We sat in the church pews the next day at the funeral mass, and the priest, who didn’t know my family’s story, said that my father would always be with us. I guess he assumed this would be a comforting thought. I shifted in my seat. My siblings and I cleaned out his apartment, awkwardly sifting through his belongings. We found an envelope with $156 inside, which we used to buy a new rocking chair for my mother. My inheritance? A TV set, a pizza cutter, and six yellow plastic corn-cob holders. I also took a Patsy Cline cassette. I was into her music back then, and it felt odd to think I had that in common with my father. I imagined him sitting alone in his apartment, and me in mine, listening to “Crazy” and “I Fall to Pieces” at the same time. § In the decades since my father’s death, my family knitted itself back together. My mother’s steady presence and doting love, and her sheepdog-like insistence on herding us all in one place for every birthday and holiday kept us from drifting apart. Our wicked sense of humor saved us, too. Family gatherings became raucous parties that were the envy of friends. My brothers recited whole episodes of Monty Python. One Christmas, Tom and I performed an interpretive dance to an entire Moody Blues album in the living room while my mom laughed so hard she could scarcely breathe. In recent years, I’ve seen friends mourn the loss of their fathers, and I’ve secretly envied the love they so obviously felt for them. I’ve wondered what my life would have been like with a good father in it. Not long ago, I was standing in my kitchen, slicing yellow squash for dinner, the late-day sun slanting in, when I thought of my father. I had always spoken of him with
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My father heard my adult voice only once. At Christmastime, just before I turned 30, I had arrived back at the house, where my mother still lived, when the phone rang.”