A Death In The Family

116

In fifth grade, I had taken up the habit of having a 'sick day' on one of my father's days off to avoid the despised fifth grade teacher, but to also have a chance to get to know my father better. On one of these days, my father had to sort through the home's attic and I joined him up in the dark and dusty space. Sorting through his collection of post World War II 'Life' magazines he stumbled upon a box with a typed manuscript inside. He looked at it briefly as he remembered what it was. It was a book written by Pappy's brother, based in their childhood location of Nova Scotia. This came as a surprise to me as I hadn't known my father's side of the family had come from Canada. I asked about Pappy's brother but dad simply said he had died young and left it at that.

Sorting through more stuff, I found a giant sized dictionary missing its cover. Published soon into the nineteen hundreds, it had more words in it than I had ever known existed. It had been squirreled away in the attic after the hard bound cover had fallen off decades ago, but had been kept given how much it had cost at the time it was purchased. My father said it had been Pappy's brother's and he had used it while writing his book. I asked if I could bring it down and look through it. He agreed and I had a great rest of the day seeing all of these words I had never heard of before and wondered if I could one day get it rebound with a new protective cover. Then it was gone. I assumed my mother had found it.

Twenty years later, in the pre-Spring of Nineteen Ninety-Four, Daina's mother had died.

What more can one say but that?

Her various siblings from across the Western half of the country assembled for the first time in decades for the funeral, then quickly dispersed as many had disowned the others during their lives and didn't want to spend time with each other. As her father had already made plans to live elsewhere, there was the family home to sort through and place on the market. Of the four siblings living in Colorado, Daina told me that two of them had not been as helpful as she thought they should have been during their mother's illness and believed that sorting through the home would be a task handled by her and her youngest brother. Given that I had been joining Daina for years on other errand runs and I felt like I owed her a lot given all the free meals she had fed me over the years, I offered to join her on the weekends and help with the home.

Sorting through one's childhood heirlooms, there's always that conflict of things that once meant something to you, but did it still mean enough for you to make a new place for it in your adult life? That was the dilemma Daina faced with each and every day we tackled one room after another. At the time Daina kept more than she should and we brought many boxes of items from Denver back to her condo and its associated single car garage, now dedicated to storage. Even the simplest things such as a canister of soothing power Daina had bought her mother during her last weeks had a deep meaning for her and when another sibling threw it away, Daina was horrified as it meant something to her, at that time. Each loss of a personal possession of her mother's often hit her as a reminder of the loss of her mother, itself.

Daina told me I could have anything that another family member didn't want as my payment for the time and effort helping her. While I couldn't imagine wanting anything, I kept the offer in mind. Once the top floor was done and the bottom basement floor cleared out, all that was left was piled in the main floor for a final sorting and review. Would a distant family member want it? Should it go to charity? Or was it to badly worn and needed to be tossed out? Suddenly, to my surprise there was a huge dictionary that was published soon into the Nineteen hundreds. While I couldn't say it was the same edition as my father and I had found twenty years earlier, it was still similar enough that it reminded me of that treasured book, since lost.

I asked Daina if I could have it. She didn't think so as it was a family heirloom in good condition and she was sure another family member would want it. Still, she asked her father and he said, ''No,'' as he felt someone in the family should have it. Hopes dashed, it was put aside and I continued to help Daina until her family home was emptied out after little over four consecutive weekends of sorting through everything. As there was little else left to do, Daina made the last trip to Denver on her own and she and her father took a last walk through the house before it was placed for sale. When Daina returned, she had a surprise for me.

No other family member had wanted the giant dictionary and her father said I could have it given all of my help. I eagerly accepted it from her and told her to thank her father for me. I spent the next few weeks reading through one after another of the very thin pages. Given its weight, it had to be placed on a table to read through. Once the table space was needed, I made a slot for it amongst my book shelves and there it stayed to be looked at once in a very great while when it was time to look up an obscure word.

Without her mother to care for and visit from now on, I assumed Daina and I would spend more weekends doing things together...

In reality our friendship seemed to be on its last leg.

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The Three Best Things I Got From My Father

24

As I had started during the nights when I first went to bed at the age of thirteen, I would reflect on a part of my life as I waited to fall asleep. Often it would be about the events of the day and what meaning they might have on my unfolding life. In the case of my third full year in Colorado, I decided to consider what were the three best things I had gotten from my father. In the case of my mother, it seemed pretty clear: Honesty about my mixed race background, Gutsiness to go out and try something new, and Resolve to continue on a path even if the day-to-day isn't fun.

