So today I got the last 6 boxes of dad's stuff from his executor. Odds and ends like his graduation robes, and baby pictures of us, and many, many paperweights and certificates from the University; his yearbook from the year he graduated from med school, a dark brown face above a military uniform. A letter of recommendation from his mentor, co-author and friend, from the early '70's that says "Elson is Black. I am a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, capitalist pig. And yet this never affects our conversations." Eyeball slides. About 30 pictures of various fishing trips he went on where he was always wearing a silly hat. A photo of a party at his house showing ladies in the pool not getting their hair wet and dad wearing his gold medallion and grinning like a wolf.
Great book fodder. But, I'm still in deepest grief because I haven't yet accepted that he died in such ugliness. I hope I'm mature enough to accept that some people are just nuts, but that simple hope that he would get stuff, stop being so abusive, you know, a hazy deathbed scene where he'd apologize to my brother, and declare that he knew we loved him, that he could feel our love and regard--but life and death are messy things and some people are fuckin' nutz and perhaps there wasn't enough oxygen in his brain. For the past 30 or 40 years.
And it's odd, but I don't have the brick wall of his craziness to fight against anymore and it was such a habit, at least internally. It's a relief and quite scary.
And
I'd love to be able to call him up right now and ask him why his head is so pointy in his military photographs. What's up with that, dad?
1 comment:
This is beautiful. It's hard sorting these things out - both the physical remnants and the emotional baggage - after someone you love passes. But having these little glimpses into their life, snapshots of those moments, can help.
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