Five Years

I’ll never forget. Five years ago tonight. I stayed late at the office. I had less than six weeks left to finish my master’s project, complete the write-up, and get it all signed off. I was not exactly ahead of schedule. I chose to spend the evening in a lab downstairs, rather than the lab on the third floor where I usually worked. It had better equipment for what I had to do that night.

I worked for two hours until I was at a good stopping point. I knew my wife didn’t have the number for that lab, so I decided to check for voicemail.

Several messages, starting from ninety minutes ago. Where are you? Her father was dead.

* * *

She was able to reach a friend, who took her up to the hospital. It was in a foothills town, nearly an hour’s drive. I rushed up there. He lay in state. His widow vacillated between putting her grief and her bizarre humor on display. Within earshot of a sheriff’s deputy she rambled vaguely about how scared he was, if she did the right thing. The sheriff suggested I just let that go.

His daughter was crushed. Over the next weeks and months I learned that hugs don’t heal a broken heart.

* * *

I posted something a few days later. As it happened I had a men’s church group retreat to go to right after he died (except they called it an “advance” because “men don’t retreat”). The timing for me was good. I was able to grieve, by and for myself, just for losing my father-in-law, whom I loved very much. For my wife — there was to be no timing or anything else to help her through the worst loss she had ever known.

* * *

He was a fisheries biologist for the State of California. He was a walking encyclopedia of fish and birds. Whenever I see a red-tailed hawk wheel over my oak trees he stands next to me for an instant, watching it too.

He was an outstanding grandfather. He was almost the only person in my wife’s family who could actually love. He grew up in South San Francisco but was born in Dodge City, Kansas. He claimed descent from the great Scots poet Robert Burns. He was an only child, his father a carpenter and musician who came west to work in wartime shipyards, his grandfather a country doctor.

He was a jazz trombonist. To listen to Stan Kenton or any similar orchestra is to listen to his heart beat. He was a dry wit. Thanks to him, whenever anyone says I’m funny I remind them that looks aren’t everything.

* * *

No two families are alike, not even happy ones. But to speak of my wife’s family (or mine, for that matter) is to speak of the other kind in its way. My wife’s father’s death closed some big chapters but opened new ones unexpectedly, and the book continues to be written. Is the grieving over? No. Does he rest in peace? I believe so, but of course I wouldn’t know.

He was nine days shy of sixty-four, and after only five years we miss him every day.