February Cold

Of course Dad got cold once in a while. Sure. He had to. We lived in Central New York. I still do. It gets cold. Snow falls sometimes more than a foot in a day. I remember how cold I was playing youth football in freezing rain while he stood on the sidelines with the other dads who all looked frozen. Dad wore no hat, held no umbrella, just smoked his cigarettes. He had to be cold. No doubt.

Except I wonder.

Driving to my job this morning I was desperate for the car to warm up. Come on, come on, come on, I said. I kept checking the vent with my bare hand then blowing into my fist trying to keep from shaking. Some of this was the cold, some was not having dressed warmly, and some was the anxiety I feel every day I drive toward my job. Whatever the case, I felt cold and got to thinking about Dad.

Of course he got cold, but I don't remember hearing him say so. He had to have said so once or twice but if so it didn't stick with me. Instead, he's the guy who went out in the cold in a light jacket or his funeral directing suit, felt hat, overcoat left open, and maybe a pair of black leather gloves. I remember being cold and complaining about it while he listened. His teeth never chattered.

I'm thinking these things having just marked the fourth anniversary of Dad's death. Mom and I spent the day together and at one point she asked how I'm dealing with him being gone. I'm good, I told her. It's what I usually say to that kind of question, but I felt it this time. I'm good. When he died I thought I would have to find some way to put him away, to not think about him, to let him go. I thought I would grieve and then Dad would be gone so that I could go on. Instead, I grieved and continue to grieve, but I turn toward him and his memory and it's not like he's still here, but I'm not alone. I write about him often, think of him even more, mark the dates that matter (anniversary, birthday, when he bought his funeral home, the day he died), and spend maybe too much time comparing myself to him.

Which is why I felt wrong giving in so much to being cold this morning. It's why I worry that I'm supposed to cope with my awful job which has become more than I can bear. Dad never seemed to find anything too much for his strengths.

Then I remember the job he left to buy the funeral home. He had to get out. He hung in a long time, even after buying his own place, and ran both businesses, but eventually, for reasons I can easily imagine now, he quit that other job. His business wasn't making ends meet. There were signs it might not ever. Quitting the other job was messy, dangerous even. But I know something now: staying in the job was a messier and more dangerous choice than leaving.

Of course Dad got cold. He didn't say much about it. That was his way. He didn't talk a lot about himself and he hardly ever spoke of things being difficult or over his head. I was his child — I still am — and I still enjoy thinking of him as towering, powerful, capable of anything, maybe everything. But I know he was cold. There's that line somebody or other wrote: he was a man, take him for all in all. Men and women reach their breaking points. Teeth chatter, hands go cold, death comes eventually or suddenly. And when we are alone in our frozen cars driving toward a job that feels toxic and venomous, sometimes we cry out for mercy. The traffic pays us no mind.

When I imagine Dad in those situations, he looks and sounds almost exactly like me.

Shoveling the Driveway After A Terrible Snow As Night And The Temperature Descend Into A Cold Fit For The Dead

I hold the snow shovel in my corporeal and gloved hands. The snow is terribly deep. It's beyond pushing down the drive and into the road and has to be taken one shovel at a time. It's nothing that can be done quickly. There is a process to it. A slow process. I lift a shovel-full and throw it high over the wall feeling it throughout body, mind, maybe even heart and soul. It's all too much, I think, this snow that I have to clear. I couldn't possibly. Then I dig the shovel in and throw it again.

Dad leans reluctantly on his old metal shovel with the wooden handle he wrapped in black tape where it began to split forty years ago. There's a chunk out of the metal edge where he tried to pry something up with it. Maybe ice. Maybe something ridiculous. The shovel and he have come back looking just as they had the day before he died or whatever day it was that he and I last shared this life. He would have preferred to come back younger, stronger, but the living bring back the dead as they wish, never the other way around. Dad excepts this, accepts what I've given him.

He has taken up smoking again. Why the hell not, his expression says as I watch him strike the match and cup it close to his face where it shines in his glasses. Then the smoke hides his eyes and blows out past me. I can't smell anything and wonder if it's just his breath floating on the frozen breeze like mine. No, I think. It's certainly not that. Right Dad, I say. He wipes his nose with a gloved hand. That old leather glove is worn, stained with grease and oil. He touches the top of the old knit hat he still wears. It's one I cast aside at ten as unfashionable. Nothing wrong with it, his shrug says. I exhale and it's as if he has blown a cloud of smoke across me.

