Carrie Link

THE VALLEY

It is hot for this early in June. Normally the Willamette Valley doesn’t get its heat until the fifth of July, it’s almost a joke, but heat has come today, June 10th, 1996. With the heat has come its friend, humidity, adding weight to this impossibly heavy day.

Heavy within my own body, eight months pregnant, comes the oppressive pounds of now being the one to unravel the complicated tangle that is my dad’s estate. As I stand on the rolling lawn of the cemetery, one eye on the Catholic priest that we’ve asked to do the service, one eye on my toddler that wants out of Daddy’s arms and into mine, I feel as though I am the one being buried. Heavy. There is no other word to describe this day.

My young daughter’s hair blond and blowing, she struggles in my arms. There is no place for her to rest comfortably with her unborn brother already taking me farther and farther away from her.

“It’s OK, Honey, I’ve got you, “ I try to sooth.

Do I really have you? I have just become the head of my birth family. I am about to give birth again. You, my first born, is there enough of me to go around? Do I really ‘have’ you?

The breeze gives comfort to the small group gathered. After 74 years you would think a person could draw a crowd, but not this man. Of the few that are gathered here, even fewer can say they really knew him. Most of the people here are showing their support for me, for my brother, Michael, and for my mom, the wronged party.

Looking briefly from the eyes of the priest to those of the group, steady figures in my life look back. My godparents/aunt and uncle have made the long drive. My second mother, my mom’s sister is there. My closest cousin dropped everything and came down from Seattle, over five hours away. These are the same people that continued to ask about my dad long after he disappeared from their lives, my mom’s side of the family. Perhaps they, like me, believed my dad had enough humanity that he was worth respecting upon his death. Perhaps they were willing to forgive and forget all the stories of drunkenness, hostility, manipulation and abandonment they’d heard so many times. Perhaps they were just there out of duty and obligation, a guilty “must do”.

It seems wrong to wear casual sandals to your own father’s funeral. It seems wrong to be swollen and pregnant, burying a man named Wilson, carrying his grandson, Wilson. It seems wrong to see all these people that I know would rather be anywhere but here on this hot, miserable, heavy, heavy day.