My father passed away in June and since then I’ve been cleaning out the remains of his life and settling his estate. It’s been an exhausting and emotional experience.
But life goes on.
As painful as his loss has been for me, I’ve found moments of love and joy since his death. Phone calls from friends who let me talk about him for way too long. Cards from those who cared for him in his last days. Words of condolence from those who knew him in ways I didn’t.
Thanks to Covid-19 it wasn’t easy to plan a funeral for him. Much of his pre-planning went out the window. But we knew what mattered to him most so we gathered his nearest and dearest and on an absolutely perfect sunny summer day under the canopy of shade provided by tall trees, we laid his ashes to rest next to his beloved wife.
Unlike the service that would have happened in the church, this one was intimate. Personal. We found ourselves laughing and telling stories. At one point we even all recited one of his silly poems together. Everyone there had a close connection to him. They all felt his loss.
In a way, it was exactly what he would have wanted. We sent him on his way with love and laughter and small tokens of his life. There was nothing fussy or formal about it. Lots of people spoke and because we were all friends and family, no one got nervous about it. We lingered, talking and sharing memories. We turned our faces to the soft breeze and imagined he was there with us.
All that’s left now is the business of settling an estate. The paperwork and banking and taxes. All of the things that keep you busy so that you don’t realize just what a huge hole that person left in your life.
In your heart.
And then there’s his stuff. Boxes and bags of the remnants of a life. Clothing to be donated when charities open up to donations again. Books he’ll never read that someone else will enjoy. Awards and accolades that only meant something to him. Photographs that will fade off into more boxes that the next generation will have to deal with.
But along the way I learned things about my father that I didn’t know. Or rather that I had forgotten. I found precious artifacts of his life. Silly things, mostly. But all the more valuable to me because of it.
What we leave behind isn’t nearly as important as who we leave behind. As the impact our life had on others. As I clean out the physical remains of his life, it’s his emotional remnants that cut the deepest.
Soon there will be no more details to handle. So what do we do when there’s no more business of death to deal with?
We move on. We live. We wake up every day, hopefully with a renewed sense of the value of time. Of how little of it we actually have. Of how we’re going to spend what we have left.
Does my life honor his? I honestly don’t know. But I know he loved me. I know he was proud of me. And I know that I will carry his ideals and his heart with me through the rest of my life.
So I heal. Slowly. And I move on. Because I have to. Because in the end, his love lives on.
And that’s all that really matters.
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Ruff Off The Cuff 