16,948 Days Down. . .

My hand reached blindly into the predawn darkness, feeling for one of the two dangling chains on the bedside light. Catching one, I slid my hand down until it ran into the brown, metal ball on the end. With it caught between two fingers, i pulled down and closed my eyes to the brightness. In lying there, my mind wandered to the days events and I remembered, this day had been coming for quite some time. Standing in the closet I surveyed the options: a pair of blue, thin wale cords; a worn leather belt, and a stiff, cotton LL Bean workshirt will comprise part of the day’s wardrobe. 

So here it is, a random day in late-July, one that seems far enough removed from his birthday and the anniversary of his death, but I knew it was out there somewhere. And I knew it was this year; when I sat down to calculate this number (well, have the internet calculate it for me) I thought I would have a week or two to think about it; turns out I had four days. On Tuesday, July 30th 2024, I will have lived more days than my dad did. I turned 46 in March and he was 46 when he had his last heart attack; to be more precise it was at 46 years, 4 months, & 24 days. God willing, I will make it past that bench mark. 

What are benchmarks? What makes a life well lived? What makes success or failure? How can I even compare my 46 years on this earth with his? Is it even worth it? We are different humans in different times and while I ponder who he would be today, I don’t have to wonder when he shuffle off this mortal coil and how that will impact those around him. That has already happened. And to this day his impacts surround me and influence me. Sitting here at a kitchen table three of his restored kitchen chairs provide seats and for on one chair, his plaid woolen jacket hangs over the back, maybe the one he was wearing in that picture, but definitely the one I remember him wearing in my adolescence. Today, I spent time cutting holes in walls and restoring old windows and I thought about the capacity my father had to hold many different projects and ideas in his head and to move them forward. He had vision and action.

Despite the similarities of taking old and making new and picking up used clothing from thrift shops and the middle of roads, I wonder if my dad would like who I am today. I wonder who I would be if he had been in my life the past 27 years, eight months, and twenty -two days. What trajectory would my life have taken? How would he and my mother leaned into their relationship sans kids in the house? While he would probably never really have retired, what jobs would he still be holding? Would he have sold the house and moved to a new project? Would the rat race have caught up with him in Stark? When I think about him, I mostly think about his emotional health and his hopes dreams and desires. The physical nature of his presence doesn’t feel so mysterious or unknown for I he was a twin; I know how my dad would look at 74 years old.

As I sit writing this first draft, it is 27 years, 8 months, 20 days or 10,124 days since my mother and neighbors performed CPR on him in the street after pulling him from the driver’s seat of his Jeep. It had stalled when his foot released the clutch. . . Twenty-seven years. In that number there lies so many milestones and firsts. And they have gotten easier to cross for the tears that flow as I write this aren’t ones of grief and uncontrollable sobs, but ones that drop fat and heavy and silently from my cheek onto the table cloth. I partly wonder if the tears are for him or for me; a lament and sorrow that I am where I am and that my life is on a trajectory that has only one result; to be cliche, I am not afraid of dying, it is the thought of being dead that strikes the most sadness into me. Maybe it is the adage that someone will die twice, once when they take their last breath, then again when their name is said for the last time. So I wonder, who will miss me?

The day has passed without fanfare, without acknowledgement of this milestone. There were the normal office ups and downs and then later, the normal ups and downs of rock climbing, which saw Anna and I up at Fossil Hill outside Lander, mostly having a low motivation day. Now, his picture sits in front of me as I sit at the kitchen table in the evening darkness, over and over tilting my head to insert the gently squeezed taco. I sit and chew and look for words to say, but right now the words don’t flow freely, but the tears, they flow with abandon.


Featured Image: The picture, dad, waist deep in snow at the Farm in Fultonville and the jacket hanging on the chair.

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A little bit less of a nomad now, Jared still likes to refer to himself in the third person.

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