The Remains of this Day

It’s still Day 18.

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I asked my sister if she had a copy of my father’s signature around. He had the most stylish signature I’ve ever seen – totally original, really artistic, and kinda timeless while also seeming to be from another time. Maybe all beautiful signatures have that distinction, especially as people seem to write less and less often, signing things electronically or without care. (I limited my own signature to a vaguely artful version of my initials as soon as it occurred to me that I could. He wrote his full name.)

She found some copies on her 3rd grade report card and sent a picture to me. Seeing it again, so confident and clean, with the flourishes controlled just so, filled me with happiness edged with burning sadness. It’s a glimpse of how he was. I wish I could go back there and see him move and talk youthfully again. I was too young to see it with mature eyes and it was too long ago to fully imagine or remember unstained by time and his ill-health. His signature changed slowly over time, and ultimately became unsteady and rough, and so did he. And now, like him, it’s gone.

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She also sent a card he wrote about her and sent to my (maternal) grandmother. I don’t recall ever seeing it and I wish I had its like written about me. A beautiful card, thoughtfully considered, artfully expressed. His brothers could make things, he’d often say, while all he could do was write a memo. But it wasn’t quite right. What he could do with words they could never match with their own skills.

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I walked home from Starbucks earlier today, in the drippy rain of an approaching typhoon. More substantial rain will come later; it may already be picking up – I can’t quite tell by looking through this window out into the night. I relaxed for a while. Tried to watch another episode of Succession, but still can’t lose myself in anything without feeling uncomfortable and guilty. So I waited until his time of death came and went, another full day come and gone, grabbed my shit and I’m back in the Starbucks. In a while, after I finish this, do a bit more work perhaps, and some more remembering, I’ll head back home, maybe stopping one more time at a convenience store to make sure I have drinks for the long boring day tomorrow as the typhoon strikes (if it strikes).

I’ll try to be productive – do some work, organize a few hundred/thousand more photos, maybe clean/organize a bit more – but mostly I’ll try not to feel trapped with my emotions while the weather goes apeshit outside. If I can, I’ll wake up early and take a rainy walk before the weather takes a turn for the terrible, which is forecast to happen around mid-evening.

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There are three things about the time of his death that I’m grateful for. One, is that it happened the same day in America as here (September 23rd, it turned out). I didn’t want to have to make a note that his actual death date was a day behind when I learned of it on the other side of the Date Line. Another is that he died near the end of the month. This lessened the impact on my paycheck of the work days I missed, and allowed me to take more days off than I would’ve been able to otherwise. I should probably still be off, but the situation worked out slightly better than it may have. And perhaps last is that it happened in late Summer as the weather was less infernal than it had been and not yet as cold as Winter. This has allowed me to more comfortably escape my prison-cell room and walk. And walk. And walk. Without also dying.

(I’m also glad that I still live within walking distance of this late-night Starbucks. In a city where everything closes early, it’s someplace for me, a teetotaler, to go when night closes in and becomes too much to handle alone.)

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I’ve said a couple times that I’ve aged more than the number of days which have elapsed. That continues to feel both true and irreversible. There will come a day, I suppose, when I have energy to cycle again, or walk with more speed and with my head raised. There will come a time when energy that isn’t aided by extreme amounts of caffeine returns and I feel some sense of life, of verve, maybe even something in the realm of untainted happiness. But that time seems far off and not a little bit fanciful – and also kinda scary. Now, the sorrow, as painful as it is, feels like the connection with him is still there, still strong, strained but not yet severed.

I feel older than I am. Older than I just was. And not by a little bit.

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I keep thinking I’ll end this and head out into the night with my thoughts and the rain, and I keep not wanting to leave. This place will close in an hour and four minutes and nature calls. But nature also cries. I’ll sit here a little while longer.

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I don’t have much else to add, at least not that I can think of as I avoid leaving. It’s been 18 Days. And that doesn’t seem possible.

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