Rough Day
I spent the day sifting through my Dad's documents.
I found where he kept his most treasured possessions. Important, critical documents. Also, letters and things that clearly moved him. There was a letter from me written to him in crayon wishing him a happy easter. It rhymed. I must have been like six. I wish I remember giving it to him.
I found out my Mom's birth name is Charlotte and not Shirley. Thirty five years and I never even knew my Mom's real name. I knew she had taken to calling herself "Charlie" recently but I thought it was just one of her weird quirks like when she decided it'd be cool to go read Beowulf on the city streets and panhandle for loose change.
I found out my Mom and my Dad were legally separated for a few years in the sixties before I was born. This is why they had me when they were older in life. I stumbled onto the separation documents. I also found an eight page hand-written letter my Mom sent to my Dad while they were separated. It was mostly not nice and clearly they were not doing well at the time. The very last paragraph, however, she wrote that he might want to hold onto this letter to remember the things she said. I guess he took her advice to heart since forty years later it's still at his bedside.
For the first time in forever, I'm not ready for football to start up again. Not yet. It's coming too quickly.
Towards the end, my Mom was vowing to take my Dad to a game this season or get him some autograph memorabilia. I was going to run to a collector's store and buy something to hang in his hospital room, but he died that night. I actually wrote a letter to Joe Gibbs and Darryl Green, though nothing much came of it (though both organizations were polite enough about it).
Everything is all sideways.