Mourning My Father
Mourning My Father
Mourning My Father
by Don Palmer
I came to see you one last time, to perform one last ritual.I came armoured as a childin my hair shirt and go-to-church jacket and pants; not as a caution against childish giggling, or nose picking during the Lord ’s Prayer,but in parade to sacred things;as if that mattered to either of us anymore.“You can commune with your loved one”;the funeral director ushered me in.Like a Russian nesting doll, I stood in a viewing room, a wooden son, in a wooden coffin, staring at a wooden coffin. To commune with what? With dark mahogany walls? With a single chair that sat before the open coffin that held a pale and blotchy thing I did not know?
I stood. I walked. I sat on the chair. I fixed my eyes out the window. I scanned the walls. If communing takes time,how much time?I looked at my watch. I communed with the floor.Thirty minutes had lapsed. Enough.
The next day I returnedto receive a shoebox of you, or a hatbox; I can’t remember anymore.I took you to the Pacific,because you loved the ocean.Scattered, you arched gracefully, a swan in ashes.
I sat on a rock, my bare feet slapped by the waves. I watched you gather, a small grey blanket on the water.You kissed the top of my feet mixing with the sand, the pebbles as if to wash away my sin. I wept more than thirty minutes.
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Featured in our January 2023 issue, "Turmoil"