I placed the ashes on a shelf that held Dad’s books published under his own name. In the next few days, we each added items to make a small shrine—photos, knives, a mug, a plaque, a Kentucky Derby hat. Everyone knew Dad wanted to be cremated, and we all assumed that someone else had information regarding the disposal of the ashes. As it turned out, he hadn’t specified his intentions with anyone. Never a sentimental man, my father had no special spot in the woods, favorite view of the land, or relationship with a body of water. We didn’t have an urn for a columbarium. Various options arose, but none took hold: saving the ashes to bury with Mom, dividing them among the survivors, or placing them in a rocket bound for outer space. After a while the subject trickled away and was abandoned. We were all putting off the decision, perhaps an effort to avoid a mistake that would have made Dad mad.
My siblings returned to their respective homes. My wife and I stayed the next three months in Kentucky to help with legal issues and Mom’s future plans. As a child, I never knew what my mother thought or felt. She didn’t talk much. My primary memory consisted of her moving quietly about the house carrying objects from room to room. She carried out tasks with focused intent and followed strict routines: shopping one day, cleaning another, laundry on a third. The rest of the time she typed.
Mom was a cipher to me then and, to some extent, still is. Her standard response to any inquiry was a variation of “I’m fine” or “Everything’s great” or “I have no regrets.” If asked her preference about anything—an outing, a meal, a drink—she invariably reversed the question to “What do you want?” Her opinions were reflective of Dad’s, a kind of psychic mirror. She avoided conflict by keeping her feelings to herself, and the result was marital accord.
A week after the memorial service, I took Mom to a greenhouse built of plastic sheeting. Mom selected a plant with white flowers, then smiled, shook her head, and chose red flowers instead.
“Your father was color-blind,” she said. “I only bought white flowers so he could see them.”
She took the red ones home. After fifty years Mom planted flowers she liked in her own backyard.
Chapter Six
THE LOSS of a parent takes away a kind of umbrella against the inclement weather of life. Regardless of condition—tattered fabric and broken spokes—it had always been at hand, offering the potential of protection and safety. Dad’s death made me the nominal head of the family, maker of decisions, next in line to die. Now I had to provide my own umbrella—for myself, my siblings, and my mother.
Mom decided to sell the house and move to Mississippi. My wife and I began clearing her house, filled with the accumulation of five decades. Furniture stood against the wall of every room, often piled with objects—pillows, books, magazines. Each closet was stuffed floor-to-ceiling. Depression-raised, my parents threw nothing away—the basement contained junk culled from the rest, the discards of the discards.
I began with Dad’s clothes—forty pairs of fleece sweatpants and pullovers, and sixty silk shirts, all bought by mail. One pair of pants had a large lump in a pocket. I checked for cash but found an unused tissue, which meant the pants hadn’t been washed since he wore them. The last hand inside the pocket had been his. I underwent a deep sorrow but quickly locked my feelings away, exactly as my father always had. Emotions would interfere with the tasks at hand, slow my progress, render me weak and vulnerable.
I worked twelve hours a day. We made daily trips to town: donating books to the library; clothes and household items to Christian Social Services; furniture to the university theater department. On the way home, we stopped at the liquor store to get more boxes. The strongest ones were designed to hold bourbon, the poison that had killed Dad.
For several years my father lived in a large La-Z-Boy chair, upholstered in leather, the right arm burnished smooth from moving the TV remote control. The seat was lodged in a permanent tilt to accommodate the favor he gave his bad leg, subject of a mysterious malady never diagnosed: nerves, arthritis, bone, something. Doctors could not discover the ailment. It bothered Dad for many years, leaving him unable to fly in an airplane, his reason for not visiting his adult children. He told me it was a “ghost wound,” scar tissue below the surface where he’d been stabbed while serving Genghis Khan. He regarded the pain as evidence of reincarnation. He stressed that Khan’s army was cavalry-based and he’d been a lowly foot soldier, nothing fancy. Dad reveled in the essential humility of this role.
Mom didn’t want to keep his chair but felt uncomfortable donating it to Social Services. I called my childhood friend Faron, at one time nicknamed “Hollywood” for his handsome looks. He’d known my father for fifty years. Faron was a Henderson, a name in good stead in the county, unsullied by scandal or sin. He had three brothers, including Sonny, who had drained the basement in winter. One brother joined the navy and left the hills for good. The rest remained. As each aged, he came to resemble his father more, and I wondered if it was the same for me.