The Cynical Kitchen

New Fiction

My flash fiction, "Time and Time Again," is now available at www.mendacitypress.com.

Ritual

This last year has been understandably tough on the kids. Actually, yes, tough on me, too. The death of their father and my first husband is an event to color the rest of our lives. Every moment I live with my kids that might have also been lived with their father is accompanied by a pang. His absence is palpable, a gaping hole in the room: Robb’s homecoming from war, Bailey’s acceptance to college, Joe’s high school graduation, Jake’s first driving lesson. Every moment that we celebrate is also a moment to mourn.
    The kids still struggle with the ugly circumstances of their father’s death. The weird and awkward partitioning of current and ex families. The exclusion from planning his funeral. The eviction from his home. The excommunication from his life and the people he lived it with. They were forced to pick up and move on, in many ways, as if he never existed. Their loss is so expansive that it defies processing. To cope, they hang on to little rituals: grave visits, impromptu story-telling when a memory pops up, good cries over old photos, saying his name when they spot a Jeep on the street that looks like his.
    In light of their loss, it seems especially cruel that the dog should die, but she did. I came home for lunch to find Stella in the kitchen floor, still. Clearly, she’d suffered. She was still relatively young, and whatever was wrong with her sneaked up and violently took her before we had a chance to detect it, in much the same way that death had called their dad.
    The shock and devastation of her death rippled through the family with horror and profound sadness. Each child gathered around her chunky bulldog body while it was still in the kitchen floor and cried for her as if they were crying for their father. Whatever tears came seemed to serve a dual purpose, because it was oddly impossible to not associate the circumstances of the creature in the floor with the pain of losing the big lovable man who was their father.
    When I first came on the site of Stella’s death I panicked and couldn’t think of the next thing to do. By phone, Ted told me to cover her up, that he’d take care of her when he got home. He felt the responsibility was his, but his sense of loss and grief was as acute as ours, and I didn’t think it was fair to dump it all on him.
    Then an amazing thing happened. Without any direction or discussion, the kids  set to work. Joe lifted Stella from her mess and laid her, as if he were handling a newborn, in the middle of the brightly colored blanket I’d found. He arranged her as if she was sleeping, and then he stroked her coat and patted her back, whispering to her. After he’d set her down, the rest of us looking on, he left to grab a shovel from the garage and set to work digging a hole in our rain-soaked yard.
    With Joe working outside, Jacob found a brush and began to comb her coat; it always did shed in the spring. While he stroked her, Bailey wiped her face and floppy jowls. The two of them loved on her and worked in tandem silence.
    Then Jacob went outside and found some scrap lumber from the garage that he fashioned into a small, cross-shaped marker. Bailey retrieved her oils and set to work on painting the cross with Stella’s nickname, Fat Baby.
    I did not direct one step, but as I watched the activity around me I marveled at what was happening. Death was in our house. It was, on first sight, repulsive and ugly and frightening. But instead of running from it, the kids embraced it. They tended to the body of a creature they loved, and they handled her with respect and dignity, even if she is only a dog.
    And I realized that something on a deeper level was also taking place. In many ways they were working to right old wrongs, old hurts. They were living out what they’ve perhaps lived out in their minds a million times. They worked as if they were thinking, “If I’d been there when dad died, this is what I would have done.”  Every action seemed dictated by the notion that what they’d been disallowed, denied, and partitioned from in Bill’s death, could on some other level, be righted in Stella’s.
    Once the hole was dug and the marker was completed, we met at Stella’s body, and the four of us folded the blanket over her. Joe gathered her up and led the way while the rest of us followed along, a small but earnest funeral train. The boys lowered her into the hole Joe made – a deep hole with straight walls in good black dirt. And then they all looked at me to say something when to this point I’d had a hard time doing anything but cry. Bailey gathered four dandelions and handed them to each of us. Then she said, “We’ll each share our favorite memory, and then Mom can finish.”
    What followed was a weird, comical but altogether important ritual. We called up the joy she’d brought our lives and even while we stood over her grave we laughed in celebration of her life, the gift she’d been to our family. When it came my turn to speak I said, “The pain we feel right now is the price we pay for loving something. This is what it costs, and if this is the price then it’s worth it. Given the chance, we’d pay it again.” The kids nodded, choking back tears. It was for Stella, but I knew it was for Bill too.
    Then we began shoveling dirt over that sweet Fat Baby body and when the hole was filled the kids set the marker, and we walked away, one by one, to find some solitude. Something was gone, something we loved and lost too soon, but in the process something new had taken its place, something that might have looked like fresh dirt over an old grave.

