I guess I should have missed my father since he was dead. He’d been dead for several years then, but as I recall I was more concerned with the damp chill, the spitting rain that covered the day like a soggy blanket so that I wasn’t sure if it was day or night.
I remember the puddle of cold, cold water at my feet, my black patent leather Mary Janes mud-spattered, my once-white Buster-Brown socks soaked, clinging and iced against my feet, the trickle of water from the umbrella overhead that always seemed to drain down the back of my neck – icy fingers against my spine. The only warm spot was the hand my mother held tightly in hers.
Taller than my head, a dark grey stone marked where my father lay. I remember wondering why anyone wanted to spend eternity in the dank ground suffocated by soil and covered with bugs and things. But like most young children, my attention soon wandered away from the stone to the churchyard. The cemetery was attached to a church dating from long, long before even my parent’s births. The rain-drenched trees lining the outside of the cemetery morphed into unnamed monsters from nightmare worlds when seen from the corner of my eye – when I looked directly, they once more became innocent trees draped with sodden leaves that faded into that misty time.
My brother stood on the other side of my mom and when I peaked around her crinoline dress skirt, he would scowl and stick his tongue out at me. At nearly five years older than I, he was as he continually reminded everyone, the man of the family now that daddy had died.
It’s hard to miss someone you never really knew at least, until someone else tells you, shows you, you’re somehow less for not having one.
(Just a bit of memoir - not sure what, if anything, I'm going to do with it.)
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