A Birthday Celebrated with Snapshots

Those frozen mental pictures we carry can be good or bad, depending on what you've seen. I have some I could do with out, but some also that I treasure. One of my favorites that I like to pull out and "look" at is of the first time I met my Father-in-law, Earl.

It was the first time Erich brought me home to meet his family. I will never forget what their house looked like the first time I saw it: hidden by a hill, surrounded by a little lake, complete with a cave, and spring, as we rounded the corner, like a fairy tale cottage. And I will never forget the first time I met Earl. He was on top of the house cleaning out the guttering. It was a few days before Christmas and the weather was quite chilly. He was wearing a "snoopy hat" like this one, with the flaps down.

Because he was doing something manly he and Erich both did the "Tim-The-Toolman-Taylor" manly gorilla grunt. I laughed and instantly fell in love with him. I have that had saved in my closet, now.

I wish I would explain what it was like for me to know Earl. I had a weird dysfunctional relationship with my own Dad, and my grandfather had been gone for several years. He was gone before I understood how much I needed a grandpa. So there is Earl, gray, handsome, funny, fatherly. I guess if I had ever pictured what a "Father" was supposed to be and look like it was Earl. He could have been a lot of things: me being not the daughter he raised, or how he probably would have raised me; judgmental. He could have thought me not good enough for his son. Compared me against his own daughter. But he didn't. I could be wrong but I think he liked me right from the first as well.

That first night as I sat in the living room with what would be my husband's family (with a sprained ankle soaking in a bowl of hot water and Epsom salt) and knew I had found home. It was so perfectly ordinary and comfortable. Of course, Erich and I had only been dating about 2 weeks and it could have gone either way. Lucky for me, it would turn out to be fated.

So I spent the next 15 years getting to know Earl. I know that fond memories make people immortally perfect. I know he wasn't perfect. What makes people perfectly immortal, however, is when those perfect happy snapshots are all that we have recorded in our mind. If I tried I could probably dredge up a not-perfect one as well, but the happy ones far outweigh the imperfect ones.

In my head I also have "voice recordings". He called me by my first and middle name together. The only other person ever to do that is my Granny :) He asked me one time if it bothered me. He also called me "little girl" every time I was doing something he thought I should not do: like carry something heavy, climb on something, etc. I have recorded his Santa Clause like laugh, and his singing voice, which makes my heart hurt if I listen too long. I could write forever about how he was the father I  wished I had, how he took me into his heart and was also available for the phone call when I didn't know what to do. Most often times those phone calls involved advice for when I was dealing with issues with my own father.  I've never missed Earl so acutely as when my Dad passed away last September. I needed so badly to hear his voice telling me I wasn't a bad daughter, and that how I handled everything was reasonable considering the circumstances. To abate my guilt, to give me that fatherly advice I so desperately craved.  Sitting on my living room floor in that moment, I don't know when things have ever seemed so quiet. Knowing, that now, there were no Dads left, good or dysfunctional, happy or disquieted. I was on my own.

All of this is stored in my "Earl box". We said goodbye to Earl in a time a turmoil in our family. I was working full time and the loss was so great to my husband that I did my best to carry out the functioning of he family while he grieved. This left me little time to grieve, myself as I had to still full function, at work, at home, without falling apart, without giving in to what was breaking my heart. And so I did.

The truth about grief is that you will grieve, one way or another. You will go through all of those stages they tell you about whether you want to do not. It will be in any order, in any timing but it's a process that can't be circumvented. I couldn't do it all at once and so my process has taken it's time, and longer than what it might have been, in bits and pieces. I open the "Earl box" on special occasions, like today, his birthday, and look at those snapshots and listen to the voice recordings, and today, I write about them. I share them with you because if you knew him, you will remember these things too. If you didn't, I hope you can know what a truly good and wonderfully fun man he was to know.  I take the opportunity to grieve a little this morning. Sometimes it sneaks up on me and squeezes my heart like a vice and some days, I abandon myself  to it willingly.  I know it's indulgence. However, it's an indulgence I have not had the time for and every moment of it, I heal a little more.

So February 2nd, Ground Hog's Day. I used to call Earl and ask him if he had seen his shadow.  Happy Birthday, Earl.  You are greatly missed.

Earl in one of his funny "chemo" hats, with my son.  Best Grandpa, ever!