My Father's Love

The love between my father and my mother was so strong that not even the crawling vine ofparenthood could penetrate their bond. It was love at first sight, he said. On their first ten dates he brought my young mother a single four o’clock to wear in her hair. This is not uncommon, I suppose. Though in adulthood I have never discovered such a love for myself.

            Just over a year after meeting my father, my mother was pregnant with me. When I became pregnant with my own children he would often reminisce about how beautiful my mother looked in the glow of pregnancy and how it is every man’s dream to witness a beautiful woman’s journey into motherhood. “I always thought of her as my angel”, said my father. “But it wasn’t ‘til she was with child that I knew she was truly sent from heaven. For me.” After I lost my first child I could hear my father whispering to my husband, “Keep your head up, son. At least she’s OK. You are luckier than you know.”

            Of course, my husband and I did conceive three beautiful children. Although, Dad seemed to retract from us after the kids were born. When he first met my daughter when she was nine months old he told me she looked just like my mother. “Her nose. She has her nose. Just like you.” Then I collapsed onto him in my mother’s chair and we cried together. Me, with haphazard little spurts of laughter, and him with deep gasps for air.

            He died a few weeks ago. A terrible accident. He fell out of his chair and managed to strangle himself. The coroner’s sweet apprentice brought me brownies at the funeral and said, “So sorry about your dad. Such a neat, agreeable man.”

            “Yes, he was agreeable, wasn’t he?” I replied.

            “You know, I had never seen a dead body before your dad. I mean, not in real life. Just cadavers and the like. You’d think I would, you know, freak out or lose my lunch or something. But, it was so strange, when we first arrived on scene, before we went upstairs, the whole house was full of fresh flowers. The smell was unbelievable. It was like a wedding, or a…well…you know. And then, when we got up to his room and I saw him…there, it wasn’t gruesome at all. In fact, he was smiling.”

            I nodded compliantly and thought that I could never recall my father smiling.