While my mother and her father had kept their Native American ancestry a secret and denied it whenever their background was questioned, mother raised me to be accepting of my mixed race background and open about it. I had. And on the whole it had been a good choice. While a very few had made fun of that heritage, being open about it only gave them a specific label to use when they would otherwise have made fun of me for something else. It's better to be made fun of for something that is true rather than for something that is false, isn't it? Also, not being in denial about it never lead me into the trap of trying to prove to others that I was less accepting of mixed race people than them thus assuaging any suspicion about my own ancestry.

While I had not always been thrilled with my mother's choice to move to Colorado, leaving my New England childhood environment behind, I had to admire her courage. Her first move out of the family home during my parents' separation had been to a nearby town that was closer to where she already worked, not a big change in the scheme of things. But to move to Colorado in her mid-fifties without any job lined-up, no friends to welcome her here and help her get settled, that was inarguably gutsy and I had to admire her for it.

So too, for the resolve to see it through. I could tell by August of her first few months in Colorado that she was having second thoughts, fantasizing that someone from New England would come out and carry her back to the only homeland she had ever known. But as she had made the choice to move to Colorado, she steeled herself to stay and make that new life work, even if it didn't seem like the best decision during the first couple of years. Sure enough, after years of perseverance, she had found herself a better job than she had ever had when it came to pay and benefits, she had made new friends to replace the ones she had left behind, and had even had a string of new lovers, though ultimately none ever panned-out to that second chance of a lifelong relationship she had hoped for.

And now for my father, what had he given me...?

As I lay in bed racking my brain, I realized just how much of a discounted role he played in my life, with the negatives easily overshadowing the positives I was looking for, but then came the most obvious: A love of Science Fiction. While never intentionally introducing me to it, I grew up in a home with plenty of exposure. From science fiction television shows which tickled the imagination, to the many books on shelves of possible future lives, some aspirational, some forewarning, some simply an escape from the daily grind of today. All called to me and my heart answered back.

And a second thing?

I had to acknowledge one day in my later elementary school years when my father had taught me a valuable lesson. My friend Pete and I were practicing shots at the basket ball hoop in my family home's driveway. As we did this, Pete was teaching me a new rhyme he had learned at camp the previous summer that we could say in rhythm to the bouncing basket ball as we got ready for our next shots. I don't remember it now, but it was something about the relationship of whites and blacks and used the N-word as part of the rhyme. My father was home that day and bustling about the yard and over-heard this and called me over. He quietly explained to me that the N-word was a racist putdown and I shouldn't use it, even casually as part of what seemed a playful rhyme. It was not simply because it was a put down, but by using it and other racist terms in my life, it would limit the people I would meet and come to know and I would be the poorer for it. When I returned to Pete he asked me what that was about and I simply told him that we shouldn't use the rhyme anymore. Yet, following my father's advice, I've kept use of racial terms to a minimum, only when discussing matters of those terms with friends, but never casually for fun and never as a put down to anybody.

But what was the third lesson I had gotten from my father which had the most impact on my life?

I could only think of the time when I was with him at the ski area during the off season and he was discussing some new ideas with his boss. While my father managed the day-to-day activities at the park, he actually did have a supervisor of his own, appointed by the owner, to keep an eye on things and consider ways of enhancing the property. As his job wasn't hands-on, this supervisor was rarely there on site, at least during my years passively observing the operations of the ski area. I would hear about him from time to time, right down to how my family's first home had been across the street from his own before I was born. But his office was almost always vacant and I saw him maybe a total of five times in ten years. This was one of those times as he was in and wanting to discuss an idea he had for expanding the use of the ski area.

My father would listen to his idea, the pros & cons he had thought of on his own, and then asked my father for his thoughts. My father just reflected back the pros & cons the supervisor had already stated and asked the supervisor what he thought. I was surprised as, when asked for his opinion, my father had ended up adding nothing and tossed the question right back like a hot potato. The supervisor juggled the returning balls of the idea and the pros & cons he had already thought of for a bit, but then really wanted to know what my father thought. This time my father talked at length about the pros & cons the supervisor had expressed, debating each one in the same way the supervisor had then, after a thorough recounting, asked the supervisor what he was thinking, again adding nothing at all to the debate. I was appalled as my father seemed to lack either any original thoughts of his own on the matter, or lacked the courage to express them. Either way, even if the supervisor was holding his cool, I was feeling the frustration for him. He again restated his idea and how it might help or hurt the park and again asked my father for his thoughts on the matter. My father simply again waffled, rephrased, and ultimately gave nothing back.

I concluded at that moment that I would never fear giving my opinion about something I was asked about and to always be decisive and not wishy-washy when I had enough facts in front of me and a decision needed to be made. And I have stuck to that tenet and never regretted it.

Though I have since learned discretion...

While the three best things I had gotten from my mother were positive if sometimes hard learned examples, I've always been haunted that to get three out of my experience with my father, I've have to include a lesson I learned despite his example, not from it.

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