I am on intimate terms with death. I always have been. We know each other well. I think about death and dying often. When I was younger, I used to think about dying and wonder who would come to my funeral. I’d lie awake at nights wondering who would miss me. Most evenings I couldn’t come up with many names aside from my mother.
I’ve thought about death much more as I’ve aged. Failure after failure has left me feeling more useless, more alone, wondering what was the point of all this. It’s been the voice of my mother, her positivity, her love that has brought me back from a brink she didn’t know I was on.
I didn’t know my father. He died before I was born. My mother told me he an important man in our town, well respected by all those who lived in my hometown of Berwick. He died in one of the fires in the old mills. Mom never explained what he was doing there. When I asked she gave vague answers. I loved my mother so I took her words as the truth. It wasn’t until much later in life that I found it odd she wouldn’t tell me his name or that she didn’t have any pictures of him.
Along with death, I’ve thought a great deal about my father. I’ve spent hours daydreaming about who he might have been. I always pictured him as a big man, broad through the shoulders and chest, with thick arms. My mother says I resemble him a great deal, with my dark hair and crooked nose at the top of a tall wiry build.
I pictured him happy as he and I walk down Main Street in Berwick. He would nod to people in the storefronts we passed, and the people would tip their caps or smile back, eager to have his attention, even for a moment. His eyes were steel blue, sharp, seeing everything and so piercing; no one could look him in the eye.
My eyes are a softer blue and mother says they are hers; the best trait she gave me. She told me my father’s eyes were hazel and sad. When she’s told me about him in the past, a sad smile takes over her face as she recounts his eyes, “they were what sucked me in; those sad deep pools I wanted to dive into and soak up the problems and hurt hidden there.”
I couldn’t see my father as sad. He was too great a man, too powerful to feel sadness. My dreams showed him having everything he could want in the world. There was no room for sadness. But then, those were a child’s dreams.
