Father's Day

my father died not quite three years ago, but none of us--not my sisters, my mother (from whom he was divorced), nor I--had ever visited his grave site. He is buried more than an hour away from where my mom lives, but more than that, it was never part of my family's culture to visit the granite and earthen homes of departed loved ones. even though i firmly believe the spirit departs the body soon after death, i always experience such anguish when everyone walks away from the funeral, and only the coffin remains, waiting to be placed into the ground.

when we walked away from my father, on a soggy October Sunday, I kept looking back over my shoulder at his box. My mother, through her tears, said "we're just leaving him out in the rain. we can't leave him there like that..." the fine drops lightly tapped the outside of the mahogany wood.

I couldn't help but think of him on another rainy morning. my middle sister graduated on a cold day in May in Vermont about a year and a half earlier. for reasons that had nothing to do with my dad, i was supremely irritated and stressed out. i short-sightedly and petulantly refused to be in any of the photos. the rain that day had chilled me to the deepest part of my bones, and i holed up in the hotel room and slept instead of going out to lunch with my dad and his father and my sisters.

the next time i would see my father was at his mother's funeral, on his birthday, one month before he died.

so, we all wanted to go and visit with him yesterday, to hug that cold stone that will have to suffice, and to lay yellow roses tinged with orange around the petals' rims and mixed gerberas and other spriggy like things on the dirt. there was no flower stand for his marker, so it looks as though we pelted him for a pageant.

"Happy Father's Day, Dad," I said. "We're all here."