You, or Your Memory

This is what I remember.

When we came back to the apartment, I went to your room. I was convinced you would be there. But it was empty. Your clothing was hanging in the closet, your shoes out on the floor. The t-shirts in your drawer had just been washed - they smelled like Tide - like you. I ran to the bathroom. The sink was filled with shavings - bits and pieces of black hair, stark against the white ceramic. You had just shaved the day before. How could you be gone if you had just shaved? Every evidence of your life - the daily, mundane parts in addition to the photographs, the treasured memories - was right there, in living color, before my very eyes. Such things do not happen. Human beings do not simply disappear from this Earth.

I was at your funeral. The rabbi gave me and H the piece of black ribbon to pin on our clothing, to signify that we were in mourning. Physical evidence of your absence in living color, for everyone to see. But still, I did not believe.

I put on your watch. I slept with your shirts. I begged others not to donate your clothing. I didn't want your closet touched; "Please Mommy, leave Dad's dresser the way it was. I don't want anyone else wearing his things." Because I knew you would be back. I knew it. Each time the key turned in the door, I waited, my heart in my throat. It had to be you! I was not going to go through life never hearing your voice again, that deep, crazy laugh. You would come back to the living room and pace like you did when nervous. You would stand out on the terrace, looking out across the Hudson at I don't know what - some distant sight far away, too far for me to see or comprehend.

But you didn't.

Today I am going to a funeral. It will be the first time I return; the same place where the rabbi gave me that black ribbon. Now, sixteen years later, I no longer wait to hear the sound of the key in the door. Your shirts - your things - are long gone. I have your watch; it is with Mom's things now. I put them all together in a jewelry box after her funeral. I know you are not coming back.

But I have not forgotten.

For my father, Barry Alan Gluck, September 5th, 1944 - July 14, 1992

Note: the title is from "You, or Your Memory", a song by The Mountain Goats from their album, The Sunset Tree