My father and Steve Winwood

There's a song on Steve Winwood's last studio album called, "Take It to the Final Hour."

But in my mind, the song has another title: "What My Father Says," because that's the song's refrain.

I have listened to the album a lot in the past year. And as often happens with music, new associations emerge, or maybe just deeper ones.

The song reminds me that while I sometimes may see reckonings coming -- even those a few years off -- that doesn't change the outcome. 

And in the past year while my father languished due to complications from blood cancer, the song has become transformed in my mind -- it's part of an internal playlist that's been on as I've dwelled on his illness, on what will never be, on what I left undone. 

Also: what will now go unsaid. 

Because my father says almost nothing. After a lifetime of robust argument and debate, of recounting funny stories, of using his voice almost like an instrument to emphasize, to chastise, to entertain. Now more or less gone. Silent.

This is what I think about while Steve Winwood is singing. The mind does that, right? The mind immersed in music.

Indeed, at times when I need to cede to the emotions emerging from the new normal, I've cued up the song in the car. 

I do it especially after taking Leo to school. I am alone, I am momentarily free of obligations, I do not need to put on a mask (or at least not the kind that hides our emotions).

I go to the song and I allow it to work its magic, or in this case, wreak its controlled havoc within the confines of my mind and my car. In other words, I am just one more wacky mom, crying as she returns from school drop-off.

One morning last Fall, after taking Leo to school, I listened to the song again, losing myself to sadness on a short rainy ride home, with the wet leaves that cluttered the ground acting as an appropriate shroud around me. I wanted to be shrouded, to be hidden, to privately pick at my wounds. Chief among them, what I’ve lost in not being able to talk to my father. 

What I’ve lost through the simple absence of his voice. Something I so took for granted that I often spurned it.

I could provide any number of quotes from him. The time I was worried a plane I was about to take would crash, and he said, "Well, it won't matter if you're in a state of grace." Thanks, Pope Michael! (I was 25 at the time.)

Or the time I casually mentioned that I might want to convert to Protestantism and he rather sternly and solemnly said, "You can do that, but it's not the true path." My heart still seizes up when I hear 'true path' in my head! (I quickly shelved my half-baked conversion plans).

I mean, I could quote him all day -- as if he were public figure or a famous writer. And why not? He looms as large as you can get in my mind. He might as well be some fantastic mashup of Caesar, Shakespeare, Thomas Edison, MLK, Miss Hannigan, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Allah, Winston Churchill, James Joyce -- and Jesus Christ, for that matter. 

One of my favorite quotes, though, showcases his whimsy (also his love of shopping): "The Lord is my Taylor and there is nothing I shall want." That's one way to (mis-) remember a Bible verse!

Or the way he insisted on referring to my high school boyfriend as "Dred Scott" -- because his name was Scott; there was no clear Civil War or judicial historical connection that I could detect. He liked the way it sounded -- and I suspect he liked the way it rankled (me).

I'm thinking a lot about his words these days because he says so little. In fact, I've begun transcribing the few words he does say in a journal whenever I visit. It's not hard -- he says almost nothing.

One of the most inquisitive men I've ever met, and now he has no questions, no comments.

In this ad-hoc journal, I've written down mundane comments like, "Sit here," which he said to me while gesturing to his wheel chair. Or when I showed him a photo of our puppy, he said, "Oh very big."

It's like the diary of his dying days.

I also write down what I am thinking and how vacant it all seems -- a house that always felt like home to me, no matter where my mail actually came, now almost devoid of activity and conversation. 

How did we get here? As I said in a piece for Brevity, it wasn't that long ago that I was arguing with him over Christmas plans. 

In an earlier version of this post, I included notes I had written up for a fictitious writ of indictment. The crime? Not a new one. Not one that I alone conspired to commit. But one which nonetheless I am guilty of: failure to pay adequate attention to the person whose habits I've copied the most. To one of the two people I owe the most.

I'll spare you the spurious legalese I used to write the indictment, and wind up these remarks here by saying if your father is in any position to hold forth, to chastise you, to tell you "what you ought to do," (one of my father's stock phrases), please please indulge him. For me. 

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