Well that was just the weirdest Father’s Day, ever.
The morning was spent getting my house ready for the new floors. Lisa and Mom came over and helped me move the larger items. Once everything was moved, we sat in my now practically empty parlor and tried to come up with new company names:
- Cosmic Marketing and Designs
- Moonjava Marketing
- Poupi Kakas
- Magnolia Marketing
- Starbright Marketing
- Starlight Marketing
- Sunstar Marketing & Designs
- Blue Karma Marketing
Poupi Kakas was a joke, I think.
They went home and I followed a few hours later. We ordered dinner and ate it out on the deck. As we ate, we cried. Once dinner was finished we went into the dining room with dad’s ashes. We opened the box, untied the bag that contained his ashes and scooped some of his remains out and filled the cremation pendants we recently ordered online. Mom then decided she wanted to put a little of dad out with Cocoa and so we went into the backyard with about a tablespoon of dad and sprinkled him into a hole right above Cocoa’s stepping stone grave. I wiped the dust of my father that stuck to my hands onto the wet ground and cried. Back inside we filled a pill vial with more of my father’s remains. My mom said we can take a little bit of him to Slovakia and the remaining bit we can mix with her remains when she goes. Everything else will be unleashed into the ocean tomorrow.
As we poked through my father’s remains, I kept wondering if we’d find his gold tooth. I almost wanted to find it just so I could be sure this big bag, full of gray ash and tiny flakes of white bone and teeth, was really him… instead we found his dental implant. My mother said, “Do you want to keep the implant?”
I thought about it. There was this weird part of me that wanted to keep it regardless how macabre it seemed. My father wouldn’t have liked that idea one bit… of course, he wouldn’t have liked us donating his lower flesh and bones to science or us sprinkling a bit of him with Cocoa or taking him to Slovakia or wearing him around our necks. Where would I keep it? In my jewelry box? I put it back in the bag.
I walked to the kitchen sink and washed my hands. I visualized all the years my father stood at that sink, mixing up his weird vitamin concoctions. And now here I stood, washing his dust from my hands. He was literally going down the drain.
What did I do next? I poured myself a drink and tried to numb myself.
I hope everyone had a lovely Father’s Day!
