Nothing to Say
Dec. 5th, 2009 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayThe day before my father's funeral, my sisters said to me, "Would you want to write something to read at the funeral?" I'd arrived home with laryngitis and I said, "No, I can hardly talk." And they said, "We know that, but just write something and one of the boys will read it for you."
Sensing that they would persist, I said, "No, not now, I really don't have anything to say." And they said, "Look, we know that things were never the best between you and Dad, but you write so well and we thought there might be something." Impatient, I said with finality, "No, there's really nothing."
After the funeral and the lawyers and the sorting through things, I drove myself home. A few days later I sat in the dining room with a binder full of things that I'd written several years before, around the time we'd moved my father into assisted living and that long, resilient life of his seemed to be winding down.
In it was something I'd written with the thought that I'd someday read it at his funeral. In it, I retold several of his stories, about the wagon ride down Old State Road with all the family's belongings to what would become the family farm, about the girl he'd met years later in assisted living who'd known of his family back then but had never met him, about his struggles as he approached the end.
After the funeral and the lawyers and the long drive home, I sat in my dining room and read what I'd written. I sat there and read it out loud and practiced it and made it perfect. Just as if I would, one day, be reading it at his funeral...
LPK
LiveJournal
12.5.2009
Sensing that they would persist, I said, "No, not now, I really don't have anything to say." And they said, "Look, we know that things were never the best between you and Dad, but you write so well and we thought there might be something." Impatient, I said with finality, "No, there's really nothing."
After the funeral and the lawyers and the sorting through things, I drove myself home. A few days later I sat in the dining room with a binder full of things that I'd written several years before, around the time we'd moved my father into assisted living and that long, resilient life of his seemed to be winding down.
In it was something I'd written with the thought that I'd someday read it at his funeral. In it, I retold several of his stories, about the wagon ride down Old State Road with all the family's belongings to what would become the family farm, about the girl he'd met years later in assisted living who'd known of his family back then but had never met him, about his struggles as he approached the end.
After the funeral and the lawyers and the long drive home, I sat in my dining room and read what I'd written. I sat there and read it out loud and practiced it and made it perfect. Just as if I would, one day, be reading it at his funeral...
LPK
LiveJournal
12.5.2009
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 08:42 am (UTC)If I were you ~ wait, this isn't advice actually, which is what "if I were you" or sentences that start out such always end up being, so...
If I had something to say about someone, especially someone gone, who has, in fact, already died, I would make it into a nice little book for anyone else who would care to read it ~ you know, just a little kinkos thing. Or, if people lived close, I would read it to them at a celebration ~ like Christmas, or a birthday, or thanksgiving. Or a just because dinner. You know.
anyway. yada.
manda.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 05:15 pm (UTC)for now, though, i think i'm gonna just let it out bit by bit, as i experience it and as it comes to me, and hope that it sort of merges into the mix of everyday things in a way that avoids the obsessive or simply boring.
as always, thanks for your kind and well-considered words...