   

Filial Cannibalism, or I Understand Why Langur Monkeys Eat Their Young

Time Magazine had an article about India’s langur monkeys. Apparently they will kill their young and sometimes eat them as a weird form of group preservation. I imagine the mama monkeys swinging from tree to tree, a buggy-eyed baby clinging to her chest, and at some point she has to get tired of the baggage, you know? When it’s time to let go of mama maybe she gives them a choice ~ swing on your own or let’s eat. I’m no zoologist, but I have raised four children, which I think means I'm qualified to say a thing or two.
    Here’s the problem: I thought that one day my children would grow up and leave me. I thought they would go out into the world, eager to strike out on their own, grow a set of wings (or something) and flit off to find their fortunes. I figured they’d want to get away from my rules and my roof. Surely they crave independence and autonomy. Imagine their relief of finally being free of my idiosyncrasies like the toilet-paper-over-the-top rule, or the no cussing rule, or the one about flushing dead pet fish instead of wrapping them in a paper towel and stashing them under the bed. Surely they’re weary of my mood swings, my social ineptitude, my propensity for road rage. They’ll be glad to get out from under my influence in much the same way that I wanted away from my parents. Isn’t that the idea? We get tired of our parents because we’re not designed to live with them our whole lives. Our parents get tired of baggage, and we get bored with never getting to drive. I’m sure Darwin has a theory about this.
    I did my best to nurture, teach and provide for them when I was supposed to. I busted their butts when they deserved it and when they did something right I was their biggest fan. And God knows I fought for them. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with unreasonable teachers, lost my cool with ridiculous police officers, and physically charged bullies, adult and juvenile, who dared threaten my child with bodily harm. I’m neither big nor strong but I can make people think I’m crazy and sometimes that’s just as effective.
    To my chagrin, most of my children, who are of “legal” age, show no signs of separating from me. Sure, geography can and does put distance between us but that’s not what I’m talking about. What am I really trying to say? They won’t leave me alone. I can’t get a minute to myself. I would pay money for some peace and quiet, but they’re fresh out.
    One calls at odd hours, 2am, 6am, 11pm, just to say hello. The call will come at a moment of extreme lightheartedness (and perhaps intoxication) and on some level seems genuine. That’s just to say that I think the caller really does love me as they say they do, which sort of makes me seem like a jerk if I get angry for being awakened.
    Another one takes my money. I think this one can smell it in my purse like a shark can pick up one drop of blood in the deep blue sea. He weasels it away. Latches on and can’t let go. Worms it out of me by promising to run errands with the gas he’ll purchase, wraps the request in a promise to make it for my benefit. He also can’t make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to save his life, and I’m pretty sure one of these days his wife will show up on my doorstep and punch me in the head for the ways I’ve crippled him in this regard.
    I used to say that my job as a mother was to work myself out of a job, and now they are reaching ages where I had long ago released my mother but they’re still hanging on. Like those monkeys. They won’t leave. They say it’s because they love me, and maybe I am kind of cool for a mom and we have a great relationship and they hang around because they are comfortable around, but I say enough! I say I have things to do. I have things I’ve wanted to do since about 1987 that I haven’t been able to do because they were put on the back-burner since there were more important things to do. Read here: change diapers, breastfeed, wipe noses, potty-train, cook, clean, oh hell, the list goes on ad nauseum. My point is, I thought all kids couldn’t wait to get away from their parents and on their own to make their own decisions and do their own thing and this illusion has been shattered. I must have made it too easy on them and now they won’t go away. They like me. Where did I go wrong?
    In the interest of self-preservation and the survival of the group, I'll do what I have to. One of these days they'll probably let go of me on their own, and I won't even give them a shove. Maybe their little arms will simply give out. Don't get me wrong, I'll chew their ass once in awhile, but when it comes to parenting, I'm no monkey cannibal.

I'm Just Saying...

