Would I do it differently? Parts of it, sure.
My earliest memory of my father happened on his work mornings. He and mom would be having breakfast in the illuminated kitchen, while I would be snuggled up in the living room chair, impossibly warm and safe, and alone with my deeply imprinting memories in the darkened room. I would lay there, hearing their muffled conversations and the sounds of the radio, and smelling toasting bread and crisp cooked bacon. All was well and safe and normal. Eventually, he would get up and leave. He and Mom would share a kiss at the front door and he'd be off. I'd pretend to be asleep, but I saw and noticed it all. And to this day I remember the smells, the chair, and their light making the darkness of the morning seem less deep.
I remember the time that I came home crying from being bullied by one of the local toughs over something or some such, and after hearing about it off he went in socks and without shoes on my sisters green bike riding around the neighborhood looking for.....someone. I don't remember even telling him who had done it, but I can still see him heading down the hill looking like he did and riding what he was on and showing the family flag in a comically protective way.
I remember summer nights when - after a shower which made him smell so clean - he'd camp out in his recliner, one leg up and over the armrest with TV on and holding a bowl of soda crackers and milk. I assume that strange combination is something he picked up while in the Army, but I never asked him that in order to find out. I've never had the courage to try it to see what all the fuss was about, but it was a fairly regular snack of his so he must have found it palatable. Soon the bowl would be empty, the show he was watching would be over, and ten o'clock would come. He would get up, leaving an empty chair and head off to bed. That chair sat in the exact spot where years later he would leave this earth, and I think of that often: How time and locales and events and segments of lives intersect and overlap on each other, as if they were meant to do so.
Once, after a very heavy rain, Dad went out to his garden to check the volume of rain that had been received in his new rain gauge. This happened in the later years when his eyesight had begun to fail, and he misread how full the gauge was. He excitedly came back in the house and announced that "We got ten inches!" He then proceeded to call the local TV station with the news, which was then dutifully noted on the evening broadcast with the forecaster's disclaimer that went something like, "Although it is possible to have isolated local very heavy amounts of rain, ten inches is somewhat unlikely...." I then asked Dad to show me on the gauge where the level he saw was and in reality it turned out to be about two inches if I remember right. He felt awful and wanted to immediately call up the station and correct what he had said, but I told him just to let it go. It was a much better story left as it was. And I've no doubt the mischievous side of him liked the chaos that got created with his mistake!
Towards the end of his life and well after he had started his journey home, Dad was sleeping in a bed in the living room that sat directly on the spot of his old chair where he rested and ate his crackers and milk so many years ago. I was in a nearby chair, trying to get some rest myself while at the same time trying to keep an eye on Dad to make sure he didn't try to get up and move about without help. I nodded off and awoke to see him standing by the bed. "Woah, woah! Where you going?" I said. "To the bathroom," he replied. I went over to him and explained that he didn't need to and that he was fine where he was. "I'm going," he said determinedly. "Fine" I said, relenting. He was in his house that he paid for and he was entitled to try it one last time.
I held his arm as he tried to move. An inch at a time, we moved about two feet in total when his legs gave out and he fell slowly to the ground with me holding and bracing his fall. It took all of my physical and emotional strength to lift him up and back into bed. I got him back under the covers, kissed him on the head and watched him go off to sleep. It was the last meaningful interaction I would have with him; the next day he was raspy and unconscious and unresponsive and had gone on to a misty mid-point place where peace and suffering fight for equal footing and equal control. We had taken our last walk together.
The passage of time has helped me gain some control over my own misty place, but I can feel my own grief deepening as the days pass. And I don't know where it is going to bottom out, or even if it will. I am now left with a newer chair sitting on the same spot where his old one was years ago and his bed was recently. I sit there and think of moments in the past and try to hear his voice as it sounded in that illuminated kitchen years ago; I think of that old bike which still sits in the garage and fight the urge to go out in the cold night and touch it; I want to find that old rain gauge, run my fingers over the marks and try to figure out how he misread it. I want, I want, I want....
But these words are about you Dad, not me. You are there in each sentence and you dance and jump when I try to turn a phrase over and over in my mind. You make me pause and erase and re-do what I thought was perfect and find that it was a lot less so. You are still there in these words and our lives and in my misery. And you shall never, ever leave.
