live for today , yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come …..
taken verbatim (typos and all) from dad’s mood message on skype. originally, the day after he died i promptly removed michael schuetz from my contacts list. i don’t recall much hesitation on my part because, truthfully, i had been preparing for this day. inevitably, the time would come when chatting with him would be an impossibility, and his name glaring at me would only serve as a painful reminder that our conversations had reached their end. his random “knock knock, you there?” messages would no longer pop up. our digital exchanges had run their course. his tomorrow would not come. so it seemed only natural that i’d want to hit the delete button on his name.
but i didn’t keep his name off my list for too long. despite my normally overanalytical nature, i was too hasty with my purge. i remembered that i hadn’t exported the log from our conversations, so i added him back to my list for that sole purpose. being a selective sentimental fool, i tend to keep the communications of the electronic variety. cards and other snail mail don’t stick around our house too long simply for the clutter factor. but emails and chat logs? i’ll probably keep those tokens forever. what’s a little hard drive space being consumed by blathering messages? (i have a hard time deleting text messages as well.)
after my struggle with removing his name from skype, i accepted the fact that i needed to clean house. his cell phone number was changed to have mom’s name for the time being. i stopped following his twitter profile. his status as a secondary beneficiary on my financial documents is being amended. his name may be gone, but he certainly is not forgotten.
mom had the bigger task. life insurance. health insurance. car insurance. student loans. bank accounts. pension. social security. IRA. mortgage. utilities. and the answering machine. of all the errands we ran the day after dad’s cremation service, of all the to-dos that popped up on our list, the one item that stung the most was mom changing the outgoing message on the damn answering machine. it reminded me of father’s day, the night his body was removed from our living room. mom started continued crying.
“that’s the last time he’ll leave this house…”
the answering machine, such a seemingly sterile household appliance. but its small, unassuming footprint on the side table is deceptive. a constant reminder that no one will leave a message for dad any longer. and if they do, he or she will clearly be a telemarketer or some other poor soul who hadn’t received the news. sorry, there’s no one here by that name any longer.
but we will never forget.
06 July 2010
the church i grew up in has seen its share of ministers, all of varying levels of rigidity toward catholicism not to mention their own human ills—one left the priesthood because he could no longer devote his life to god; another was an alcoholic; yet another was run out of the parish for reasons unknown to most; and still others left to run more prestigious churches and schools.
i’m no upstanding catholic; in fact, i don’t identify myself as such anymore despite nine years of catholic school and many sundays spent at mass. but when i first met father bill last year during dad’s hospital stay for tracheostomy surgery, i was taken by his twang and his overall presence. he didn’t strike me as a man of the pulpit. despite his holiness, he openly admitted his own errors in life, and he was eager to recount his missteps and offer up life lessons.
last week, mom regaled us with her own tale of how dad first met father bill. father bill had been serving a small parish down in the southern tip of illinois before his transfer back to belleville. he had a previous stint in our area many years ago, but it was for one of the more highfalutin churches. so his transfer was met with some reservation.
after one of his first masses in our church, dad went up to father bill to introduce himself. dad exchanged pleasantries with him and literally welcomed him with open arms.
“i’m a hugger.”
apparently, that made quite the impression on father bill, and he quickly settled into his new role. our church wasn’t like others in the diocese, and my dad was able to open father bill’s eyes to our warmth and hospitable nature.
(“i’m a hugger” became our phrase for the next few days because it wouldn’t be a sissy reunion without some quote to randomly shout out, ending in a simultaneous giggling fit.)
——
after three days of visitation, funeral, and cremation services, it was time for the three ladies to get out for a lighthearted activity. sissy had arranged with some of her friends for an outing to see toy story 3, and she happily invited me and mom. mom mentioned that dad wanted to see it, but we reassured her he was with us anyway.
probably a quarter into the movie, we were introduced to lotso, the pink fuzzy bear you’ve probably seen on billboards to promote the film. his character is the sheriff of the daycare center where woody and friends get dropped off. he’s giving the new toys the lay of the land, welcoming them to their new home, and then he says the unimaginable.
“i’m a hugger.”
in an identical twangy accent that mom had ascribed to dad’s own “i’m a hugger” statement to father bill.
i missed the next few moments of the movie because mom laughed and sissy and i looked at each other in disbelief. we weren’t wrong when we had told mom earlier that dad would be with us during the movie. and i think that comforted all of us.
i look forward to more of life’s little coincidences, nudging me to remember that dad will always be with us in spirit.
02 July 2010
californians are chatty. the cashiers at the grocery store. passengers awaiting muni buses and streetcars. the waitress with laryngitis (!). the barkeeps. the garbage men. the postal workers. the bummies. mere passersby on the street. hell, even our neighbors say hello and offer up idle banter—and i’m not talking simply about the other occupants in our building.
i attribute it to the amount of sunny days here. people just seem more pleasant than most. or perhaps they’re high. hey, whatever works. i’m not here to judge.
admittedly, i was pretty down on our old stomping grounds. when you live in a city 4–5 years longer than you expect to, you tend to get grumpy and restless. and when it keeps snowing and the cold is relentless, you become almost unbearable. so, i’m going to go out on a limb and say this could be reason #1 why i didn’t notice the cordiality of others in the midwest. that, and i just didn’t like to talk to strangers. blame a childhood habit that graduated to adulthood, leaving me introverted almost to a fault.
i’m not saying that san francisco has turned me into this gregarious, life of the party. but i no longer shy away from pleasantries while waiting in line for coffee or at a stop light with a fellow cyclist.
sun. it does a body, and mind, good.
25 February 2010