I survey the driveway I've cleared, the snow left to shovel. Percentages, that's what I'm calculating. Dad looks. He thinks in fractions. I say, about two-thirds to go, my breath blowing hard away from us. He nods. The afternoon sky has gone dark and the snowstorm is giving way slowly to falling temperatures. We're headed down below zero, frigid, breath-stealing cold.

Dad finishes his cigarette and tosses the butt in a pile of snow I've thrown over the wall. It doesn't fizzle but disappears. He holds the handle of the shovel like a tool but uses it as a staff, something to hold him up or hold him here. I tell him to rest, just take it easy, Dad. Be here with me.

I dig in the shovel and throw snow high up out of the driveway. Again and again. Dad stands and watches. There's no hurry. The streetlight at the foot of the drive flickers to life as I throw another shovel of snow up high over the wall. The wind catches it, blows it back at me, right through where Dad stands. That snow blinds me. I'm so tired. I rub my eyes with the back of my glove and open them again worried, anxious that I'm alone. The night is growing so cold and though the streetlight illuminates all the work left for me on this Earth it has put out every single star in the heavens. I dig the shovel in and throw it hard against the blowing wind.

Rust

“Out of the blue and into the black
You pay for this, but they give you that
And once you’re gone, you can’t come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black”

— Neil Young, "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)"

I got to thinking this morning of Neil Young, a guy whose music I usually like but with whom I often disagree. I remember when he put out a super-duper digital music player and I thought, no way is that going to sell. It didn't. And he wrote this book that felt like the whining of a child or the grumblings of an old man. Still, he's Neil Young and has made incredible music, done good charity work, and been working at a high level for longer than I've been alive, so I should cut him some slack and have some respect. 

Still, this morning, getting in my car I got to thinking, "Neil's wrong." This was occasioned by the sight of rust weeping from under my driver's side door. 

My car, bought new in 2005, has 170,000 miles on it. We have been through a lot including one serious crash. Each morning, despite all the years, all those miles, and that crash, I open the door, climb inside, and my car starts on the first try. It gets me where I need to go. I like that and I'm sad to see the rust, know the exhaust system is dying, and feel it is passing the point of diminishing returns. 

It was raining this morning when I went out to the car. I opened the door and rusted brown water dripped from the rusting sill. I heard a voice sing, "it's better to burn out than it is to rust" and thought, "shut up, Neil." The rain and the rust had me a little pissy. I was thinking about Dad too. "And once you're gone you can never come back." God damn it, Neil. 

Driving to work, I thought over those two songs that I file as one: "Out Of The Blue And Into The Black." I didn't remember all the lyrics, but felt like arguing with him anyway. I wanted him to be wrong so maybe the I could be right. I remembered the album title: Rust Never Sleeps which I changed to Rust Never Stops. And rust always wins, Neil. 

Looking at the lyrics now, printed on clean white paper, out of the rain, I don't see much to argue in them, but I'm fighting what's happening to my car, what happened to Dad, what's developing in me. "There's more to the picture than meets the eye." I'm pretty sure Neil knew that rock and roll can and will die. Everything does. And even if he didn't know then, he knows it now. We're all forty years closer to death than when he sang his way out of the blue and into the black. After forty years, the rust is undeniable.

Did Dad burn out or fade away? Did he just rust? Is he out of the blue and into the black? Can he never come back? Is he forgotten? 

I'm not expecting answers. I sure as hell don't expect to hear answers from Neil Young. Or my car. Or Dad. I'm no longer in the mood to argue or fight. I'm just humming along with the song in my head. A memory or maybe an expectation. It goes like this: 

My my, hey hey and hey hey, my my. And goes on from there to wherever. 

Doppler

Maybe I’m still in bed. Inside a dull dream. A man sits before a page. Holds a pen. Has an idea that death is a physical thing. A child growing inside him, dull and lazy. The death inside his wife is something metastasizing, a word he fails to understand, barely knows how to spell. In his father death was a sudden short of the circuitry. An electrical explosion. He tries not to imagine the deaths inside his children, but a maggot wriggles. If this is a dream, I want to wake but it won’t let me sleep. I close my eyes but cannot lie still. There is a chill. And a smell of something burning. Outside, strange flying things buzz and call. Lights flash. A siren blares, it’s tone deepening as it moves away. I recall the name for it: the Doppler effect. A sure way to know if something is coming for me or moving away. I listen hard. The man with the pen is unsure which way things are moving. Death doesn’t make even the slightest sound. Not anything either of us can hear anyway.