Writing to remember
The trouble is, you think you have time.
Yesterday was my dad’s birthday. Were he alive today, he would have turned 77 years old. I didn’t wake up thinking about this yesterday. I didn’t actually think about my dad’s birthday until I got a text from my mom—an hour after I’d woken up, while I was out walking—reminding me of the day’s significance.
My mom and I have been communicating a lot lately about her own stories, which she shared and had published in a StoryWorth book that I recently read in two sittings. My partner just finished reading it yesterday. The stories include some my mom shared about my dad that I never knew—their botched attempt to bake fruitcake in their young married life, their honeymoon at the Peaks of Otter, stories from their youth. They had known each other since high school—fair to say that most of my mom’s adolescent and adult life includes stories of my dad.
My daughter went to Paris over the summer. Her dad and his wife had entered the lottery for tickets to the Olympics and secured those tickets months ago. Before Penelope was scheduled to leave, in July, I retrieved my photo album from 2001 that documented a trip I had taken to Paris with my dad. He took me and my twin sister on a European adventure for our 21st birthday; Paris was our last stop after starting in Amsterdam and then spending a few days in Brussels. After he returned from the trip, my dad typed up an epic “What I Did on my Summer Vacation” email, which he sent to all of his friends (likely via his AOL account). A print-out of that email narrative is tucked into the photo album that I put together after our trip. I sat on the couch next to Penelope, showing her the sights I had seen with my dad 23 years before, sights that she would see with her dad later that month. I laughed and cried in equal measure as I remembered walking those streets with him and as I read his words. His dry sense of humor was so alive on the page. His fondness for the memories we created on that trip were palpable. He wrote, about his daughters, “I hope this was a trip that they will remember for the rest of their lives.” I do and I will—I cherish those memories. He was dead a year later. We didn’t know then what was coming for him, for us, for our family.
In my mom’s StoryWorth book, which she titled “The Days are Long but the Years are Short,” there’s a photo and a story from a trip she took with my dad to Paris. They went with my mom’s dad and stepmom. They walked those same streets, decades earlier, young newlyweds, their whole lives ahead of them. I love knowing that we were all there together, over the course of time.
There’s another story in the book about when my dad got sick, my mom’s recalling of this time. How my 91-year-old grandfather (I’ve written about him here) came to live with my dad at the end, though he was nearly deaf and mostly blind. With the story is a photograph of my dad, his dad, and his brother. I stared at the photo of these three men, all gone, since my uncle died this spring. All that’s left of them are the stories they shared.
My grandfather was a prolific writer. I treasure the notebooks filled with his prose and poetry, each year his handwriting deteriorating, along with his eyesight. (You can still read most of it.) Like my dad, my grandfather’s humor permeates each page. His writing reminds me of things I otherwise would have forgotten, it gives me insight into his human experience: his love for his wife of 50+ years, the pain he experienced watching his son become sick, then sicker, and then caring for him until he died.
My dad and grandfather aren’t here anymore but I can still share them and keep them alive through this writing, for anyone who wants to read it. I share stories about my dad, and his writing, and my grandfather and his grandfather’s writing, with my daughter. Maybe one day she’ll share my writing with her children. I hope so. Regardless, this writing is important. It is what lives on.
While out walking tonight, I thought about how old 77 seems to me now (and how young 54 is—he was just a decade older than I am now when he died), how I can’t quite fathom my dad being that old, how he is still frozen in time at age 54. I wonder what these interim two decades would have held for him. I wonder what more stories I’d have to share of him and me, our adventures together.
Some memories of my dad I’m thinking of tonight:
The sensation of his rough fingernails scratching my back lightly at night before bed, soothing my nervous system and helping me to drift off. I loved when he scratched my back before bed—it wasn’t a regular occurrence, it was always special.
The swim trunks he wore at the beach and the way that, every year without fail, he’d drink too much, fall asleep in sun, and end up with a horrific sunburn.
Anytime Diana Ross & the Supremes came on, dad would grab an imaginary microphone and go to town. He loved Janis Joplin, too, but for living room karaoke, there was nothing better than “Stop! In the Name of Love!”
His scratchy kisses and the cologne he wore, Calvin Klein’s Obsession.
How demanding he was—of himself, of his kids, that his home look a certain way, that he be the best at work… in all ways, he was incredibly demanding. (I think I inherited that from him, just a little.)
The last letter he wrote to me—words from his heart after he received his terminal diagnosis and before he began the treatment that would ultimately be futile. There was so much unknown at that time, so much fear in that unknown, I can’t imagine how scared he was. But all he wanted me to know what how much he loved me, how proud he was of me, and how much he hoped I never lost my “joie de vivre.”
Keep writing. Keep sharing your stories and your words. You never know what they will mean to someone.
