The Questions Themselves

The hardest part was picking out his boxers and socks. Standing there in that small, dingy trailer where my dad had lived every summer since he and my mom divorced in 1986.  No electricity, no phone, no running water – “off the grid” as he liked to say – with just his small trailer to sleep in, his organic garden, an open-air outhouse and his teepee close by.  And there I stood, inside that same trailer, next to the unmade bed where my father had had a heart attack the night before, looking through his drawers for a pair of boxers and socks he could wear at his funeral.

“This is real,” I tell myself. “You are standing here, your father’s clothes he had on just last night are at your feet.” Old worn-in Levi’s, 36x30’s, the leather belt Chris and I gave him one Christmas, his comfortable leather moccasins.  I stop looking for a sock without holes momentarily so that I can pick up the Levi’s from the floor.  I press them to my nose and breathe deeply.  Suddenly, he is there – cigarettes, coffee, and his warm musky skin smell fill me. Isn’t he nearby? Where has he gone? Why am I standing here with one threadbare sock in my hand, looking for a match without holes? I think to myself, “ Chris and I would have given him new socks for Christmas this year . . .” Thick wool socks to keep him warm, to soften the bitter cold of another frigid Michigan winter he would not have to bear.

Instead, I am looking for just one sock without a hole that my dad will wear to his open-casket funeral.  A thing so against anything my father would have wanted, it’s almost laughable in a sick, sad, mean way.  Had my dad made his wishes known, he’d rather we put him in a canoe and push it down the Manistee afire than have an actual OPEN-CASKET funeral at a local funeral home, a month before his 55th birthday.

You can’t ever be ready, can you? I mean even those individuals who have time with someone before they die, to say the things they need to say – to say good-bye . . . Can you ever be totally prepared?  Being the first to find out did not help my situation – like being hit be a Mack truck and then expected to get up immediately and walk down the sidewalk as if it were any warm, early fall afternoon. It was any warm, early fall afternoon up until that point – up until 3:58 p.m. on Friday, September 4th.
My Labor Day weekend had started early, having just finished nine holes of golf with the man I was dating at the time. And as we headed back to his house, I asked if I could borrow his cell phone to check my messages. Though a bit garbled, I heard a man’s voice say, “Yes, this is Trooper Rodriquez calling from the Cadillac State Police Post in regard to Gerry Mundy. If you are any relation to him please call us at 616-775-2433.”  My immediate thought – “Is this a joke?” and then on that thought’s heels: “Perhaps my dad got a DUI??”

I turned to David and said, “It’s a police officer from Michigan calling about my dad . . .”  I quickly dialed the number and waited for someone to answer, trying to remain calm, to not let my fears run away with me.  Someone answered on the second ring and I explained that I was responding to a message left earlier for me and I identified myself as Gerry Mundy’s daughter.

The officer that answered said they had been trying to reach someone all day and he was glad I had called.  I was anxious as he spoke, wanting to cut to the chase – for him to tell me what I needed to know. He began, “Ma’am, we don’t like to do this over the phone . . .”, letting the sentence dangle like words over a cliff.  To which I answered, “I’m his daughter . . . you can tell me.  Whatever it is.” He hesitated, asked if there was anyone else he might speak with, wherein I reiterated with more vehemence, “I’m his daughter . . . you can tell me.”  To this he replied, “Your father had a heart attack this morning.” I heard that. Believed it. I could deal with that. It settled in, a feather dropping to the ground.

“O.K.” I responded. “Where is he?” Again the officer said, “Ma’am, we don’t like to do this over the phone  . . .“, his pause pregnant with foreboding,  I held my breath, could sense something treacherous about to be unloosed. I didn’t want to hear the next words out of his mouth, knew they were going to be bad by the tone of his voice. But I’m good with silence. I waited. I made him say it. All the while my hysteria mounting.

“He died this morning.”

“Oh my God, NO!” I screamed.  “Nooooooooooo!” I threw the offensive phone down and as it bounced on the floorboard I could hear the distant officer saying, “Ma’am, please don’t hang up . . . ma’am?”  And then the no’s began in earnest.  A thousand times no. “No, no, no, no . . .” This I could not take in. Would not take in. Pinching, scratching, my hands pressing the ceiling of the car.  Sobbing uncontrollably. Thoughts like bullets shooting through my shocked brain.  Too much. Too much. Too much.  Noooooo.

If I could just say it enough, couldn’t I will it to not be true? Hadn’t I always been able to make what I wanted happen? Wasn’t it my dad himself who told me, “You can do anything. Be anything. You are so bright, smart, beautiful. Anything you want you can have. The world is yours.” But this world wasn’t mine. I didn’t know it. And I certainly didn’t want it. Couldn’t push it away hard enough or fast enough with the no’s or by the force of my own will.  My thoughts ran around inside my head – looking for comfort, security, a safe place to hide.

There wasn’t any. 

Only the reluctant return – again and again – to the knowledge of what a faraway police officer had just informed me of over the phone: my dad was dead. And then the continuation of the resounding no’s – echoing varying degrees of my shock and disbelief; my unwillingness to accept the fact that my father had suddenly died.

David – having pulled over as soon as I threw the phone down – tried to console me. But how do you console the inconsolable? What can you do but be there, listen and watch – witness to the greatest grief a soul will ever bear. What could he do for me other than hold me for those few brief seconds when I’d allow it, until I would have to pull away as I attempted to crawl out of my very own skin. Not wanting to live there for another second. How could I with this newfound knowledge wreaking more dissonance on my brain than I could withstand? But as hard as I pushed, it would not go. The knowledge was lodged there as tightly as a newly-turned screw.

I knew in that moment my life would never be the same.

_______________________________________________________

As scary and hard as my father’s sudden passing was, there have been more gifts and blessings than I can count over the past 16 years – because of his death, in spite of it, as I muddled through those first few years. And as much as my dad’s death has shaped my life and perspective, so too have the many gifts and blessings that have inspired me, sustained me, and helped make me whole: my family, my friends, quotes, books, songs, prayers, writing, being married, having children, nature, spirituality, exercise, and the list goes on and on.

One quote in particular, by Rainer Maria Rilke, has buoyed me during the most challenging periods in my life when I am overwhelmed and clamoring for control amidst the seeming chaos:

I beg you to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you could not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it but take whatever comes with great trust, and only if it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.

Other writings, like the inscription in the leather bound journal my dad gave me for my high school graduation, inspire me to live my biggest and best life:

 . . . I have been trying to think of something so special for you. Everything seemed inadequate, but Walt Whitman must have had this in mind for someone like you.

Meaghan –
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body . . . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready, ploughed and manured . . . others may not know but he or she shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches . . . and shall master all attachment.”

Now I’ll stop being heavy, Meg. If I could. Congratulations but your work has just begun and never ends. What fun you’ll have.

Love always,

Dad

Sometime read Rumi, Kabir, and Mirabai. Never stop drawing your dreams. When you’re sixty, oh my.

Nothing my dad ever gave me or wrote me was inadequate. Indeed, I return to his writings, letters, books and music time and time again.  They feed my soul and keep him close – no matter the time or distance between us.  They ground me and give me both roots and wings with which I continue to forge my life and story.

What I know for sure: Life is a lesson in letting go. Of accepting what is. Of opening ourselves to try new things. Of embracing change.  Of trusting and being patient.  Of living one day at a time into our answers.

My dad’s sudden passing taught me many lessons but perhaps the most important is this:

EACH DAY IS A GIFT.

And I, I am forever grateful for this hard-won lesson.

(Thank you Dad.)