Good Grief

When I was very young, my father bought a little aluminum boat...I think from Montgomery Wards...a SeaKing, maybe? It was small and could fit in the back of a pickup truck sticking out just a bit. He'd go out on the river with it and sometimes take us kids along. What I recall about fishing with my dad was his utter joy at the whole event. He'd grown up fishing with his dad who had the same twinkly eyes at the mention of the sport.

I recall being "hooked" (not on fishing) one particular outing by my brother practicing his casting on the rocky banks of the Eel River very near our home. It hurt rather badly but only in a surface sort of way when my dad helped me get the hook out of my skin. There was a little blood to go along with it, and my dad's hands smelled like fish. I still went fishing with him after that, and I have no idea now which of the many tiny scars I have on my body came from that fishing hook lodging in me.

I'm not sure I'd call what I really want to tell about "scars," but they are pains that stay with me now that my father has passed on to the next great adventure post-living. Different than the hook in my skin, I have no desire to have these pains removed. These are the pains of grief so palpable that I wonder sometimes if they have a bloodiness of their own that others can witness if they look a little closer than the average glance.

Here's the thing. I LOVE my dad. I have loved him my whole life, I think. I have memories of his smile and laughter that run so deep in my mind that they are immoveable. I have visions of him in these starched white smocks my mother used to iron for him every week for him to wear to work at his drug store. He kept his hair "high and tight" and combed it with a short black comb kept in his pocket. It was never out of place. He had glasses, dark-framed glasses that framed his laughing squinty eyes. He had straight white teeth though there's no way he ever had braces as he was raised without privilege in a small Idaho town near a reservation where is friends were from the same wrong side of the tracks as he was.

My dad would tell stories of his youth full of hard farm work and getting by with his brothers and sister in their little brick home. His teen years must have been what turned my grandparent's hair white as it was full of adventure. He and his brother staged a death at The Crest, the local theatre in town. They stole watermelons by hanging from the light post and dropping into the back of the watermelon truck and hucking out as many as they could to their friends before the driver caught them or pulled away--which ever came first. He worked at 8 delivering milk and did many other odd jobs to bring home a little money. It was a time of great depression and war, so no one had much. He talked of hiding under the house so that the sheriff could not evict them and of his house burning to the ground when was as barely school-aged.

He went through some pretty hard times throughout his life. Despite and maybe because of those times, he was always looking on the positive side of things and feeling pretty grateful. While I was growing up, he worked six days a week and 12 hours a day most days in that ironed white smock to be sure that we (there were six of us kids) never went without the basics. He didn't spoil us, and I thought we were very poor ourselves. You see, he required that we work from the time we were about 8 at the store. First I dusted and cleaned the bathroom. Soon I was stocking shelves and running the cash register. It wasn't long before I was doing many more things including counting pills (not legal today) and filing prescriptions in the long narrow filing drawers. At close we would count the till money and log the day's earning. I'd witness his glee on high volume days and his worry on slow ones. I would wonder what it must be like to carry the weight of a large family, home, and business. What's more, he took care of his aging parents most of my childhood. They lived with us and in an apartment my dad made for them in the shop at our house. Every single day and night my father would take special care of his parents. He'd provide for whatever they needed and with such love and devotion and a tenderness much like a mother does with her newborn babe. As I got older, I witnesed his care for his brothers and sister. He loved them with a fury even though he rarely saw them.

Here's more, my dad love my mother with all his heart. He looked at her like she was the most beautiful and intriguing human on the planet which to him she was. He called her sweet names and spent Sunday afternoons after dinner and before evening church cuddled up with her on the couch napping and holding her close. If she said something was to be done, he did it without raising a fuss or accusing her of bossing him. He did it with love. I can't times were always good or even pleasant, but he acted like they were when it came to my mother.

He was also truly good to others. He had many great friends and a half dozen very close ones whom he loved like brothers--George, Bill, Cecil, Bruce, Chad, and Ira, and others I'm probably just not recalling right now. Heck, even the McKesson sales man who made regular stops at his store became a dear friend. My dad was extraordinarily generous though in a very quiet way. When he died, I was stunned at the number of middle-agers who said my dad paid their college tuition or funded their church mission. I know he lost money delivering prescriptions to people who lived alone and were unable to come in to get what they needed. He'd always visit with them and make them feel like a million bucks with his personal way of relating to them and love he showed. Sometimes he'd do small chores or household repairs...this after his 12 hour work day.

I think I could write forever about my dad and his goodness, but I have something else to say that all this is actually about. I love my dad and miss him something fierce. I'd love to have him call and say, "How's my girl." I long to sit in his aluminum boat with him learning more about fishing than anyone needs to (I have that boat now...my brother polished it to a shine and fixed every little thing about it then let me have it for a song). I miss my dad. He's been gone only three years next week, and it feels like a fresh wound. This is grief. It won't go away. I wouldn't let it if it could. You see, my grief is a marker of many for the love I felt from him and for him, and I would not have it any other way. Grief aches, but it does not stop me from living. If anything, my grief motivates me to be the person I believe I am to become. My grief makes me a little more likely to love others, to laugh heartily, to tell an in appropriate joke, to give more freely, and to be full of gratitude for my life as it is and as it was from my youth and as it was in generations back that created the space I now have to thrive as my father's daughter.

Grief is totally good enough.