Below is an excerpt from my current WIP, work in progress. It is the story of my family, of growing up without a father. It will be published soon. (SHE is my mother, Virginia Rausch Pfordresher)
John, Beth and Bill. Three years between each of us. But when a salesman or an old woman who wants to sell her potholders comes to the door, She becomes “just a widow with three kids.” But every night at the dinner table, as the years stretch on, there is laughter or we argue about who will wash the dishes, or we watch Bill try to tell a joke and then fall on the floor laughing, rolling around. Then much later, we sink into bed, sleep like the dead. We are safe, with no fears. At least the three of us are. We don’t think to ask how it is for her.
There is a wake at the funeral home, this the night She must move about, hold and hug people, her husband lying just beyond, solitary in an open casket. It is a ritual that some may think barbaric, but She will tell me over the years of the comforts it brought, she now in a trance of sorrow. Many arrive, his dental patients who weep, shake their heads. He was so loved. He was too young. They have gifts for her—fond words, their own special memories of him, and of course hugs and tears. And though promises will be made, they will then say good night, turn from her, grateful for the progression of their own peaceful lives. But what else can they do in the face of her sorrow?
There is Dr. Valentine, a fellow dentist, crushed by this loss, unable to approach the coffin, though throughout the evening he stays at her side, introduces her to doctors who have come, patients that she might not know. And She will tell me when I’m grown of one unthinking mourner, who says my father should have been on blood thinners. In that day, in that time, these drugs were new and not always available. It is hurtful to be armed with knowledge, but not with understanding. She will also tell us of the promises people made, the things they said they would do for her and for us—but most did not.
And there are the words of the nurse from the Medical Arts building where my father had his practice: “I saw Dr. Pfordresher one day, sitting on the back steps of our building, his head in his hands. I went to him, asked him if there was anything he needed, if I could help him. He looked up at me and said, ‘No, no one can help me.’”
I will live in a frantic cloud of anger, asking over and over Where is he? Where has he gone? I will fight what I can’t understand, my world so changed, his deep voice, his hugs and kisses, gone. I’m like Helen Keller, fighting my misunderstanding, being unruly, angry, overwrought, uncooperative. She seeks help from doctors. They tell her to let me be, but then at least once a day, to remind me that she is in charge. And later, I do not remember the day or the experience, She tells me my father has died and gone to heaven. I ask where heaven is and how he got there.
But there are always the songs She will sing to me, the words of love she will say…and the hugs of my Nana and aunts, the soft body of my tiny baby brother as I hold him, smile down at him. There will be the quiet of the back bedroom with the shades pulled, the hall light on, the window slightly open to the crickets and sometimes an owl. And there will be me, lying singular in my bed, sucking my thumb, always sucking my thumb, my heart beating, beating—all my living moments buried in the wood, the plaster of this house, mingling with the slope of the ceilings, the creak of the floors, the very air of the space. It will be there, a second skin, and I will hold it, depend on it, as I live my child self into the future.
The swing on the cherry tree is mine, and after my father’s death I spend most of my time on that swing. It is a place of solace, one I refuse to share with anyone, yelling, screaming when my friend Tigh, sits on it. From my father’s death in June to the cold autumn weather, I swing, back and forth, back and forth, my little body taut with an energy I cannot expend normally, my mind full of questions, memories I cannot articulate…except to sing a song my father taught me, sing it over and over… “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