The doors were unlocked, and we were granted one-time access into Bill’s basement to rummage through some discarded items in search of anything the kids might want. Why they weren’t sold at auction with the kids' art projects and toys is a nagging question, but making sense of this whole situation is a foolish endeavor, so I took the boys to see what they could find:

Two pairs of sneakers, size 13;

Numerous old Bill and kid photos;

A John Deere clock my dad had made for us when we lived on the farm (shellacked with                    gold foil numbers);

All of those things a person keeps in the top drawer of their desk (paper clips, thumbtacks, needle and thread, business cards, misc. key chains);

A leather coat I bought Bill for Christmas in 1988;

Bill’s briefcase;

Drawings by Joe that Bill had kept;

One of those green shaded desk lamps. He’d always wanted one, and I’m guessing this is the one I bought him as a birthday gift;

and the dresser Bailey asked for six months ago that was finally made available.

We loaded everything into Joe’s El Camino and took it home.

“What’s the combination to Dad’s briefcase?” Joe asked.

“Used to be 1-2-3, 3-2-1,” I said.

“Yep,” Joe said, lifting the lid. “Still is.”

Jake and I gathered around to peek over Joe's shoulder. Laying on top of some business-related items still in the briefcase was a handwritten note to the kids. It read, along with wishes for a nice life: “I hope you kids never have to experience anything like what I’ve been through in the last several months.”

I've never been a widow, so I can't speak from experience though I'm sure it is tough. But there is this weird absence of acknowledgment for Robb’s pain, Bailey’s pain, Joe’s pain, Jacob’s pain and Lillian’s pain that must surely pale in comparison. I don't get it. I don't think I ever will.

Joe wadded up the note. Jake set it on fire and watched it burn down to his fingers.

And that was the end of that.  

The Nature of Fireworks

The old adage that all good things must come to an end dates back, I read somewhere, to Chaucer in the 14th century. I’m not so special for breathing some form of this statement on a regular basis in a tone of cynical resignation. For every joyful hello there is an equally disproportionate and tearful good-bye, quelling that initial joy and replacing it with something like ache.

I first wrote here about Robb leaving back in 2006 when he left for boot camp. I wrote about it again when he left for Iraq. And then when he had to leave for Iraq a second time, well, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I never get used to his leaving. I don’t like it. I refuse to like it. 

Good-byes are on my mind today because I’ve lived another one, and while I was standing at the airport watching my son arc away from me, into a whiter than white sky, I thought about how many more there are to go, not just his, but each child's. So much leaving already lived, yet so much more to endure.

Robb’s leavings have become a familiar, if unwelcome, routine. The day dawns under a pall. The whole family speaks in hushed tones. We keep looking at the clock. No one wants to eat.

With his digi-cam ruck sack stuffed and flung over his shoulder, Robb entered the kitchen shortly after nine a.m. and gave me a “Let’s go,” flick of his head. All of us filed to the driveway where Joe produced a Roman candle. I don’t know how long he’d saved it, but he decided today was the day to light it, in the middle of a moderate snow storm no less. Robb set his cigarette to the fuse, and we took a step back. After an abbreviated moment, sizzling flares of color arced from the stick. Each one reached a little higher than the last and soon they were firing over the bare trees, high above the house, first blue, then red, then another blue, before disappearing into the white backdrop of the world. When no more fired, Joe said, “That’s it?”

I said, “Yeah, but it was cool while it lasted."

Ted, who wasn't going with us to the airport, wrapped his arms around Robb. They said things to one another that I could not hear, and when they released their hug the rest of us got into the car.

***
It was important that he stop by the nursing home to say goodbye to Marnie before leaving town. When I pulled into the parking lot, a half-block from our house, we spotted her sitting in her wheelchair waiting for us to arrive. Robb walked through the door and greeted her. “I saw the fireworks!" she said. "I knew that had to be you kids!”

“That makes me almost want to cry,” Joe said.

“Not almost,” added Jake.

Robb and Marnie hugged, and then hugged again. Neither wanted to let go.

When he was buckled back in, I pointed the car toward the airport, but Robb said, “Can we make one more stop?”

“Where?” I asked.

“A place out by Farm King.”

The cemetery. My stomach knotted. He hadn’t brought this up before. Yes, it was necessary, but, damn, it was going to hurt.

Jake started crying before we got there. The car was silent, slipping on ice, trudging through slush. I parked near Bill’s grave. Joe and Robb got out but Jacob simply couldn’t, so I stayed with him inside the car, holding his trembling hand, watching as my two oldest sons with bodies like men and hearts like boys, walked to their father’s grave. Robb bent over, using his bare hand to wipe the snow from Bill’s name, as tender as if it had been his face. Then the two boys stood with their backs to us, shoulder to shoulder, speaking or wordless, I don’t know. After several minutes, they turned and walked back toward the car, hands shoved in pockets, necks bent to shield their faces from the falling snow.

