My mom believes in heaven, but she also believes that my dad could be in the raspberry bushes.
Mom reminds me that dad is dead, but he’s also alive in another dimension.
He can’t be the wind, the Divine has already claimed the moments that the breeze sweep the tufts of my hair across my face.
He can’t be the green grass — he will be with me constantly for five months straight, then suffocated below the entrenching snow for the other seven that remain.
He can’t be the blue sky, or the peaking of the sun over the clouds, or its bow after a day’s performance. He can’t be the birds or the cold that bites at your face in the winter; he can’t be the tolling of the bells, the slice of a tomato, the sound of pouring water. He can’t be the cyclists passing on the road or the shadow that falls down the wall. He can’t be the bubbles of boiling water or the electric shock that stings you when your lover tickles your feet. He can’t be the fall leaves turning or the fall leaves falling. He can’t be the crunch of them either. He can’t be the rain that sprinkles, the rain that drops, or the rain that turns to hail. He can’t be water, in any form. He can’t be the wildflowers or the weeds; the whispers of hummingbirds as they feed, the giggling of children on the side of the street or the lightning bugs coming out as the summer heat goes to sleep. He can’t be the man who walks around our block every morning, the same path every day. He can’t be the red light or the green light, or the yellow one too. He can’t be the sound of groceries being carried in, the car door slamming, a shoe clunk-clunking around in the washing machine. He can’t be the “hyaaaa-tew” of spitting out toothpaste after brushing your teeth. He can’t be the sound of pages turning or a car driving by. He can’t be the frost on the window or the cloud of smoke from your neighbor’s cigarette. He can’t be the feeling of sore muscles after a good workout, the feeling of tears when they start to well up in your eyes and you beg them to fall back. He can’t be the relief when you put your sunglasses on and can stop squinting or of relenting that stupid argument of that stupid hill that you were stupidly going to die on. He can’t be the sound of your fingers click-clacking on the keyboard or the drip of a drop falling from the window to the base of the floorboard. He can’t be the “whirr” of the fan or the stir of your morning coffee. He can’t be the inhalation followed by the deepest of sighs. He can’t be those damned birds, they’re chirping again, and you’re sure, you’re certain, he can’t be them. He can’t be the smell of laundry as you walk through the puff of freshness that escapes the vent into the outdoor air or the laughter that ensues when your husband sees the way you “folded” the fitted sheets. He can’t be a blanket wrapped around your ice-cold feet or the temperature that your one un-blanketed leg provides you perfectly. He can’t be the ant crawling on the picnic blanket, the spitting of the cherry seed into the grass, or the humming of Simon and Garfunkel into the nothingness. He can’t be that. Certainly he can’t be that. He can’t be nothingness. But he can’t be everything either. The nothing is numbing, the everything overwhelming.
At the cathedral is where I make my confessions. Lying on a hill, on a blanket, I confess my searching for my Dad. In the sky and in the grass, and in the shifting of windy leaves. A bus passes, and intently, I watch its wheels turning. I can see the face on the bus, as if a cartoon come to life, and I watch it roll away. Could that mechanical abomination have been my Dad passing for the twentieth time today?
I go on. I confess my longing and I confess my coveting. My mother has found my Dad in the raspberry bushes, and I feel I am left helpless. I wish that it was I who found my Dad among the sweet, red blossoms.
He is nowhere to me, and I am forgetting. He is everything to me, and it hurts too much.
I let my propped elbow fall to the ground, my back held by the blanket on the grass on the dirt on the earth. I can hear the bus pass again but I do not look for him.
The damned birds keep chirping and I prop my elbows up and look up into the sky, searching for the brazen things that fly and fly and fly. I spot them and realize, they are fine.
My gaze glides. I look out over the skyline and then suddenly my eyes swing down to the earth and I see more birds. No. I see just one. It’s large and gliding close to the weeds and the long grass and all the things he cannot be. Its wings raise it higher and higher. “Is that an eagle?” I say, taken aback. “No, it’s a red-tailed hawk.” My friend replies.
A red-tailed hawk.
Ordinary and extraordinary.
Nothing and everything.
It glides and glides; and I cry as he continues up, and up, and up into the sky.