The tiny Lake Phoenix chapel was filled with people. We were going to be doing a larger memorial service back in Connecticut, so I hadn’t expected this one to be so packed. But standing by the front pew in a black dress my mother had lent me, I watched them streaming in, all these people who had shown up for my dad. Wendy was there, and Fred and Jillian, and Dave Henson, who’d sold him so much licorice. Lucy was there with her mother, Angela from the diner was there, and the Gardners, everyone from the beach—and Leland had even combed his hair.
The minister hadn’t been too happy when I’d given him the mix CD of the music we had chosen. It probably was a little unorthodox—opera mixed with Jackson Browne. But I had a feeling it’s what my dad would have wanted. He also wasn’t happy about the dog, but my grandfather had told him that Murphy was his service animal, and so, he was sitting under the front pew, at my grandfather’s feet, perfectly still.
It was just the family in the front row, Gelsey in an old black dress of mine, Warren wearing a suit that somehow made him look younger. My grandfather was wearing his Navy dress uniform, which might have been one of the reasons the minister hadn’t argued with him. My mother was sitting next to me, clutching one of my dad’s handkerchiefs tightly. I noticed we’d left an extra, open spot in our row, as though he might be joining us, but was just running a little late, parking the car. I couldn’t somehow get my mind to accept that the still figure in the casket at the front, surrounded by flowers, was him.
The minister gestured to my mother, and the service began. I let the words wash over me, not really hearing them, not wanting to hear about ashes and dust when it came to my father. After he was done, my grandfather spoke, about what my dad had been like when he was young, and how proud my grandfather had always been of him. My mother spoke, and I gave up on trying not to cry. Warren spoke briefly, reading a section from the T.S. Eliot poem Dad had loved.
And even though I hadn’t planned to say anything—or prepared any remarks—I found myself standing as Warren returned to his seat, and walked straight up to the lectern.
I looked out at the crowd and saw, standing in the back, Henry. He was with Davy, wearing a suit I’d never seen before, and his eyes were fixed on mine—supporting, encouraging, somehow giving me the confidence I needed to start.
And as I looked out at the crowd, I realized I wasn’t panicking. My palms weren’t sweating. And I wasn’t worried about what I was going to say—it was simple. It was just the truth.
“I’d always loved my dad,” I said in a voice that was stronger than I’d expected it to be. “But I actually got to know him this summer. And I realized that he’d been teaching me so much, all along.” I took a big breath—not because I was nervous, but because I could feel tears building up, and I wanted to try and get through this first. “Like the importance of really bad puns.” The crowd laughed at that, and I felt myself relax a little bit. “And that you should always get ice cream when the opportunity presents itself, even if it is close to dinnertime.” I swallowed hard. “But mostly, he taught me this summer about courage. He was so brave, considering what he was facing. He didn’t run away from it. And he was brave enough to admit that he was afraid.” I wiped my hand across my face, and took another shaky breath, to try to finish.
“I’m just glad that I got the time I did with him, even—” my breath caught in my throat, and the view of the crowd got blurry. “Even if it wasn’t enough time,” I finished. “Even if it wasn’t nearly enough.”
I stumbled, half-blind with tears, down to my seat. The minister was speaking again, and now Jackson Browne was singing. And it was Warren, unexpectedly, who pulled me into a tight hug and let me cry against his shoulder.
Things wrapped up after that, with the announcement of the reception back at our house, and then the processional past the casket. I sat it out, holding Murphy on my lap, feeling like I’d already said good-bye to my father under the stars. But I noticed that as my grandfather went up, his posture so straight in his uniform, he put into the casket the figure he’d been whittling all week—a tiny carved robin, taking flight.
Chapter thirty-eight
I TURNED THE CAR DOWN THE DRIVEWAY, SHUT OFF THE ENGINE, and let out a breath. I had just dropped my grandfather and his telescope off at the bus station, and it had been much harder to say good-bye than I’d been expecting. And there had been far too much of that already lately.
In the days after the funeral, we slowly fell back into the pattern of a few weeks before. But instead of playing Risk, or watching movies, we began to talk about my dad. And with every story, some of the memories of him sick faded away a little, and I started to remember him as he’d been my whole life, and not just this summer.
I was still feeling shaky, and the smallest things could cause me to burst into tears unexpectedly—like finding one of his clean handkerchiefs in the laundry and suddenly panicking about what to do with it.
But today, coming back from the bus station, I was feeling slightly closer to okay as I crossed the driveway barefoot to find my mother was sitting at the table of the screened-in porch, a manila envelope next to her.
“Hi,” I said, as I sat down and looked at the envelope next to her. “What’s that?” The sight of it somehow made me nervous. My mother turned it over and I saw that Taylor was written in my father’s handwriting. My breath caught in my throat, just seeing it, and I looked up at my mother, confused.
She slid it across the table to me. “It turns out this was your father’s mystery project. I found them upstairs in the closet. He wrote them to all of us.”
I picked up the envelope, tracing my fingers over where he’d written my name. I didn’t want to be rude to my mother, but I suddenly wanted to read my father’s last words to me in private. “Sorry,” I said, pushing back my chair a little from the table. “But…”
“Go,” my mother said gently. “And then I’ll be here if you want to talk about anything, okay?”
I nodded as I stood up. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I gripped the envelope carefully as I left the porch. It wouldn’t have been valuable to anyone else, but at the moment, there was nothing in the world that I valued more. Before I even knew I was heading there, I found myself walking to the dock, which was deserted, the late-afternoon sunlight glinting off the water.