“He needs a better headstone,” Robb said.

The car fell silent as each boy stared out the window, lost in his own thoughts.

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” he added, answering a question no one had asked.

I thought about the Roman candle, its small but intense light shooting into the sky just high enough into the whiter than white morning that the people to see it were the only ones who really needed to.

Toys As Essential Tools of Violence

I grew up in an era that prepped kids for the realities of a cruel world. Seventies kids are tough as nails. Our toys were not products of a virtual world with ‘pretend’ violence. Our toys had real consequences and required real stitches. That’s how we learned to survive in a world that’s designed to kick our butts. We weren’t sissies with toys like lawn darts that kept us bruised, battered and skittish. We had Soccer Boppers that gave us permission to punch one another in the face, and Creepy Crawlies Thingmakers to melt our fingerprints off. Easy Bake ovens singed the hair off our arms, and Polly Pockets and Superballs blocked our bowels when we accidentally swallowed them. We even got high off of the fumes from Balloon-In-a-Tube that claimed so many brain cells. But the best preparation for the wilds of living in the adult world had to be Clackers: two large marbles on the ends of two strings attached by a plastic ring. They were designed after the bolo, a South American hunting weapon. If you had a set of Clackers and came away with all your teeth then you weren’t using them right. We knocked our brains out, blackened our eyes, bruised our arms and, when we got lucky, managed to shatter them with spectacular results. I’m a proud survivor of a 70s era childhood. Sure, we’re scarred and hand-shy, but we know how to pick ourselves back up. Not like kids these days who can Ctl-Alt-Delete to start over. Band-aids, ice packs and stitches, man. That’s how kids learn to be tough.

What Dreams May Come

Joe had a dream about Bill. He said, in fact, that he dreamed about him all night, so that when I woke him at 6am the first thing he said was that he’d been dreaming about his dad, which made me feel bad for him, that he had to leave his dad to wake up.

Later, during the evening, I was with him as he recounted the dream not once, but three more times. With each retelling I thought to myself, “I don’t want to have to listen to this again.”
I was there when he told it to his grandmother. And I was putting away groceries while he sat at the table and told it again, this time to Bailey.
They'd gone to a movie, Dad and the three kids who currently live at home. “It wasn’t a particular theater,” Joe said. “It was every theater we'd ever gone to with dad.” And then he said they'd watched a movie, a good one. Afterward, Jake and Bailey went off with other people but Joe didn’t want to leave Bill; the two of them wanted another movie. So they sneaked into another theater without paying. “I don’t want to dole out more money,” Bill had said (so true to life), so they ducked inside another showing and hid amongst the paying customers. Somehow, Joe dreamed, theater employees had caught wind of their scheme and came into the theater looking for the culprits, but Joe and Bill played it cool. They knew how to act cavalier, not get caught. And they didn’t.
“And then I woke up,” Joe said. “I was so mad I had to pee because I just wanted to stay there.”

Bailey asked if she’d told us her latest dad dream. We shook our heads and paused to listen. “We were on a bus going someplace,” she said. “And everybody was getting off the bus, and I was walking to the front and the bus driver looked up and it was Dad.”
He used to drive a bus, back in the early 90s. It’s where he worked when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
“I started screaming,” she said. “I wanted to tell everybody it was my dad. And I fell into his lap and was crying and screaming and yelling to everyone that it was my dad, but no one listened. And he just sat there.”

I’ve dreamed him too. He’ll crop up in unexpected places. I thought I’d dreamed him out, but now that he’s gone in flesh he’s resurfaced other places. And although his presence is no longer real, when he appears it kicks like a mule in the gut. I cannot fathom, most days, that he is gone. That I am on this kid-raising journey without him. No back up. No co-cheerleader. No one to tell me I’m not crazy for getting pissed at a teacher for shoving my son unprovoked. No one to puff up with pride when one or another of these kids does something right, or good.

Sure we keep him here in heart and mind. But he’s gone. Without a trace. Life has changed, and there’s no putting it back like it was, even if how it was was aggravating and broken and screwed up.

