November 29, 2009
Today would have been my father’s 70th birthday. We always celebrated his birthday on Thanksgiving (his favorite holiday), adding an apple pie (his favorite, that he taught me to bake) to the pumpkin pies and adding an extra layer to the festivities. This year, the family spent Thanksgiving together quietly, peacefully, with a different layer added to the day’s events.
Today was impossibly gorgeous for late November. It was sunny and 70 degrees, with high beautiful clouds of a type usually reserved for the most hope-filled of May days. It’s the first Sunday of Advent in the church calendar, another big time for hope. During the final stages of my Dad’s illness and during the week between his passing and his funeral, the weather was some of the most lovely imaginable. It felt to me as if the world were softening its edges, as if there was a kindly give to things that might otherwise be hard at that time. That little window of grace existed, and while some things were so difficult, worse than I’d ever had to deal with, everything else seemed beautiful and easy and gentle. Today felt like a glimpse of that spirit.
I am not much of one for graves. Whatever happens to us at death, I know that our bodies do not signify once the spirit leaves them. I had always suspected this before and now that I have been present at the moment of death, it is fully confirmed. I have never liked open caskets or viewings, though I have come to understand some of the ways they can comfort other people. When I’ve visited the graves of my grandparents in the past, I’ve come up short. What do I do? Do I pray? Do I remember the person? Do I make silly jokes? Believe me, in my family, that one’s definitely an option, and not a disrespectful one.
Today for the first time since his funeral, I visited my father’s grave. I took some flowers even though he was never very fond of them. “I can’t see the colors,” he’d say with a shrug, since he was so colorblind he could really only see shades of gray. But it’s what you do, right? You say, I was here, I love you. Since Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, I also brought a small slice of pumpkin pie. Apple was his favorite but he loved my pumpkin pie too. I leaned the flowers against the white wooden cross at the head of his grave (a place-holder until the granite memorial arrives) and then I sat on the little bench at the foot of his grave and ate a slice of pumpkin pie. I cried and I sniveled and I laughed, and though he would have rolled his eyes at me he also knew me well enough to know that this is going to have to be how I mourn.
Sitting there, it was so still and serene that the tears eventually stopped. I still am not convinced about graves, but I know that that place is a right and good place to remember my Dad. Right now when I sit at his grave I am filled only with the memories of the end of his life, but I know that in time I will have all the memories there when I am there, the good ones and the bad. The ground of that place was sacred to him, and so it makes sense that it is now sacred to his memory as well.
Happy birthday, Dad.
November 29, 2009
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Jen · 
5 Comments
Tags: birthday, dad · Posted in: family
5 Responses
When I die I hope someone brings me pie. This made me all misty-eyed.
This was beautiful, thank you for sharing this with us. I’m sorry you had to deal with such a hard milestone so soon.
Genie, when I die, I think I’d prefer chocolate cake. Still, the sentiment remains. =)
Christie, thanks! The milestones come whether we want them or not so…pie helps. =)
This was so amazingly lovely. What a wonderful way to remember. My father would have loved the idea of pie.
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