David After Dark

Dad

I like to go out in the back and sit for a bit with a small cigar. I sit on the steps in an oasis of dry wood and sunshine surrounded by melting snow. My Mom’s three foot high bronze sculpture only sticking half way out of the snow. My wife dislikes the smell of me when I come in so there’s no encouragement for the cigar smoking there. Some might think it odd that I go out and have a cigar by myself but I’m not really by myself. When my Dad was alive we had a ritual where we would sit outside and smoke one of our favourite cigars. Even in the dead of winter. We’d just sit just inside the open garage door of his house with a radiant propane heater going, in our parkas. A little crazy but it was our thing. We’d talk about guy stuff or not talk at all and just enjoy each others company not feeling the need to fill the void with talk. So I carry on the tradition but it’s just me with Dad in my head. A bit of peace. It was an especially pleasant ritual when the weather was nice and we’d sit on the back patio with a cigar and a beer or a single malt scotch. I notice the absence of this pleasure when I’m sitting with my wife and my step Mother and they’re talking about gardening and other things which are of no interest to me. That’s probably when I miss him the most. My Dad and I took quite a while before we started hanging out together. Our relationship had always been strained at best. It wasn’t really until he and my step Mother moved to our neighbourhood from a different town in his late seventies. I was there for the end of his life but it didn’t really register with me that it was the end. I knew intellectually but if I had really known I would have done things differently. I remember him in the hospital, not able to speak anymore but aware. He shock his head ‘no’ several times. I didn’t know what it meant but if I had it to do over again I would have stayed and held his hand until he was still. It always concerned me that I couldn’t be sure he was dead but it was clear. He was entirely still and the warmth was draining from him. I brushed his forehead with my hand and knew there was no life. My Dad taught me a lot even in the end. I was also there for my Mothers death. My wife and I helped care for her in the last month of her life so she could die at home. What my fathers death had inadvertently taught me was what to expect. I knew what to do this time. And so I sit with Dad in my head and have a cigar.