So, today is May 9, the dreaded two-year anniversary of my stepdad's death. I've taken the day off work so I don't have to pretend that I'm ok, just in case I'm not ok. Anniversaries are hard for us, as I guess they are for anyone who has lost a loved one. I read Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking a few months ago. It's a memoir of her life after her husband died. In it, she writes, "All year I have been keeping time by last year's calendar." I know what that feels like. But we're in our second year, and so far the days and months get easier--less tears, less breakdowns, more happiness. Grief is hard work.So to commemorate Sonny's life and death, here's something I wrote for a timed-writing exercise in one of my journalism classes, about six months after Sonny passed. We had 15 minutes to write about someone we knew. And even though I felt like I lost him too soon, like I had so much more to know and learn about him, here's what I've got. It's called "The Big Catch." The slimy underbelly of the catfish was slick to the touch. I held the mouth in my hand, careful not to snag my finger on the razor fins. I was nine, much too small to hold the fat, 20-lb. monster by myself.
When I caught it off my uncle's dock, my stepfather Sonny had to hold onto to me so I wouldn't fall in the water. But we wanted a picture. Sonny used fishing line to hang the fish from my red and yellow swing set that he had put together for my seventh birthday. I stood with my hand on the fish, the camera unaware of the invisible thread that suspended the creature from the air. He snapped the picture. I smiled at him.
I didn't smile much at him back then. I didn't like him at the time. I didn't want a new dad. Twelve years later, after he died, we found a newspaper clipping of him, taken when he was six years old. The local paper featured Sonny because he had caught the largest rockfish ever recorded to come out of the Saluda River. He held a striped bass that was almost as tall as he was. At the very top of the picture, I saw a hand--his father's, I was told. The hand inconspicuously held onto the mouth of the fish, so that Sonny could get all the glory. The eyes of that six-year-old looked as stoic as they would the rest of his life. He was a quiet man, tall and lank. He was a dark-skinned Indian that stood in stark contrast to my ivory-freckled combination. Someone once asked me if I was adopted.
The avid hunter and sportsman was strong like the rock that he mined from Martin Marietta Rock Quarry. But the dust and the cigarettes took their toll on his lungs. The cancer came.
He spent months in the hospital. Nothing could be done. But he told me, "When someone dies, we should not try to call him back, but we should be glad they go on to prepare a place where we'll all one day meet."
On All-Saint's Day of 2004, we unveiled his gravestone. It was strong granite, mined from the quarry where he did his life's work. The front and back were polished, but we left the sides with a rough-hewn, natural look. Just the way he would have liked it.
