I grab the hanger and ease it into the shoulder of the soft periwinkle blue dress.
I wish I had taken the time to hem it up a few inches, but no.
I hang it up and kick the black pumps to the back of the closet. They proved to be a tight pinch throughout the entire funeral.
And when I look at photos from the service the outfit looks all wrong anyway.
More importantly, my eulogy felt wrong. I never articulated what I wanted to say. And I mumbled throughout the reading.
I wish I’d practiced.
Oh well, it’s too late now.
We’re home now and all that’s left are memories, some regrets and much sadness.
From my dad’s apartment, my sisters and I divided up some of the plastic bins that housed memorabilia – mounds of letters and clippings, the draft of a book. Bits and pieces.
I thought I’d gotten off easy because the contents of my bin were small – an accordian file of old letters that my parents exchanged during their college years. From their first date up until his deployment in the Marine Corps.
I guess these things could just get get tossed.
Each thick monogrammed fold of stationery from Sweet Briar College, each eggshell thin blue Air Mail letter from Japan.
Who wants to read these?
Turns out I do.
Over the next few days, I attempt to sort them out chronologically and then try to read through a half a dozen at a time.
It’s all I can handle.
There are fervent love letters after a chance meeting freshman year.
The pledges to stay in touch over the school breaks.
The thrill of Mom being “pinned” (fraternity) by Dad, and then the excitement of a secret engagement.
And then, after the wedding, shipping out from California to Japan.
They were trying to somehow bridge the distance in a world before cell phones, or even before land lines that could connect reliably across the ocean.
All they had were radio calls that usually wouldn’t patch through successfully.
After one such attempt my father writes, I think I heard you say I love you.
That was the extent of the short call – his wondering if the words existed at all.
It’s hard to imagine a world where communication had to wait for days.
How much of life was held between the long pauses.
And my mom’s optimism for the future is heartbreaking. How did she assume that he would return?
But he did.
And then the letters stopped.
My Dad’s scrawl went on to grace other letters and sermons as the years went by.
But these old ones feel so important. They show me the different sides to him.
The fresh college boy obsessed with his girl.
The young father eager to meet his newborn son after long months away.
The lieutenant (!) running around Okinawa trying to find special silk fabric for his wife to sew into a classy suit.
Over the years my father would occasionally express regret that he hadn’t followed through with his writing. He quit maybe 15-20 years ago and I know it plagued him.
But as I read these old letters, it occurs to me that he did a lot more writing in his lifetime than he remembered.
His letters, no matter how trivial, are a snapshot in an album that I’m privileged to read.
And I know he would have loved to elaborate on these stories on one of our Friday calls. He would remember the events down to the last detail.
But I never asked.
They were stories I never knew to ask about.
I could make myself crazy thinking about all the things I never asked him.
But no wonder he wished he’d carried on with his writing. There is so much material here. He was such a natural writer.
And I can relate to this need to keep writing, to keep chronicling, to keep striving to articulate the thoughts in his head.
Because, after all, what else is there?
It’s the stories.
We need the stories to transpose ideas as a way of putting a stamp on a life.
A remembrance, a memory told.
A letter for a daughter, like a gateway to another time.
And for me, my writing, while just a blog, is also like a snapshot.
The stories that I’ve been writing for ten years, they tell a life.
None of these things disappear after death, we just have to keep looking to remember them.
They exist in the universe side-by-side with our present day.
And so the dress, the high heels, even the eulogy – none of that really matters, I think.
It’s Dad’s stories – his words – that hold meaning.
And I want to think that it’s my voice too, even mumbling, that might also have something to add.
For today, or for another day, and even for someone in another generation.
The stories simply want to be told.
honeybees & reveries 