Kaitlin

What is it about April…?

There is so much about Spring that stirs things up.

Mixes me up, confuses me, discombobulates me.

Part of it, I suppose, could be the change of seasons.

The warming up. The longer days. The greening. The rain. The flowers. The snow, the cold, the ice, the wind, the clouds. The sun. The rain.

Change.

Part of it could be the fact that so many major things in my life have happened in the Spring. And the drastically changing weather reminds me of them.

Dredges them up. Good and bad.

Graduations. Weddings. Moves. Births. Deaths. Dissolutions of marriages.

Middle School dances.

Puberty.

Old age.

Sigh.

My father died ten years ago today.

Suddenly. Out of the blue.

Without warning.

Heart attack.

Boom. Flat line. End of story.

Rad was two. We were living in San Francisco. Jason was working for a bank. I didn’t really know many people.

The call came. It was my mom. She didn’t usually call at that time of day.

It was my father, she said. She’d been outside gardening, come in a few times, and out. My father had been reading in the den. And watching TV. Or listening to the radio. Or something. In and out. She had passed by the room several times, but never looked in. Didn’t want to bother him. And then finally she had stopped to look in. At first she thought he was asleep in his chair. But the angle of his head. The way the book lay in his lap. Something. Told her things were not right with the world.

He was gone.

We flew back from San Francisco as soon as we could get a flight out. Rad had a cold and was all snuffly and fussy on the plane. Jason pretended to be supportive, but I knew he was out of sorts about missing work. Plus, he didn’t really like my father.

My mother was so glad to see us. Met us at the gate. She took Rad into her arms and hugged him close and hugged me and hugged Jason and started to cry.

My mother pretty much had everything under control. There was a viewing the next night and funeral the following morning. We didn’t really have to help much with the arrangements. The phone was ringing off the hook until Jason set my mother up with voice mail. It was his voice on the recording for years after that. Which I found rather disconcerting whenever I called my mom to tell her the problems Jason and I were having.

My dad and I had been fairly close. I mean, sort of close. I mean….

I don’t know what I mean.

I had taken it for granted that he would be around for a good long time, and so I had never bothered to talk to him about… so many things.

I could not reconcile the still man in the dark suit who lay so silently in the coffin. I kept expecting to see his chest rise and fall. I was waiting for him to sit up and smile and laugh suddenly at our folly. Why, he… HE could not possibly be dead!

But he was.

I read at his service. I wanted to speak. You know, speak about him, his life, how much he had meant to me. But I couldn’t. Instead, I read a passage from the Old Testament. I do not remember what it was.

We did not take Rad to the cemetery. He stayed at my mother’s with a neighbor. He cried when we left him, but then he got immersed in a video and fell asleep with his purple Barney doll in his arms.

Jason kept putting his arm around me and holding my hand. He didn’t say much. At the time, I liked that. It was comforting but not overwhelming. I think it was the right thing for him to have done.

My mother cried. A lot. Both in the church and at the cemetery. She did not read. Or speak. Jason held her hand and gave her lots of hugs, too. I think. I am not really sure. But that is how I remember it.

I had this dream. Not long after my father died. But after we had returned to San Francisco. I was a teenager again. Riding my bike through the cemetery. Not sure why. Past a spot where they were burying someone. Only then I realized they weren’t burying someone. They were unburying him. Or moving him. It was my father.

And his body was laid out on the ground, face down. All he had on were white boxer shorts and a white tank undershirt and black socks. He had a full head of black hair like when he was young and these thick-framed black glasses. Like from the Sixties.

I had no memories of him this young.

And I had no idea what he was doing there. Or why they had dug him up. Or were moving him.

And why nobody had bothered to tell me.

It didn’t seem right somehow.

It was cold today. And rainy. And cloudy. And then sunny. And then rainy. It is Spring.

Yesterday Rad went to his first school dance. With a girl. Before he went, he told me he was now a man.

He doesn’t remember my father at all.

April is the cruelest month....