When The Stars Go Blue

It took a little longer than I had expected but my dad’s headstone was recently placed on his grave.  I drove out with my mom, brother, and sister to see it this morning.  It’s about a twenty minute drive from Maplewood to the cemetery where my dad is buried, up north.  You know how when you’re driving along, your mind is thinking of something else, and then all of a sudden you arrive to your destination, but you can’t remember how you got there?  That’s how it was today.  It’s a suitable metaphor for life really, meandering from place to place, not really focusing on being in the moment and then the next thing you know you find yourself in a cemetery. 

Today we step out of the car and it’s cold out.  We had to order a bronze marker for dad, since he is buried in the part of the cemetery that only accepts bronze, which are considerably more expensive than granite markers.  I laugh because dad is in the penthouse suite of the cemetery.  He is buried close to my grandma, so we say hello to her while we’re there.  We pass by my sister, just a few graves down, and stop for a while.  I cry every time I see her headstone which isn’t very often and today I do it again.  She was seventeen when she died.  We finally get to dad.  It’s a simple and elegant marker.  It looks like we’ve spent a lot of money on it but in reality we bought the cheapest one that we could find since my mom doesn’t have any money.  We discuss how nicely it turned out and how we were afraid it was going to look awful.  We think it’s fitting for him.  It doesn’t look like any other grave marker.  None of us have been here since dad died in June.  We just couldn’t come out and see it unmarked, especially since it takes so long for dirt to settle on top of fresh graves.  We cry.  The memories of his last months and days come rushing into my mind and I can’t take it, but I act like I can so that I’m able to comfort my mom.  Below me are the remnants of my father.  Someone I kissed and comforted and who’s hand I held not even six months ago.  My belief system tells me that I’ll see him again someday.  It doesn’t matter what you believe.  This is what I believe.  

The last couple of weeks of my dad’s life he was in and out of consciousness, but mostly out.  My brother would play the guitar next to his bed and we’d have family sing-alongs of southern gospel standards and Johnny Cash songs.  My dad’s moniker was “Cowboy Willie.”  One time he even donned his fringe jacket and cowboy hat and brought his guitar to my nephew’s school to lead his own sing along.  It was a hit with the kids and something my nephew will never forget.  At his funeral we played recorded versions of him singing “The Holy Hills” and “He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need,” old southern gospel songs.  A couple of days before he died, when everyone was out of the room, I’d take my dad’s hand and sing those songs to him, just him and me.  I know he heard me.  There was a lot of peace in that room when I sang, a lot of forgiveness and reconciling.  I know that in those moments my dad knew that his daughter loved him and would stay with him until it was time.  I promised him every time I had to leave him that I would see him on the other side, not sure if that moment was going to be the last time I’d see my dad alive. 

It’s hard standing on the grave of someone who loved life as much as my father did.  He loved to laugh.  He loved to tell stories and sing.  He was, as my husband affectionately puts it, a “crazy old hoot owl” but he was an original.  He loved holidays and always made such a big deal over them.  He was so proud of his pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving and would shove a forkful into our mouths as soon as we’d walk through the door.  “Here, I want you to try something,” he’d say.  The smell of pumpkin pie will always remind me of dad.  Thanksgiving was really tough this year.

My dad never met a stranger.  After they removed the brain tumor and before his strokes he had no social boundaries (not that he ever had many to begin with) and would talk to anyone who had ears.  They didn’t even have to pretend to listen.  He couldn’t pick up on social cues anymore anyway so even if you were rude to him it didn’t matter.  He’d smile at you and talk to you as if you were his new best friend.  That’s how he was.  He wouldn’t be rude to you, no matter how rude you were to him.  And he was never, ever rude to his kids.  He always had encouraging things to say to us.  He was so proud, it didn’t matter what we did or who we became he was just so proud that we were his.  He’d tell us that all the time, “I’m so proud of you.”  We were so embarrassed of him at times but he was always proud of us.  “Nobody has prettier girls than I do,” he’d say, embarrassingly, all the time, to anyone.  Humility was not his strong suit.  We learned it from my mother. 

