Dad in the armoire

Dad? Are you in there?
It's me, Susan.

Last week, I sat on my bed staring at a moss green fleece in my sweater closet, deep in thought about a book I've been writing since I was, let's say, much younger.

It's unfinished. It may stay unfinished because I feel about this book like I do about Burger King whoppers. I remember when I loved them but can't imagine wanting one now, and I can imagine anything.

And just like that, my dad's voice was in my head: 

What could you have done while you were finishing a story you don't care about? 

I wrote this down. It was mantra-quality.

"Is there more?" I asked this armoire-dad

There was a lot more, and I wrote that down, too. And I'll tell you what, it was like I was hearing the words of the Man Upstairs himself, instead of  his new friend, my dad.

Now. Does that mean I sit on my bed and open my armoire when I need advice?  

Yes, it does.  I've been back a few times.

Decide if you're trying to understand someone or make them understand you.  

---green cardigan-dad

Your words are a gift. Don't make them weapons.

---shell pink tank and cardigan-dad

Honesty and kindness are more important to you than having the last word.

---wheat v-neck-dad

Most opportunities to be suspicious are the same opportunities to trust. Choose trust.

---black v-neck-dad

Two things have to happen before you believe your closet is talking to you. First, you must be contemplative, reflective, and meditative. Second, you must have lost, and miss badly, a person who knew you so well, you'd never try to conceal an important emotion because he or she would detect it and describe it for you, and share a similar feeling that they had once.

That kind of missing won't kill you, but something of your missed one must remain in your life, maybe in the form of conversations with someone who knew your missed one as well as you did, or, if possible, your raspberry summer cardigan.   

It's become my belief that wherever we were when we allowed insight to settle the soul - the parking lot at Rite Aid, the bend in the road near my mailbox - or allowed a revelation to overwrite old ways of thinking - near exit two on route 89, looking at my neighbor's house from my kitchen window - we will expect more of the same on returning and probably get it.

Because expectation is half of receiving.

---Susan Bonifant.

Some people go to the ocean. Some go to their fireplace. And, some go to their furniture.

May no one ever be helpful enough to suggest to me that it is not my missed one I'm finding there, but my own counsel; that it isn't a kind of peace I'm left with, but a state of attunement to the deepest depths of grief,  that my moss fleece is just a moss fleece.

                                                                                                                              

Conversations with my armoire-dad will never be like the lunches we used to stretch into two hour dates. But if I can't anymore say to his tilted, interested face, "Here's something I'm trying to figure out,"  I can pick a spot – or sleeve – to focus on, and before long my deepest issue, worry, or concern will wiggle its way to the front of my mind.

You've been taking your own advice and asking me to help you trust it. I was only holding your coat.

---burgundy tunic-dad

A couple of weeks ago, I struggled with my own judgment about something and was trying to decide how to respond, and noticed that while trying to be more candid I was only beginning to feel pious. There was no good response, any comment I might have made would have been superfluous. 

Don't act on anything while you don't like the way you are seeing yourself

--- new pullover which is some color between brown and charcoal and doesn't go with any of my shoes-dad

In the five months that have passed since I lost my dad, I've been feeling drawn to a "next book" which could be a new way of thinking or a new way of life. It's not something I'm building. It's a thing that is there and waiting for me to find it. 

Like Dad in the armoire.

It's already happening. I've made some small decisions about new things I need or old things I no longer want, and one big one to return to school in the fall and finish my degree work.  Go Wildcats.

It's counter-intuitive but healing, this time of personal retooling that has followed the loss of a go-to who kept me grounded.  It feels like I've taken off tight shoes to think about rewriting the decades ahead. 

But.

Regret is worse than guilt and nothing is sadder than the words "I should have."  

---gray sweater jacket-dad