I think about him lying in bed that Sunday morning. I wonder what he was dreaming. I wonder if his last dream was of his kids, or of us when we were kids, first married. I don’t know. And when he was shocked from sleep by the shutdown of his body, and then ushered into unconsciousness before he could even speak, I wonder what he thought. I think his first thought was, “Oh shit, somebody help me.” And when he realized for a few conscious moments that help was not enough, I think he put his mind on his children. He put it there, and kept it there for his last cognizant moments, and then when his mind released from his body I believe he locked it onto them and that’s where it has stayed.

I just wish he could come back and tell them it will be okay, that they’ll get through this. I suspect he wishes he could too. One of these days, when I enter my afterlife, I’ll seek him out, and we’ll talk about it. I’ll tell him my version; he’ll tell me his, and we’ll shake our heads in disbelief. We survived so many ordeals on earth, but we always had each other to share them with. “You won’t believe this one…” we might begin. But his death has been horribly lopsided; I haven’t had him here to tell it, and some days that’s all I want to do. “You won’t believe what happened,” I'd say, because he probably wouldn’t. He'd be just as bowled over by it as we are.

But wherever he is, I hope his mind is on these kids, and  I hope that when they dream him into their sleep-world existence that it’s for real. I hope it's really him. And that he’s okay, and he’s keeping watch over them. 

Best Halloween Ever

Halloween night I sat on the parlor stairs, playing on my computer, waiting for kids to show up at the door. Since the doorbell doesn’t work, and the house is huge, I wouldn’t hear the kids if I wasn't right there. I turned up iTunes and tried to enjoy the aloneness.  That's become my new normal. The kids are too old to participate in the things that parents would be along for, so I'm often left to myself. It was while I sat on the steps, mindlessly surfing the Internet that I thought back to another lifetime.
We were poor as church mice. Didn't have a penny to our names, but a friend had gone on a trip and brought the kids back plastic rain capes. The hoods looked like animals. It was a warm but rainy evening, so the capes made perfect sense.  We drove over to Bateman Street, a good neighborhood where nearly every house turned on their lights. Lots of people still gravitate there; it's like something out of Rockwell. Robby was a green dinosaur; reptiles were his fascination those days. Joe was a red dog; we called him Clifford, and Bailey and Jacob were yellow ducks. We walked along the sidewalk while the kids, Robb leading the way, ran at full throttle up every walkway, screamed “Trick or Treat!” into the face of a startled homeowner before bolting off to the next house, yelling “Thank you!” on the fly. Poor Jake was just over two years old, so he couldn't keep up to save his life. Bill and I scooted him along, sometimes carrying him to catch up, since it seemed Robb'd be tearing out for the next house just as Jake made it to the door. I remember people being knocked over by how cute the kids looked. We were just glad they had ‘costumes’ and were staying dry.
What’s most vivid to me about that night was walking down the street with Bill. We commented on the beauty of the evening while shuffling through wet piles of leaves the color of fire, stirring the aromas of fall.  The night was lit up by yard lights played against a soundtrack of people laughing and calling out to one another up and down the block. We walked side by side, our children, still babies around us. That was the best Halloween ever. We were so poor, but we had so much. Hell if I could see it at the time.

Estate Auction

To settle the estate of William R. Fitch, the following was offered for sale at public auction. Below is a partial listing of items purchased.

Wooden Soapbox car, green with black stripe, handmade by father and son.
Purchased for $4
I don’t remember if it was a school or church project. It could have been scouts, but that doesn’t seem right either. I’ll have to ask Robb. But it was stuffed in a box among other miscellany. I remember Robb’s pride at completing the project. Bill was allowed to guide Robb, but he couldn’t do the work for him. When the job was completed and the culminating race was run, Robb bequeathed his car to Bill, the emblem of their efforts. It occupied various spots in the house over the years but usually sat in a place of prominence on Bill’s desk or a nearby bookcase. On the bottom, scratched with a nail in Robb’s 8-year-old handwriting, is his father’s name.

Small Dollar Store glass bottle with puff paint design.
Purchased for $4
Inside the bottle is a rolled piece of paper, a little scroll of Bailey’s handwriting that reads: “To Dad, Love from Bailey.” She made it in Sunday School. It’s difficult to properly proportion a freehand cross, but she managed. Other adornments include squiggly lines, dots and flowers. Clearly, she made it with him in mind, perhaps for a Father's Day.

