
old. The last picture I have of him was
taken while he was asleep in the back seat of the car with Elsa on the way home
from Wisconsin.
Later today I will go
running. Like my father, I am slow but
persistent. I love the scenery more than
the exercise.
Grief is a funny thing. I don’t really know where it comes from or
why. I was never sentimental about my
father, but sometimes I feel so sad that he has gone on. It was never an easy relationship. My father was an awkward man, and I am
acutely aware of my own awkwardness on a daily basis. Almost six years later I still don’t have the
words.
As I grow older I seem to grow
more into who he was. I see the wisdom
in his madness; his compost pile and vegetable garden, his bicycling to work on
the burnt orange Schwinn with the baby seat never removed, his love of politics,
his reuse of every possible every day item, his desire to darn his socks rather
than getting new ones, his happiness in the simple things of life, of trees and
loons, of building a retaining wall or just sitting and looking out at the
lake.
(published a little after the actual date)
