Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Mrs. Blogotional Remembers My Dad
Perhaps I expect too much, perhaps it remains too raw, but I have yet to find the voice to really tell you about my father. But my blessed wife has put fingers to keyboard and begins to tell the tale:
John lost his father this last June, suddenly and in an abrupt fashion, due to injuries sustained in a car accident. Many, many years ago, long before I met John, I lost my father, over a period of two years, due to illness. We were able to process my dad’s departure in a far different fashion than the departure of John’s dad, Harry.
Harry’s sudden leaving caused us (mostly John) to have many, many tasks to carry out with rapidity. Harry was gone, but he left as though he walked out that morning to go get the paper and never came back, because in a way he had. So this has been the summer of amazing toil and grief.
When your loved one dies, my experience has been that over a period of time you work through your sadness, and after the greatest grief passes you are left with what mattered to you most about that person. If they were extremely close sometimes you really can’t separate the things they left inside you, that will always be a part of you. My dad was a self taught guitar player and sang moderately well, and to this day I hear certain guitar chords and song phrases and it’s as if he drifted into the room for a moment.
Harry was gone so suddenly. And we have many days and weeks ahead to experience our grief and ponder what were the important things that Harry left us. I think I started to get an inkling of this as I sat in my office at work. On a bulletin board I had pinned up a picture of the farmland in Minnesota. It was taken on a cold spring day. There is still snow on the ground and the sky is an icy blue. John and I made the trip and met John’s parents in Minnesota, Harry’s home state. During that trip I was able to get acquainted with people and places that were important to Harry and that John had visited as he grew up. I saw the home town, I met cousins, I saw John’s grandparents’ grave site. It was a get acquainted trip with the part of Minnesota Harry came from and held still very dear. As I sat in my office looking at the picture, the empty sky, the cold landscape our trip came flooding back and I could of course see Harry in my mind’s eye, so proud to show us around. He was especially proud of the school in his home town, the one that educated him when he was a kid, that same school that was specified for donations, upon his death. Minnesota will never be in my mind, without a thought of Harry. That’s just for openers.
So mourn we must. This is the summer of our mourning. And as that process takes place memories and bits will surface that seem the most important, treasured and dear. What did I, a Washingtonian know of Minnesota before I met John’s dad? And what I know of it now, will always be tinted with memories of Harry and our trip. I have a feeling that as time passes those bits that Harry left us will be more and more apparent. Hopefully as the pain of a very sudden parting with him fades, we will be able to relish them. I will look forward to those times when I will see a photograph or scene, hear some phrase or a memory will surface and cause me to remember my father-in-law and bring a smile. I know at that time he will seem to have drifted into the room, for just a minute.
John lost his father this last June, suddenly and in an abrupt fashion, due to injuries sustained in a car accident. Many, many years ago, long before I met John, I lost my father, over a period of two years, due to illness. We were able to process my dad’s departure in a far different fashion than the departure of John’s dad, Harry.
Harry’s sudden leaving caused us (mostly John) to have many, many tasks to carry out with rapidity. Harry was gone, but he left as though he walked out that morning to go get the paper and never came back, because in a way he had. So this has been the summer of amazing toil and grief.
When your loved one dies, my experience has been that over a period of time you work through your sadness, and after the greatest grief passes you are left with what mattered to you most about that person. If they were extremely close sometimes you really can’t separate the things they left inside you, that will always be a part of you. My dad was a self taught guitar player and sang moderately well, and to this day I hear certain guitar chords and song phrases and it’s as if he drifted into the room for a moment.
Harry was gone so suddenly. And we have many days and weeks ahead to experience our grief and ponder what were the important things that Harry left us. I think I started to get an inkling of this as I sat in my office at work. On a bulletin board I had pinned up a picture of the farmland in Minnesota. It was taken on a cold spring day. There is still snow on the ground and the sky is an icy blue. John and I made the trip and met John’s parents in Minnesota, Harry’s home state. During that trip I was able to get acquainted with people and places that were important to Harry and that John had visited as he grew up. I saw the home town, I met cousins, I saw John’s grandparents’ grave site. It was a get acquainted trip with the part of Minnesota Harry came from and held still very dear. As I sat in my office looking at the picture, the empty sky, the cold landscape our trip came flooding back and I could of course see Harry in my mind’s eye, so proud to show us around. He was especially proud of the school in his home town, the one that educated him when he was a kid, that same school that was specified for donations, upon his death. Minnesota will never be in my mind, without a thought of Harry. That’s just for openers.
So mourn we must. This is the summer of our mourning. And as that process takes place memories and bits will surface that seem the most important, treasured and dear. What did I, a Washingtonian know of Minnesota before I met John’s dad? And what I know of it now, will always be tinted with memories of Harry and our trip. I have a feeling that as time passes those bits that Harry left us will be more and more apparent. Hopefully as the pain of a very sudden parting with him fades, we will be able to relish them. I will look forward to those times when I will see a photograph or scene, hear some phrase or a memory will surface and cause me to remember my father-in-law and bring a smile. I know at that time he will seem to have drifted into the room, for just a minute.
