What Remains
Dad was a traveler. A few days after he died, the guy from the local used bookstore arrived with a friend, U-Haul, and a bunch of boxes and gathered his eight bookcases worth of books and a robust collection of opera CDs. I was relieved to have found a ready outlet for the collection, some of which harkened back to his college days. Sending them into the world felt right, liberating, however much the house seemed empty after they left. My father preferred the world of ideas, alcohol, and melodrama. I swear he waited until sunrise to die, just for the effect. Weeks before, I had asked him, tactfully, if he was interested in recovery counseling. I have my theories about why he wasn't. I was raised, including by him, to value and make the most of each day. His clear-eyed desire to die, the ultimate operatic gesture, came from another, however parallel universe. Right up to the end, part of me still thought: are you sure? There were other options. Comparing my father to consulting clients is a distancing strategy, but there are similarities. However admittedly dysfunctional a behavior might be, an organization can often be resistant to change, preferring the familiar to the seemingly unknown right up to the end. On many occasions I've thought "Are you sure?" My father wasn't a great father, but he wanted my brother and me to have things, copies of certain books, a life of the mind, well-designed creature comfort, all parts of himself. Scattering his ashes will be redundant. He left in the U-Haul, to continue to wander the world.
