Non-fiction / The Unraveling; A Memoir
The Unraveling; A Memoir
I don’t think my father ever really gave his eventual death much thought. It came as a complete surprise to him as it does to most of us I suppose. At the onset not long before dawn, denial then anger may have passed through him and perhaps finally acceptance of the fact he was dying. From sleep to the wide awake realization took only a few hours. Yet I can’t help but think he had a good death, how unlike the lingering my mother is going through. I’d like to think he was as conscience in death as he was when he was born.
When my father died in 1996 it hit us boys upside the head. It was sudden and final when his heart decided that it had had enough and quit. With the grieving long over, that fancy casket was a waste of money. I think the old man would agree. “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” Seems to me he said that. We shipped him across the Washington state to be buried next to his brother Leslie who died two years earlier from cancer. The side by side plots came as a gift from their oldest brother Hershel, whose wife Hattie Evelyn wanted to be buried in her hometown of Colfax, forty miles east where he eventually joined her.
Dad had only lived in his brand new house for eight months or so before he died. Paid cash for it and was too cheap to get insurance. I bitched at him when I found out. For Christ sakes Dad if the place burns down you might as well take the money you paid for it and flush it down the toilet. There wasn’t much he could say to that. He surprised me when he bought the place and continued to when he filled it with new furniture. For the past two decades he’d live rent free in a couple of shacks that his brother Les owned, in Tacoma and then in Everett. He never put any money into them unless he had to. In the last house he was forced to put a roof on it when the lathe and plaster bowed from the walls. There were places where the plaster had surrendered to gravity revealing twisted lathe. And he replaced the hot water tank. It was depressing to go inside. Located on the side of a hill overlooking the Snohomish Valley, it was just below the freeway and when a semi truck hit the inevitable chuck hole in the road the whole house would shake. He once told us that someone had kicked in the back door, but nothing was missing. What are they going to steal I asked him? I bet the would-be-thief felt sorry for you. Old and wore out, it was all old and wore out with the drapes always drawn, the windows shut tight and the walls dripping with the oil of fried foods and exhaled smoke.
Looking back on it now I think he suffered from depression and didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t realize you don’t have to feel like that. He was miserable for years and the house reflected that misery back upon him. You could hear the scurry of mice in the attic and walls late at night after the TV was silenced. Dad would grumble about it but had little inclination to rid the house of them. The dark hole of depression left him with the will to do only that which he had to do, mainly go to work each day. At times he suffered physically for he had grown sensitive to petroleum products and as a mechanic he was always in contact with it in some form or another. His skin would break out. I remember him rocking back and forth in misery while sitting in front of a blaring TV.
It was a few years after he retired that he went into the hospital to have a vein transplanted into his leg which was unsuccessful. His leg was amputated just below the knee. While he was in the hospital my brother Randy and I did our best to clean the place. The curtains were so rotted they would tear apart with very little effort. We went to the Goodwill and replaced them all. We washed walls and opened the windows to let the old place have a breath of fresh air. Like so many people who had gone through the depression he hoarded food. We sorted through his canned goods and filled three large grocery sacks with cans that were spoiled, many had burst their seams.
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I am noone to be critiquing anothers work, but I really enjoyed reading this. I saw so much of my life and those around me in what you wrote. I will make the effort to be a better son, brother, uncle to those I really care about. Thank you
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