The veil is thin

Remembering my dad, and being in the moment, then and now

The sky above my father’s grave site.

I’m on I-76 going east. There’s a handful of dahlias sipping water in the back seat, along with a few straggler zinnias from my garden. On this day, forty-two years ago, our father was still alive, sporting a pair of red sweatpants, recovering from back surgery. In the morning, I would find him on the purple shag carpet, not even warm.

I get off at the Belmont Avenue exit. But before I go see my dad, I’ve got another stop to make.

I cross the Schuylkill River into Manayunk and rev up the giant hill that is Green Lane, zigging and zagging my way to Ridge Avenue. As I wait for the light to change, Bob’s Diner is looking right at me, a stainless-steel beaut that’s been around since the forties. It sits right on the edge of Leverington Cemetery; I can see tombstones in the distance.

I’m hoping to meet the Bantoms, my paternal great grandmother’s people. I loved my great grandmother Beulah, and so did my father. The day she died, my parents waited until after the fourth-grade play (I was Dorothy) to break the news. It was one of the only times I saw my father cry.

It’s an old graveyard dating to 1745. Many of the headstones are faded and hard to read. I’ve got the general coordinates scribbled in a notebook, but after nearly an hour of hunting and pecking and asking for ancestral assistance, I never do find the spot where Myers and his wife Mariah and children Henry and Lewis are buried.

At a nearby spot that always has a line, I order a couple of chicken cheesesteaks with extra-sharp provolone and pickled banana peppers  -- one for my lunch, the other for Russ. The sandwich is just okay – under-seasoned meat, squishy roll, not-quite-cooked onions – but the feeling of two-foot-long, foil-wrapped parcels in a brown bag radiating heat onto my chest and that first whiff in the car is more than half the fun.

It's windy, and the air is more November than October. The sun is in and out, moody. I park and walk the thirty or so feet to my father’s grave. I’ve got the remaining half of my sandwich, a dram of rum, and some of those dahlias from a flower farm in Amish country.

I sit on a pile of leaves and tuck into the rest of my sandwich. I tell him how much I miss him, but maybe for the first time ever, I’m not sad talking to a stone. On top, I place three dahlias, one for each of us kids. I pour a few drops of the rum on the edge and take a nip for myself.

“I’m so glad you’re here in this beautiful place,” I say, as I admire the tall pines and the majestic maple shedding its leaves. “It almost makes me want to be buried here, but I’ve decided I’d like to be composted. I’m a gardener, as you know.”

A black bird with a white breast and a red beak flies overhead and parks high up in that maple. It shouts something, and it feels like the veil between us isn’t just thin. It’s downright sheer. He is right here.  

I tell him how John, his namesake, and I are getting to know each other after many years of being estranged. That when he comes up north, I will bring him here. 

That evening, on my way back to Lancaster, I call John from the car. He asks me why I went on the 15^th, not the 16^th, the actual day our father died.

“I wanted to remember him alive,” I said.

But then I thought about it some more.  In my mind’s eye, I wanted to replay the scene, of my father seeing sixteen-year-old me off on my date – my first date – with a boy from school. Dressed in those red sweatpants, proud, smiling, releasing his girl.

I wanted to replay our last conversation when I got home a few hours later, my father watching the ball game at the bottom of the ninth, me feeling a little flushed from my date. I wanted to remember the easy way that we had with each other. I wanted to remember how I felt that I could tell him anything.

I wanted to remember how we didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. That right now was all we had. All we have. And that is worth remembering until my own last breath.

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Next month, PNW Veg (which just got a snazzy updated cover) is the featured title of the Cook’s Book Group with King County Library in Seattle. The conversation is online, so anyone from around the country can join. We’ll talk about what to whip up for Thanksgiving and anything else that’s on your mind. Go here for the details.