My earliest memory is of my father. He's sitting in his bathrobe drinking tea while I stare up at a reflection of water on the ceiling. He explains the properties of reflection and refraction while I hope desperately that a swimming pool has magically grown up in the yard overnight. I know this is a vain hope because he's explaining my fantasies away with science. I don't tell him, but the light dancing on the ceiling makes me want to go swimming.
I am two years old.
My father died in early October, two weeks before my birthday. I suppose that was six months ago, since I seem to be counting. I hadn't been, but my sister reminded me last week in the middle of a totally unrelated conversation.
Then, of course, she posted a few hundred of his most mortifying photos and I thought, "For a man who did his best never to appear on a social network, I think he's making a pretty good posthumous showing."
I hadn't written about my father or his death because I wasn't sure how to put it into words. Rather, I should say that there were too many words to organize. Dad isn't a simple man to describe. Put it down to long years of exposure or huge amounts of filial adoration, I couldn't do it. I'd been tasked with writing his obituary but had to pass it off. Again, I spoke at his memorial and, after saying a few quick words of token esteem, copped out and read a series of quotes his coworkers had sent us in remembrance after he died.
Dad was the guy who took us to ruin after ruin and explained in excruciatingly gory detail what all that architecture was for. He loved science fiction and hated historical and military anachronisms in TV shows. He rented movies he'd seen just to watch our reactions and stood around in the kitchen with us late at night to talk about whatever it was we wanted to talk about (even if the conversation inevitably turned to science or history because he could never help himself). Maybe some of this was to make up for the times he couldn't be home but whether or not my father was physically present, he was always there.
Dad worked hard and rarely complained, except when grossly put upon and usually only to say, "My telepathic license has been revoked." I suppose he had some cause to say this. Dad took care of everything. I think sometimes he took care of everything so well that my mother forgot he couldn't read her mind. Dad had a way of making even the most impenetrable subjects seem simple and a slyly irreverent way of making light and sense out of any situation.
His death was sudden but, in hindsight, I suppose it wasn't entirely unexpected. He might have thought he'd die on his last assignment overseas, but he didn't. He died at home a week later, leaving my sister free reign to post his most mortifying pictures all over the internet (my sister's definition of portraiture involving occasionally involving knees, apparently).
There are a few good photos. He's facing away from the camera in our favorite photo. He's walking through the souq in Fez with a camera slung across his chest, holding my sister's hand. My sister says she likes it because it reminds her of the way we used to follow him around. I like it because my father used to tell me he could always pick a man out of a crowd by the way he walked and Dad had a very distinctive gait.