You can talk to your dad any time

Alaska, you aren't alone

Three years ago my dad was still alive and I was home. Three years ago I got on a plane to go home to help mom and one of my sisters (we started taking shifts the siblings) for the long drive to Iowa City and another stent replacement, another test, another another for an appointment - the Saturday upcoming.

But dad died on Tuesday. Calling and cancelling appoitments for the dead. My god.

This morning I watched that beautiful video making the rounds of Amanda (Alaska?) reaching out on TikTok to Mandy Patinkin - please click this link to watch and come back. I’ll wait.

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This is how I first started to let myself feel my dad again - that terrifying and wonderful moment when letting go and letting in the fucking pain - my God.

(This from 2019 - six months A.D. — After Dad)

MEETING MINUTES: THE ROOFTOP BEREAVEMENT SOCIETY

I call to order the meeting of the Rooftop Farm Society of the Bereaved. In attendance today are kitty cat, longtime members the phalanx of flies—both horse and house—and I note for the minutes Dragonfly is back after an excused absence. Welcome back Dragonfly, you look to be on the mend. We also have a new member joining us today, the egg of the Black Swallowtail butterfly. Welcome to this little party, egg, please feel free to help yourself to the dill.

I kneel down on the rooftop next to my raised bed garden. I roll myself onto my back feeling the weight of the building pushing up to hold me. 

I am staring at the still blue and purple sky; a slight glow on the horizon means the sun will be here soon. I think about the butterfly egg. The dill I plant year after year to draw these exact butterflies to my rooftop garden. I touch the soft green willowy leaves just enough; I bring my hand to my face, close my eyes, and breathe in summertime, caterpillars, butterflies, the farm, and dad.

I am clinging to the woody stem of the trumpet vine plant, now. Some consider it invasive, a nuisance plant good for nothing but pushing through the worn wood slats of your front porch unless tamed and trimmed out of its aggression. Below me I see a canopy of trees, foreign, tall with leaves upturned: rain is coming. I can smell it in the distance, hear the leaves rustling. I am losing my grip on this make-believe vine. My hand slides slowly down its length. I am pulling off leaves, bright orange flowers, bits of stem and root and dirt. 

Finally, I let go. 

I float downward gently but with purpose. I pass through the tangle of branches, leaves, and kudzu (how did that get here?), then am through. The breeze stills, a new sound of crickets or frogs or birds? 

I am on the ground. How am I not dead? The forest floor—covered with fallen leaves and branches worn soft by months of decay—cushioned my landing. Warmth envelops me: all of this is fine. But then the trees fall away and I feel a gentle pull. I am falling up, lifted, somehow rising on the ebb and flow an invisible sea. I relax and for the first time since everything happened and my muscles melt into peace. 

Below there is land arranged in squares, brown and green quilt blocks separated by fencerows cut through by rivers and the tiniest of streams. There is a field below me, one I know, across the road from my childhood home, our farm.

Over the rise I make out the yellow and green of a tractor. The fields are bare—harvested. The sun sets over a familiar horizon in an arc across the south of the early fall sky. I am walking now across the gravel road, barefoot, my feet impenetrable, hardened by a summer of running around the farm—gravel and all. The tractor comes closer and I keep walking toward it but now I start to run, cornstalks breaking under my feet. 

Dad! He jumps down from the cab of the old tractor and he is so young! He is wearing his uniform: blue shirt blue pants weathered leather boots that one old Dekalb seed cap frayed across the brim. He looks at me and takes off his old pair of leather gloves I smell sweat, Cornhuskers hand lotion, and he is smiling at me. He has his old teeth! 

I want to preserve this moment in amber, heart racing in excitement, anticipation, that one second before I fall into dad’s familiar embrace. 

I wrap my arms around his waist; I can hear his heart beat against my ear. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face into his shoulder.

He wraps his arms around me and gives me two long, firm pats on the back. Then he looks at me and says well hi, An! Then throws his arms around me again. 

Meetings of my bereavement society often end like this: unable to breathe for the sobs. I see my cat out of the corner of my eye. She is crouched, trained on something I can’t see yet, but whatever it is she is ready to pounce—her tail flitting wildly, her back legs adjusting finding the right hold. Then I see it—a dragonfly (I have seen three different ones this year) perched on the side of the building next door. 

In these situations (my cat trained on a bird, dragonfly, butterfly, caterpillar, our neighborhood bumblebee the size of a hummingbird) I usually grab her, try to refocus her, and have the caterpillars are friends not food conversation with her for the millionth time.