Red Flyer child’s wagon, some rust, few dents, four good wheels.
Purchased for $7
The day Jacob was born in 1993 was an unmercifully hot June day. By 9am humidity saturated the air, and the sun beat down with a vengeance. I was sick of being pregnant, and had made up my mind that this child was going to be born whether he wanted to or not. So I loaded up baby Joey and little Bailey into the wagon and Robb pedaled alongside on his 12 inch bicycle. The four of us, me as big as a house, walked to the convenience store, the long way. The wagon wheels rattled along the brick street. We stopped to notice things along the way: an empty lot full of flowering weeds; the carcass of a squirrel; sticks; odd bits of trash. At the convenience store the kids got Popsicles. I bought a scratch n’ win lottery ticket. The Popsicles melted faster than the kids could eat them. I won $50. Jacob was born before sunset.

Klein Tools brand leather climbing belt
Purchased for $27.50
When Bill got into the cable business in 1987 he was required to climb poles. Not everyone had the luxury of a bucket truck, and in order to connect customers to the system, installers had to climb telephone poles to complete the loop. As big as he was, Bill could do it. I saw him with my own eyes. He was strong as an ox in those days, and I marveled at the rhythm of his lumbering body, like Paul Bunyon's, throwing a strap around the pole, digging spikes into the splintered wood, pulling himself up that sheer vertical incline.
There was a monstrous pine tree in front of his parents’ house. One year they decided it was time for it to come down, so Bill gathered up his chain saw and that Klein belt. He whacked the low branches from the trunk and when he’d skinned it to the limits of his reach, he strapped on his belt and climbing gaffs. Chain saw in hand, he trimmed along as he went, first climbing and then leaning back into the belt for leverage, trusting it to hold his weight. When he reached that last few feet of the tree he sawed off the tip and let fall to the ground what looked like a miniature Christmas tree. On the way back down he cut sections of the trunk into fire-log lengths and then let gravity have them. I have pictures of the entire revolution. I wish I could find them. I would love to show them to the kids.

Craftsman Socket Sets and Wrench Sets
Purchased 4 lots for $32.50 each
Jacob wanted his dad’s sockets and wrenches because, “Those are the tools I saw him use most.”

Crate of misc. items including Estwing 28 oz. hammer
Purchased for $12.50
I was on the phone with Robb, in Iraq, when I saw the auctioneer hold up Bill’s Estwing. “Oh my God, Robb. There’s his hammer. I gotta go.” Then I handed the phone to Bailey.
Bill had lots of hammers. He was a carpenter. But his Estwing was his favorite. "Perfectly balanced," he used to say. He liked the feel of swinging it. His first one was stolen not long after we were married, and though it was difficult to lay out extra money for an Estwing, that’s what we replaced it with. This is that hammer. The grip is discolored from years of occupying the palm of his left hand. The head is worn smooth from use. It is nicked and worn with time. It is still perfectly balanced.

Clay Pigeon Launcher, mounted to worn radial tire on rim
Purchased for $17.50
Last Christmas, when Robb was home on leave, he wanted everyone to go shooting. Even though it was rainy and cold and miserable, they ventured out to some nice person’s country property, lugging the pigeon launcher. After the first few shots Bailey had had enough. She retreated to the warmth of the Jeep while Bill and the boys stayed on, throwing and firing for hours. This was the first and only time they did this. Bill and I used it one other time, on the farm. He wanted me to give it a try, so he launched clay pigeons out over the pasture and let me shoot at them and miss. I remember the gun recoiling against my shoulder. I remember Bill laughing at me, showing me how to do it right. When Bailey saw the launcher sitting in the gravel outside the auction house, flanked by the red wagon and the green cart Poppy pulled behind his riding lawnmower to give them rides, she broke down and wept.

Electra Golf Clubs
Appraised value $150
Purchased for $150
Bill loved playing golf even if he wasn’t that good at it. He didn’t play much when we were married, but as the kids got older he liked taking them along on outings, often for their birthday. He was supposed to take Jacob for his 15th, but he died eleven days too early.

Winchester Model 97 12 gauge shotgun Appraised value $600
22 caliber single shot rifle a.v. $75
Winchester Model 12 12 gauge pump shotgun a.v. $450
Stevens 410 gauge single shot shotgun a.v. $300
Ruger Model 10 22 caliber carbine with scope a.v. $350

Purchased entire lot for $1875.00
Bill’s weapons were his inheritance. He’d often spoken of passing them on to his sons. He bought none of them himself. They all came from grandfathers and great grandfathers. They were used to control pests and provide food for families. They are specimens of craftsmanship. Even during his darkest financial hours, when he was willing to pawn most anything else including the Ruger .357 magnum I gave him one year for his birthday, he refused to give up his grandfather's weapons. Despite his wishes, and someone's promises to the contrary, they were sold. 