My dad wasn’t perfect.  It’s a funny thing with us humans that we tend to romanticize people and turn them into saints once they’ve died.  My dad was no saint.  He had a long list of flaws.  We all do.  His just affected me a little more than anyone else’s.  He was never directly mean to me.  Ever.  One of my friends told me how she hated her dad growing up because he would say and do the meanest things to her, and now she still hates him.  They don’t even talk.  I can’t relate to that.  My dad was loving and kind and affectionate with me and my other siblings.  He was tough when he needed to be with four deviant kids, but he was pretty gentle most of the time.  When I was young he would braid my hair after my bath and I’d cuddle with him on the sofa and fall asleep in the cradle of his arm during Cardinals games. 

It’s just, and I say this as only a daughter can, a lot of his mistakes indirectly affected my view of men and of life in general.  He felt the pressures, temptations and wiles of life, just like I do now.  Only he couldn’t handle it.  He wasn't anchored to our home.  He was gone a lot.  He settled down in his later years and made peace with himself, I think.  I made peace with him too though it took me a while and by the time I did it was almost too late.  The day of his tumor removal the doctor came out afterwards and told us my dad had Stage 4 cancer and there were still “feelers” in his brain that would probably kill him in three to six months (he survived three years after that.)  I cried the entire thirty minute car ride home from the hospital.  By the time I'd gotten home, I’d forgiven my father for every mistake he had ever made. 

Six months after his surgery, sometime in August, when my dad was in his most intense cycle of oral chemotherapy, I announced that I was pregnant.  By this time, the cancer and the brain damage from removing the tumor had made my dad’s emotions and behavior a bit erratic.  He was down a lot, sleeping during the day and up at night.  We never knew what he was going to say or how he was going to react to things.  His filter was non existent.  After rounds of chemo, radiation and then eventually, the series of strokes, his spirit, that fire behind his eyes, began to wear out and change.  His personality changed.  By the end of his life he could barely work up any emotion.  He’d stare off into the distance, his beautiful blue eyes glazed over, as if the world that he used to see of fire and beauty was nothing but a landscape of dull grey. 

I did a bit of grief counseling after my father’s death.  The loss of my dad and the two hospice experiences being so close to one another understandably left me a little freaked out.  I felt like I needed to work out a few things before they took their toll on my son.  I talked to my counselor about my life, mostly about my dad and my son, and she pointed out something to me.  A lot of the words I used to describe my dad: full of life, funny, loved to laugh, sang all the time…were the same ones I used to describe my son.  The things that stood out most about my dad’s appearance were his sky blue eyes.  As a young man, my dad had black hair and baby blue eyes.  My mom used to call him, “My dark haired blue eyed man.”  My son has those same eyes.  They are beautiful and on fire.  Everyone comments on my son’s eyes just like they used to about my dad’s.  And my son laughs hard, almost like a grown man.  A friend of mine once said “I’ve never heard a baby laugh like that.”  My son also loves to sing, especially when it’s for an audience.  We had to sing “Happy Birthday” with him this year about ten times before he was satisfied.  He just has to hear a song once and he’s singing it for days.  My son loves life and life loves him. 

It’s a tangible thing, this connection of the dead to the living.  You don’t have to look far for it.  It’s our jobs to carry on and be the living reflections of those who’ve passed.  My counselor said, “Your dad lives because of you, because of your son.”  At first I thought, oh no.  I laughed at that.  It sounds so cliché.  I promise you it’s not.  When you lose your parents, and you will someday, it’s a very comforting thought that the best of them will forever be housed in you, in your children.  Yes, I know I’ll see my dad again someday.  Right now I'm satisfied with knowing that my family tree is strong and the roots that I am now standing on will last as long as skies, and eyes, are blue.

We drive out of the cemetery and back into the world of the living.  I remember that waiting for me at home is a dark-haired, blue-eyed reminder that there is so much more life to live.  He’ll meet me over at my mom’s house later today and he will burst through the door and run into my arms, “So happy see you, mama,” he’ll say.  I’ll kiss him a million times.  There is so much purpose and reason for my being alive. For generations to come my life will amount to something, and go on and on.  Driving away from a cemetery you realize that, in the simplest terms, life is a gift.  My dad’s life was a gift to me and mine to him.  I miss him now and I always will. 

I love you dad.