I’ve been daydreaming a lot lately about what things would be like if my dad were still here. Little things, like whether he would still have his beard or if he would have shaved it off by now, he did that from time to time and joked about it with me earlier last year. When I was little my dad and uncle shaved their beards off and the first time that my cousin & I saw them after the change we both started screaming and crying because we didn’t recognize them without facial hair. Big things, like what he would have done for my mom for her birthday last Wednesday, how they would have fixed up everything that needs fixing at their house, how the church position would be working out and what all he would be doing in the community now. Big things, like all the different places we would go on our lunch breaks each week. A little while after he was hired as lead pastor he called me one day and said “You know what this means, Kiddo? It means we can go to lunch or coffee or for walks together regularly. I’m practically working down the street from you.” He was excited about it, I was too. It was perfect. We went once. He picked me up and we went to Adagio. I read the menu to him because he was having a hard time seeing. We sat in the window and talked about life, plans, his new job, my job. I teased him because the table was wobbly and he bumped it and spilled his latte, he teased me because right after I made fun of him I did the same thing. We laughed, some friends came in and said hi. He looked tired. That was the last day that he ever drove, the last time we had lunch together like that.
I don’t think that things are getting any easier. They’re just different. It hurts in a different way now. I really miss him and there‘s a lot of loneliness in that missing. It’s funny, I know that I’m in this with my mom and my brother and the rest of my family and I know that there are a lot of people out there who miss him too but that knowledge doesn’t make it any less lonesome. I still sometimes think that it wouldn’t be surprising to get a phone call from him. I don‘t expect it, I just don‘t think it would be that weird. I called his old cell phone number the other day and a strange girl’s voice came on his answering machine. I knew it would happen but I didn’t want it to, with her voice came a deep disappointment that I hadn‘t expected.
Back there at the beginning, as I see now, my life was all time and almost no memory. Though I knew early of death, it still seemed to be something that happened only to other people, and I stood in an unending river of time that would go on making the same changes and the same returns forever.
And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time. …I began to understand that whenever death happened, it happened to me. That is knowledge that takes a long time to wear in. Finally it wears in. Finally I realized and fully accepted that one day I would belong entirely to memory and it would then not be my memory that I belonged too…
Some days, sitting here on my porch over the river, my memory seems to enclose me entirely; I wander back in my reckoning among all of my own that have lived and died until I no longer remember where I am. And then I lift my head and look about me at the river and the valley, the great, unearned beauty of this place, and I feel the memoryless joy of a man just risen from the grave.
My aunt Sharon gave this book to us for Christmas and said that she thought Tom would really like it. I agree; I think he would love this book. I often wonder what he would think about certain lines that I read or scenes that I see or things that I think, I wonder what he would say about them now. I love his life so much, it’s hard to imagine letting any of it go and it’s even harder to imagine him being forced to do the same, even though we lived it. There have been many incredible people who have passed away recently, some that I knew well and some that I never had a chance to know. I hope that they’re all together somewhere waiting for the rest of us when it is our turn to go.
I don’t think that things are getting any easier. They’re just different. It hurts in a different way now. I really miss him and there‘s a lot of loneliness in that missing. It’s funny, I know that I’m in this with my mom and my brother and the rest of my family and I know that there are a lot of people out there who miss him too but that knowledge doesn’t make it any less lonesome. I still sometimes think that it wouldn’t be surprising to get a phone call from him. I don‘t expect it, I just don‘t think it would be that weird. I called his old cell phone number the other day and a strange girl’s voice came on his answering machine. I knew it would happen but I didn’t want it to, with her voice came a deep disappointment that I hadn‘t expected.
I have lots of great memories, I love it when the good memories catch me off guard. They’re little treats when I least expect them. I’m reading an incredible book right now, Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. I love this excerpt and have re-read it many times:
Back there at the beginning, as I see now, my life was all time and almost no memory. Though I knew early of death, it still seemed to be something that happened only to other people, and I stood in an unending river of time that would go on making the same changes and the same returns forever.
And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time. …I began to understand that whenever death happened, it happened to me. That is knowledge that takes a long time to wear in. Finally it wears in. Finally I realized and fully accepted that one day I would belong entirely to memory and it would then not be my memory that I belonged too…
Some days, sitting here on my porch over the river, my memory seems to enclose me entirely; I wander back in my reckoning among all of my own that have lived and died until I no longer remember where I am. And then I lift my head and look about me at the river and the valley, the great, unearned beauty of this place, and I feel the memoryless joy of a man just risen from the grave.
My aunt Sharon gave this book to us for Christmas and said that she thought Tom would really like it. I agree; I think he would love this book. I often wonder what he would think about certain lines that I read or scenes that I see or things that I think, I wonder what he would say about them now. I love his life so much, it’s hard to imagine letting any of it go and it’s even harder to imagine him being forced to do the same, even though we lived it. There have been many incredible people who have passed away recently, some that I knew well and some that I never had a chance to know. I hope that they’re all together somewhere waiting for the rest of us when it is our turn to go.
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atimeforsharing- Tom Hunter Family