These were photos of the first snow at Riverlot, back in mid-November (and was probably some of the most snow we've seen this year at home, strangely enough). And that day I was thinking about my dad, and how since I'd been away he would always send me photos of the first snowfall. I always appreciated these little updates of what the earth was doing, faraway in my homeland.
He was never one for speaking much on the phone, so especially cherished these little notes of his, whether snapshots from the backyard or recent fishing trips or photos of especially cute Jack Russell Terriers or news snippets he'd come across that he thought I'd like to read. And opening my inbox now every morning I am constantly reminded of the absence of his emails, that I never see his name pop up amongst listserv notices and the daily flood of university tasks.
Perhaps even more strongly, I still feel a wave of grief every time there is something I want to tell him -- something interesting that I've read about fossils unearthed or deep sea fish newly discovered or antediluvian bacteria trapped in Antarctic core ice (shades of the X-Files!) or how the week after he died they found the feathers of dinosaurs trapped in amber in the southern coal fields, how they thought they'd finally captured evidence of particles moving faster than light. These are the things we'd marvel at together, and they remind me of his sense of wonder at the world; to not be able to tell him these things, share them with him, feels like waking up in the night and grasping around in the dark for something that can never be touched, isn't even there where you thought it was.
Last month I read Roland Barthes' 'Mourning Diary', a compilation of thoughts he jotted down on cards the year(s) after his mother passed away after a long illness. They devastate me and at once leave me with an immense calm as I find so much of what I experience mirrored there, raw and unapologetic, in this instance, the realization that there is so much I am never going to be able to tell him, talk to him about:
Feb 12th. Snow, a real snowstorm in Paris; strange. I tell myself and suffer for it: she will never again be here to see it, or for me to describe it for her.
I used to eagerly upload my fieldwork photos, and those from when I was first in Scotland, to show him these places where I was too, these places he would never see other than through me. To show him these things also comforted me, and sending him these things became a way of reminding myself, reassuring myself that this is what he wanted me to be doing; that I should not feel any guilt whatsoever at being away from him while he was ill. I wanted to create and discover beautiful things, and share them with him, as a way of showing him what his support for me could do. And so we were conduits for these little quotidian experiences, bits of knowledge, and this always connected us.
So much of grieving, and the aftermath of a death, is about renegotiating your relationship with that person. They still exist, but in a different form now, in a way that makes your brain try to grow tendrils in order to try to reach and wrap itself around this change of state and tense.
In the weeks after his passing, though, I had a dream, the first dream with him in it after his death. He walked into the kitchen like nothing had happened, and I rushed over to him and I was crying in my sleep, holding on to him, telling him how much I missed him. He told me not to worry, he was doing fine, and I asked him, had he heard about the feathers in amber? And he said, no he hadn't, yet, but he was going to remember that, read about it later. Let me just grab a pen and write that down, he said, just like he always did when he asked me about something, so he wouldn't forget the details. And certainly, I know that I still can tell him things, tell him whatever I want -- but I have so much trouble handling the fact it still feels like a monologue. I don't know yet how he can respond.
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