They Don't Make a Card for It

Father's Day is coming up, June 19. Not exactly the same day as the summer solstice, but close enough for a free-thinking solitary Wiccan like myself to celebrate the two events together. My dad is buried in a tiny Catholic cemetery not far from the Tennessee River, and I go there each year at sunrise on Father's Day for a little multipurpose ritual. Summer solstice rites, naturally, are all about the sun, so the crack of dawn is a good time for me to do my bit to honor Mother Nature, with the added advantage that I can sneak in and out of the graveyard (which is right next door to the church) without anybody seeing me. Catholics rank admirably high on the tolerance scale; nevertheless, I fear the nice young priest would feel duty bound to object if he knew I was out there doing an end run around the Judeo-Christian tradition.

My Dad wasn't a Wiccan, of course. He wasn't a Catholic, either. He didn't have much use for religion of any kind, but my mother is an enthusiastic, late-in-life convert, and she made sure he left this world with all the ceremony the Church of Rome had to offer. It seems that these days being married to a bona fide communicant gives you green card status re funeral Masses and burial plots, at least as long as there's proof that somebody at some point baptized you. There was a little awkwardness about this when Dad died, since his baptismal record had burned up in a church fire 50 years ago. But small towns being what they are, the nice priest was able to scare up an ancient local who swore that yes indeed, Dickie Browning had been baptized at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1930, she remembered it well—and that was good enough.

Dad had a sedentary nature. The Army sent him to Korea and Japan, and his job forced him onto an airplane a fair amount. Otherwise, he relentlessly stayed put, rotating between office chair, barstool and recliner. His idea of outdoor adventure was taking his Scotch out on the patio. So, in spite of being chunked down amid the Catholics and conjured over by his wacko daughter, he's probably pleased with his current situation.

I am the baby of the family, and the only girl. By all rights, I should have been Daddy's little princess, but I was not issued the right looks or temperament for that. Since neither of us had any other model for the father/daughter relationship, it never really got off the ground. He was a complete mystery to me, and everything about me seemed to baffle or antagonize him, but he tried to be a good dad. During my obligatory horse-mad-little-girl phase, he came home one day with a Shetland pony in the backseat of the Ford. He bought Thunder (who hated everybody but me and who came to a very sad end) off a guy in a bar. A tavern was like the Home Shopping Network for Dad—a round-the-clock opportunity to buy useless crap from questionable people. He once purchased a shotgun from a manic drunk who was waving it around the bar, threatening to kill somebody. He sold it back to the guy the next day, so there was at least one deal where he broke even.

The last conversation between us was sort of a two-minute rehash of our 40-year relationship. My mother had left us alone in the grim little hospital room. She and I both knew he was dying, but neither of us admitted it. I think Dad knew, too, although he was somewhat distracted by recurring visits from his childhood dog Ferdie, and his dead-for-a-decade drinking buddy, Red. He had terrible hiccups and had been struggling to make himself understood all day.

"Well, Dad, I have to go now," I said. I smiled one of those frozen smiles we save for the really important moments in our lives. "I'll come back in the morning." He said something completely unintelligible and made a sort of urgent gesture, a wave of the hand. His gray-blue eyes were fixed on me, very intense. "What?" I said. The same garbled words, the same gesture, the same gaze. I didn't know what to do. Again, I smiled. "Well, I better go on now. I'll see you in the morning." Defeated, he subsided back into his pillow and looked away.

I did go back the next day, but he and Red and Ferdie had checked out. The funeral home hadn't yet fetched what was left of him for the farewell festivities, and I took my turn alone with him by the bed. The gray-blue eyes were open wide with the expression of a man who has just seen something astonishing, delightful.

A Wiccan friend of mine says that the great thing about a dead father is that when you talk to him, he has to listen. And she's right. Honoring the departed is all about the prerogative of the living. I'm not out there lurking around the boneyard because the old man asked me to. But before the sun comes over the trees and the birds start to chatter, I keep still and listen close, just in case he has something to tell me.