Father's Day Without My Father

I should probably add "the first" Father's Day without my father. It is just after two months since my father died, and exactly two months after his funeral. Father's Day was a bit of a battle between us, from my perspective, because I'd always want to take him out, spend money. He, the depression era child awaiting another, would actually get angry at me for the profligacy. So I tended toward avoiding deciding anything about what we'd do until a day or so before, and there'd be a little tension between us, he preferring to cook at home, meaning he'd do the cooking, because that is something I have never been, a cook, and me preferring to go out, both of us missing the point of the day.

Looking back, and it is always easy to look back, I should have simply let him be. But that isn't the way with parents and children, no matter how old the child is. And in this, perhaps, I acted too much the child in my resistance. I'd like to say that if he were here, this Father's Day would have been different, that I would have acquiesced to his wishes without any resentment, but I suspect otherwise,given my prior history. But he isn't here. And so, I slept in, as I always have done on Sundays, went to Church, which he used to do with me. But today I lunched with friends at the same restaurant at which I celebrated my father's 90th (he allowed this spending spree as a love of his New York life was with us), and then went to the cemetery.

I have been talking to him since he died in the free way I wish I could have done in life. I have told folks that it seems to me that since he has pierced the Cloud of Unknowing, he has seen God and in that he knows His plan in a way that none of us can in this life, I have felt his hand in protection of me, now without the fear and anxiety that used to accompany his guidance. I don't know that I had to go to the cemetery to "see him". But that is where what remains of his earthly self is, and it seems that on this day, a close visit, an in person visit, was compelling. My mother is buried at Gate of Heaven cemetery in NY. I have been out here, in California, half my life. I have thus only visited her about three time all tolled. Even when I lived there, I was not driving and a trek to where she was, relatively upstate, was difficult. But this cemetery is an easy drive, close to home. There would be no excuse for me not to visit. Today was my second visit since the interment. The place was packed with families sitting on blankets next to bunches of flowers they had placed on the ground plots. And at the niches, where my father is, flowers were in the little holders on space after space. I have decided now for certain I will get a holder. My father did not have any great interest in flowers, but it is the only way I can leave anything tangible of my presence and sentiment, so I will end up getting one of these.  And a portable chair so I can sit rather than stand or lean against the columbarium. At another niche, daughters of a parent chanted prayer. It echoed in the mausoleum as did the chirping of the birds. Another family chatted by a niche as if they were at a party, and their dad was the guest of honor. I said a prayer or two, perfunctorily. I have never been very good at praying, except maybe in Church. I cried a bit, still feeling a level of disbelief that he isn't here but sure that he is safe and sound in God's hands. I walked about and took in the paradoxical beauty of the place. I find I like cemeteries very much. I came back to dad and said my goodbyes. It wasn't long. I remembered how I'd be impatient in his house to go do something else on a Sunday, prepare for the next day of work, hang in the back yard, doing my own "thing". He'd note that I couldn't sit still. Here I was still doing that too. I came, but then was in a rush to go. But perhaps it only is that this visiting the dead may take some practice. I haven't done a lot of it, when I think about it, counting my mother, three times, a friend, two or three times, and my dad, now two. I am a novice at this visiting and praying at the grave. I am pretty sure I'll be a fair regular seeing my dad. It's an effort I probably should have made more of when he was alive. Although people would say, I would say in my own defense, I saw him quite often, my internal conflicts sometimes kept me at an emotional distance. Now all that seems quite silly and unnecessary.  And yet, in a peculiarly good way, our relationship, at least from my side of it, is stronger, easier. I wonder if that makes sense?