*This post contains mentions of, and some descriptions of, death and sick-related stuff*

Death is unfortunately not a new phenomenon in my life. I’ve seen a lot of my family members get sick, a lot of friends die suddenly. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting in intensive care waiting rooms, getting to know the staff, the smell, learning to walk around like I know where I’m going so no one will bother me. I’ve spent way more time than I should have perfecting my small talk in funeral homes, not knowing how long to kneel at the open casket, hugging distant relatives in stiff clothes they only wear to these functions. I’ve sunk into a lot of grave dirt in some really uncomfortable shoes. My advice is to have a sense of humor about it. 

That’s what my family always went with. It was how we supported each other, it was how we acknowledged a horrible situation. It was how the dying made the best of it. My grandfather used to pretend he was bugs bunny after most of his teeth fell out after the chemo killed his salivary glands and his teeth rotted out of his mouth. He used to call the oxygen test they made him do “blowing the clown” which I didn’t get at 6, but laughed anyway. My uncle, who lost his arm in Vietnam, who lost his toes to diabetes, and his other, foot, and eventually his life, due to MRSA he picked up in the hospital, was never in a bad mood. Literally, I have not one memory of him ever being upset. My last memory of him being coherent was him lifting his head and smiling as he recognized me, this was right after his central IV line had be ripped out of his neck when they had transported him from one bed to the other. He had no reason to smile and it was huge and genuine. Most recently my dad died from lung cancer. He told me he wasn’t afraid, but excited to see what happened after this life thing. That wasn’t completely true, he was afraid, you can’t not be when cancer is eating your bones and the most humane thing they can do for you is give you more pills and push air into dead lung tissue that can’t receive it. But he also wasn’t lying about being interested in seeing what comes next. Though I don’t think his plan involved being shipped through UPS.

This morning I found a box sitting in the garden. I recently ordered parts for the crew team and assuming that was it, threw the box inside and went to class. Imagine my surprise hours later when I pulled out and an envelope with my Aunt Janet’s tell-tale lipstick on it. She signed all of her letters with a bright red kiss. Oh it’s the necklace. My dad had a silver chain he had worn for as long as I could remember that he never took off. When I was about ten I started wearing my own chain to mimic him because I thought it looked so cool. When he came up from Florida to say goodbye he had the idea that he was going to get his ashes put into a necklace and give it to me. Now this is a thing. I don’t want to be against anybody who would get some kind of solace out of doing this. My father and I simply did not have any kind of relationship where I was going to get any comfort from wearing his urn around my neck. Also he wanted his custom made by a friend of ours so his ashes were visible and made a swirly design, which is not a thing. Not in the habit of wearing my dead parents that I don’t even associate with regularly around my neck, we finally compromised that he would send me his chain after he died.

Opening the package I found a jewelry box, a note, a badly written poem from when my father first left that I can’t bring myself to trudge through right now, though I know contains the stanza “you sit on the floor, as I walk out the door” and what looks like the quarter pound bags you get from Wockenfuss Chocolate with something in it. I open the bag, and close it again immediate.

“Damn it, Janet.” I say to the empty room.

Rocky Horror aside I am now faced with a real problem, for in the bag is a tiny plastic heart, filled with a little baggie, filled with what looks like heroin(not that I would know), resting on a wilted rose petal. Except it’s not heroin, it’s my dad, well part of him. *I was going to include a picture, but that felt a little too weird* I go to her letter.

“I know you said you didn’t want me to, but I sent you some of his ashes anyway.”

Thanks.

With my dad chilling on the coffee table, I open the box. When my dad moved to Florida he started going to pow wow’s and added a silver feather to his chain. My aunt thought this was what I wanted, and bought me a nicer, more feminine, chain, to go with it. That was all a little too appropriative for me. We’re the type of white people that like to say “I’m Cherokee or something” because we have like one eighth blood or something but then never actually research it, or know anything about that part of our culture. Though my aunt does like to trace our ancestors, I’m still not feeling the pow wow feathers. What I wanted was included under the packing, tangled in the bottom of the box, permanently tarnished from being around the neck of a mechanic for so long, and the clasp was so worn I could hardly open it. My dad and I really did look alike. My mom’s side of the family is all blue eyes and blonde hair and freckles and moles, and small noses, and dry skin, and then there’s me. Looking in the mirror, it lays on my collar bone in the exact same way it did on his and I feel like I’ve accomplished something I’ve been trying to for months.

Jewelry is one way my dad and I have always bonded in a weird way. He pierced his own ear when he was 16 with a sewing needle. However, the first time he apparently pierced his right ear, which is apparently the “gay” ear. Which the more I’m thinking about the more I’m feeling conflicted about, because if queer culture wants to claim a certain identifier as its own than yay verily. However, at the same time, if you want to make homophobic remarks and hate on someone over something as simple as an ear, then what the hell is wrong with you?

Back to my father, he ended up taking it out and doing it again, in his left ear. My dad never wore an earring in that ear while I was growing up but about two months before he left for Florida we came home one night to find him drunk on the couch, which was not an out of place occurrence. However, this night he had one of my dangly snowman earrings jammed through his ear.

“After all these years, it still fits.”

And from then till his death over a decade later, he went back to wearing an earring. Though he nixed the snowman pretty quick. He once gave me a pair of 24 Karat gold earrings with some kind of green gemstone, I lost one, but lucky for me, I had to be edgy when I was 14 and only get one of my third holes pieced, so it all worked out in the end. We never talked about it, and I don’t think it meant much to him, but I always liked to see the different ways my dad and I were similar. I always felt a little bit closer to him after I put my own chain on.

Another thing humor has helped me accept is that I don’t have to mourn how they do in the movies and romance novels, because I don’t. My family doesn’t sit in a room and sob with each other, that’s not how we eulogize someone. Again there’s nothing wrong with that response, but there’s nothing wrong with not having it either. I don’t think about my dad on everyday terms because he wasn’t there for them. I remember him in flashes, twirling his mustache, his cough, the smell of Newport’s, and the way he walked with his hands in his pockets and blew into the mouth of his beer bottles to make “hoot” noises. One of the strongest connections I have is the way this braided piece of metal looked laying against his tan throat, peeking out through the collar of his fishing t-shirts that he only bought if they had a breast pocket for his cigarettes. I don’t think I’m going to start wearing his chain, but it’s nice to have, unlike his scoop of ashes, which are still on my coffee table.

The rest of them are with my aunt and going to be buried at sea in the spring during a paddle out. I think she wants me to have some of him so I can put him in the ocean? An ocean closer to me? I don’t want to swim in my dad. It’s interesting, I was raised Catholic, though I wouldn’t consider myself overly religious, much less someone who would get offended for not following strict protocols about anything. And I love the idea of donating organs, they were actually able to donate my dad’s corneas which I think is awesome. But this really bothers me, on multiple levels. Like did my aunt spill some of him when she was scooping him into that bag? Is he in her carpet? Did she use a spoon? Is it the same one she eats her Cheerios with? I don’t mind cremation, but I don’t like the idea of splicing up a body  and sprinkling a person around like they’re some kind of condiment. This is actually a family tradition for that side of the family, I think. I don’t really know much about them. I’ve only met my aunts, everyone else died when I was little. They did this with both my grandparents, my uncle, and now my dad. The majority of my paternal family line is in the ocean. I’m going down in the spring for the paddle out, but for the time being, my mom and I are now playing (figurative) hot potato around my house with a chunk of my father.