So this happened today. Last visit to my father's grave before we leave Georgia. Dane is portable, which is nice, but my dad is stuck here, surrounded by old money Jews and conservatives, which is pretty much all he every wanted in life. So I guess that's good.
Sicily and I followed this up with some bickering and sushi, and a stroll through an antique store where I bought a glass buoy from England and tried not to think too much about Dane and all of his stories of these buoys, floating in the Bering Sea. Sicily and I talked about scattering his ashes in Alaska (ultimately what he wants), but I don't know if I will ever be able to do it. I don't think it's because I am holding on to Dane; he is not his sizzled bones in a carved box, anymore than my dad exists under the grass.
Still.
There is something comforting, and a little shocking I guess, when Sicily and I refer to Dane and his portability (and how we blame everything on him now, usually with expletives, because that's what you do when someone's not around. You blame them for stuff. But I digress), and the whole thing is very unlike me. I am mercilessly unsentimental, and I have cultivated that. The things I miss and pine for are not things, just like I miss smoking in a way that has nothing to do with cigarettes. So it's a bit odd that I haven't already fertilized a bush with my deceased husband.
But I do miss my dad, and think of him often, and I am sad when I realize that no one will leave rocks on his headstone anymore (or shells, or a Maryland flag key chain from this nasty bar in Fells Point called The Greene Turtle, but I wanted to give him something Maryland and that's what we had in the car, plus I didn't think the sproingy Buddha in the car would stick around or go over well in a Jewish cemetery). I guess the most important parts of him are coming with us, but it is still a bitter pill.
Three more days.
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