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Dec. 20th, 2023 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_crowIt's been a year since my father died, and I miss him more now than I did at the time. I meant to post something on the anniversary of his death, but I was in the middle of a colonscopy prep which was not brutal but moderately unpleasant, and it was messing with my head. and then it felt like I'd missed the proper date of that anniversary and somehow couldn't? wasn't allowed to? talk about it, and I know that is insane so here I am.
Another friend's father died on Monday. She was talking to Al about it last night, and said she'd been doing all the things she know she would have regretted not doing for the last several months - everything from hand holding and deep emotional talks to getting finances in order and setting up trusts and processes. I am glad she got that, mostly the part where they could talk. There was so little left of my intelligent, puckish father by the time he died, dementia had stolen him years before. He was sometimes childish, yes, but also he was bewildered, and uncomfortable, and surrounded by strangers. Even my step mother and I were strangers, friendly ones, but not the people he knew and missed.
A little distance from his dementia has given me more room to miss what he used to be. My brother and I talked about his fantasies about sailing around the world, and my brother said, with authority, "he wasn't a captain" When I asked about that, he said when he'd joined them on their boat in the Caribbean the one winter they were experimenting with blue water sailing like that, my father had said "oh thank god you're here" and just stepped back and let my brother manage the boat for a week. It is true my dad had vivid dreams about sailing, but it is also true he was an anxious traveller, one who checked time tables, and arrived well in advance of departure times, and worried about details. I think that combo was not good for getting him actually out on the water and going places. He was overwhelmed with the scrimmage quotient of the process, all the myriad details of wind and current and engine and sails, and preferred (as far as I can tell) simply puttering on the boat, accomplishing maintenance. Which, to be fair, is also eternal on a boat, but it makes for less time to practice the processes so that the scrimmage quotient becomes more like a checklist and less like a horrifying wall of details.
but I was also remembering moments that are just so indicative, to me, of the way I think of him.
When Al and I were visiting them in New Orleans, he was repairing a set of drawers, and needed a new drawer slide. At the hardware store, he found one, and was so appalled at the price (which was trivial? like under $5) he went back home and built his own from bar stock and scrap he had in the shop.
His first impulse for any large project was to start drawing. The design was formalized in the lines on the paper, and he could start to troubleshoot it from the very beginning. I have, somewhere, the design for the climbing structure he built for the kids - measured, to scale, capable of reproduction even though it was a one off. (and the memory of him arriving with it on a borrowed trailer behind a borrowed jeep, describing his trip down the Maine Turnpike feeling like he was dragging a circus behind him.) I also have the plans for two boats he thought about but never built, and a set of lines for the Effie Morrisey, a historic Banks schooner (now in the hands of Mass Maritime).
His machine shop is still in my garage, although my brother thinks he might have a use for it. I wouldn't mind either way. I did learn to use these machines - a Bridgeport milling machine, a South Bend lathe, and a great hulking drill press - when I was about 8, but I was just using them to make wood chips and metal chips and mess about. A friend does come and meditate with the lathe in the summer, but mostly they sit in the dry space and remind me of my father. By the time we moved the shop into our garage, he was already too far gone to use it or even to putter in it. He'd forget what he was looking for and it would scare him, I think, as well as frustrate him. So we have it, and I love it, and I can instead remember him machining up parts for a series of tiny failing companies. It smells like machine oil and love.
Another friend's father died on Monday. She was talking to Al about it last night, and said she'd been doing all the things she know she would have regretted not doing for the last several months - everything from hand holding and deep emotional talks to getting finances in order and setting up trusts and processes. I am glad she got that, mostly the part where they could talk. There was so little left of my intelligent, puckish father by the time he died, dementia had stolen him years before. He was sometimes childish, yes, but also he was bewildered, and uncomfortable, and surrounded by strangers. Even my step mother and I were strangers, friendly ones, but not the people he knew and missed.
A little distance from his dementia has given me more room to miss what he used to be. My brother and I talked about his fantasies about sailing around the world, and my brother said, with authority, "he wasn't a captain" When I asked about that, he said when he'd joined them on their boat in the Caribbean the one winter they were experimenting with blue water sailing like that, my father had said "oh thank god you're here" and just stepped back and let my brother manage the boat for a week. It is true my dad had vivid dreams about sailing, but it is also true he was an anxious traveller, one who checked time tables, and arrived well in advance of departure times, and worried about details. I think that combo was not good for getting him actually out on the water and going places. He was overwhelmed with the scrimmage quotient of the process, all the myriad details of wind and current and engine and sails, and preferred (as far as I can tell) simply puttering on the boat, accomplishing maintenance. Which, to be fair, is also eternal on a boat, but it makes for less time to practice the processes so that the scrimmage quotient becomes more like a checklist and less like a horrifying wall of details.
but I was also remembering moments that are just so indicative, to me, of the way I think of him.
When Al and I were visiting them in New Orleans, he was repairing a set of drawers, and needed a new drawer slide. At the hardware store, he found one, and was so appalled at the price (which was trivial? like under $5) he went back home and built his own from bar stock and scrap he had in the shop.
His first impulse for any large project was to start drawing. The design was formalized in the lines on the paper, and he could start to troubleshoot it from the very beginning. I have, somewhere, the design for the climbing structure he built for the kids - measured, to scale, capable of reproduction even though it was a one off. (and the memory of him arriving with it on a borrowed trailer behind a borrowed jeep, describing his trip down the Maine Turnpike feeling like he was dragging a circus behind him.) I also have the plans for two boats he thought about but never built, and a set of lines for the Effie Morrisey, a historic Banks schooner (now in the hands of Mass Maritime).
His machine shop is still in my garage, although my brother thinks he might have a use for it. I wouldn't mind either way. I did learn to use these machines - a Bridgeport milling machine, a South Bend lathe, and a great hulking drill press - when I was about 8, but I was just using them to make wood chips and metal chips and mess about. A friend does come and meditate with the lathe in the summer, but mostly they sit in the dry space and remind me of my father. By the time we moved the shop into our garage, he was already too far gone to use it or even to putter in it. He'd forget what he was looking for and it would scare him, I think, as well as frustrate him. So we have it, and I love it, and I can instead remember him machining up parts for a series of tiny failing companies. It smells like machine oil and love.