***

These are the items I was able to secure for the kids, what’s left of their father. Since the day he died, they have been shut out. They have been ignored and cheated. There is a face and a name to this unspeakable evil. At their young ages they have witnessed first hand a vacuum of greed and selfishness in its most vivid image. I find it unfathomable that there are humans sharing this planet with us who are willing to subject innocents to such unmerciful suffering. This past year God is testing my willingness and capacity to forgive. This stretches me to my outer limits. I was forced to buy back what belonged to my children to begin with, and what should have been rightfully given to them. Indeed, they were promised they would receive these things and more. Instead, the mementos they cherished most were put up for public sale. What was not sold has been hoarded and greedily concealed from the family by the one person who never wanted to be considered family, who did not earn the right to be called family, who has since abandoned the family, and who surely never loved Bill in the first place because love and her behavior cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. The loss is immeasurable and extends beyond ‘stuff’ into the realm of the intangible including trust, hope and love. I find the small-mindedness and small character of those who have inflicted this situation on my children utterly disgraceful.

CODA: In fairness, I should add that Bill's estate is insolvent. He owed more than he owned. No surprises there. However, my children were promised the opportunity to keep things that belonged to their father that held special meaning. The boys chose his tools and his guns. Many other things the kids wanted were kept, have disappeared, were not offered for sale. The final insult was the unexpected -- having to buy back my children's art projects, gifts they'd given their dad, and their toys.

What If?

Since Bill died I no longer worry about Robb getting killed in Iraq. The dreams and nightmares have stopped. The preoccupation with worrying about his safety has faded. He's still on my mind every minute of every day, so far away, but the fear that gripped me from the moment he told me he was to deploy has mercifully let go.

It is about forty days before he is back home on American soil.

He calls me on a regular basis. It takes his voice about five seconds to span the continents and another five for mine to reach him. We stumble over one another in syncopated communication, our words colliding over the ocean.

It is not common for a marine of modest rank to get invited on certain missions. Such an invitation is a reward, even if accepting it leads to the marine's untimely death. A MGySgt requested Robb's presence to establish a FARP (Forward Arming and Refueling Point) in Afghanistan where for two months his only contact with family would be through snail mail, and from what I've heard snails don't survive well in such brutal environs. The request was a result of his behavior in Iraq, an honor of sorts. He's been called a "shit-hot marine." He has the attention of his superiors. They've seen something in him they like. He asked the MGySgt if he could sleep on the request, mull it over. When MGySgt asked again, he still didn't have an answer, and when he approached Robb one last time, Robb turned him down. He told me about this in a phone call not long after returning to Iraq, after coming home to bury his father.

"I'm telling you now because they left last night," he said. "I didn't go because I couldn't imagine doing that to you, after all we've been through." 

Silence filled the phone line. I had no words. Only gratitude. Relief.

In the 100+ days since Bill died, I've thought about a lot of things:
What if Bill died so that Robb did not have to? What if Bill died so that Robb had a choice? He might have been ordered. What if Bill's untimely death interrupted the rhythm of Robb's life just enough to take him out of harm's way? These thoughts and more. And I think that if Bill had to make the choice to die or endure his own son's death he would have said, "Take me, not my son." I think this would have terrified him, but I don't think he would have hesitated.

Bill was not a warrior. He told me once that he got into a fight when he was five years old and wet his pants. He did not raise his hand to anyone. He was a talker and a joker but not a fighter. When we were married and on hard times I could not coax a good fight from him. I accused him of being weak, selfish, and uncaring. I criticized him for not taking care of his family. I questioned his love for me, for his children.

The Bible says in John 15:13, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Robb is Bill's son -- so much more than a friend -- but a friendship was developing. Robb had come into manhood and received the gift of Bill's blessing along with fatherly respect for the decisions he'd made. Bill knew that Robb was venturing into territory he wasn't cut out for; he'd said so himself. Robb was doing something Bill simply couldn't have done, but he was infinitely proud of his son.

What if, in the end, it came down to this: that Bill gave his life so my son could live? What if, in death, Bill gave me the one thing I knew I couldn't endure, the thing that represented my greatest fear? What if Bill's love for his family was so much greater than I had ever imagined? What if he really did care that much? What if he was that selfless? That strong?

What if?