The Italian Goodbye

This is a deer in Shenandoah.

Michael and I went to Shenandoah to sit shiva, of a sort, for my Dad, on the seven-year anniversary of his death. For all kinds of reasons, we had never managed to do it when he died, and now here we were, fitting it in between Michael’s Dad’s 85th birthday party in Long Island and a work conference and Michael moving, by himself, to New York. The house was finally empty, we were selling it for real. We had one night.

We watched storms gather themselves in the mountains, then a few hours later, we got the alerts when the wind and rain started hitting DC.

I brought whiskey along, but it was a whiskey my Dad wouldn’t have drunk, or at least wouldn’t have bought himself. Baller Whiskey, it’s called, and I could feel him rolling his eyes at me. It’s a joke concept of a whiskey — a California take on the Japanese style of Scotch whiskey — but it’s good. It goes down smooth. They age it in plum wine barrels. I don’t drink it that much, it’s expensive.

Dad mostly drank Evan Williams, $15 a bottle instead of $50, in increments of diamonds. His glasses had diamonds carved onto them, and every night he might start with a diamond and a half of bourbon, maybe two.

We had one night for sitting shiva. We told some stories, Michael taught me how to rip cloth — as is done traditionally — and wear it pinned to my shirt.

I brought along colorful Thai fabric, rather than the traditional black. It seemed more appropriate, if not to my Dad exactly, than at least to the circumstances. Funny, really, to fit in mourning, in between all the other things you have to do.

• Laundry

• Disentangle credit cards

• Mourn father

• Drink Baller Whiskey

Aren’t we all doing this, if not all the time, at least some of the time? Aren’t we doing this now?

There was only the one morning available, so, still a little tipsy, I got up early to go see what I could see.

A few deer, making funny faces at me. 

Those satsuma segments of sunshine, those sparkling raindrops of melted butter, the goldfinches.

A chipping sparrow, making the case that it was just as attractive as those attention hogs, the goldfinches.

A startled-looking chipmunk.

This past weekend, I was thrilled to meet the crime and mystery writers Tom Pluck and Jen Conley signing books at Second Time Books. Tom’s written about Timbuctoo before — a graveyard for Black soldiers in the Civil War — so after delighting in the fullness of what was apparently an Italian goodbye, in which goodbye indicates “let’s chat for at least another hour,” I wandered over there.

I was glad to see someone had come before me to lay wreaths and put up flags for Memorial Day.

I watched a few birds. The blue jay would hop no matter the weekend, the red-bellied woodpecker would drill. Still, it felt good, and peaceful, to see them doing it here, and now. It felt good to acknowledge their sacrifice amidst oppression, even if I felt I wasn’t doing it fully or properly, or absorbing all of it as I wanted to, as I felt the sun sinking hazily behind me and a drive in front of me.

I was already thinking of the next day, you see, when I planned to have a few mostly-librarian friends over for drinks on my rooftop. We sat outside and talked about little things, like how you remember the stuff you lose on vacation and also big things like how sometimes the child who is easiest to love gets loved the most in a family, and also the murderer who killed so many children and teachers in Uvalde this past week, and our anger and feelings of loss, and when we got to this part of the conversation a carpenter bee set up shop in the beams above us and began drilling and showering us with little sawdust tears.

We laughed at this single-minded bee who had, it seemed, only himself and his wood-boring to think about, and because we had so much to say, because so much was happening all at once, the person who had been particularly flooded with sawdust tears moved chairs and we kept talking.

I don’t know how else to handle things now, all I know is to keep saying shiva. Say goodbye and then keep talking, pour another diamond, rip a little cloth, here comes the mountain rain, we’re still talking, we’re still remembering.