Selfish?
Yes, because it means somebody dear to me has already passed on while I attempt to immortalize them in simple words and phrases...attempting to encompass over 85 years in a few minutes. It means that I have to stir up the clouded memories in my own mind with a simpleton's stick, retrieving the good ones and letting the poor ones remain dormant. Throughout that weekend of my paternal grandfather's funeral I had a mental image of a brick wall, weathered and wind-beaten. I put it up every time I started to try to articulate how I was feeling. I held it together for the majority of the speech, but I have to admit that my voice began to crack as I finished.
It was at my other grandfather's funeral, my maternal one, that I realized the heart-wrenching reality that life and its tiniest, most insignificant gifts can seem like such trivialities to one person and true and complete needs to somebody else.
I have two such memories of the emotional toll a mere piece of crafted shoe-string can be lifted gently like river-dead from my mind, carried on to the shore and displayed for the curious to see.
In the first one, it is a regret. Frankly, both of these stories are framed in regret, framed by my inability to overcome what was clearly a trivial matter to me but in the end perhaps meant the whole world to the people dear to me.
My daughter owns the first one, where as a young and precocious four year old she attempted to dazzle and be as close to a forest princess as she could muster. In the tall pines of North Carolina where the drones of C-130 transport planes carrying airborne soldiers off to far away places buzzed in the sky and she would glide underneath their shadows and twirl in our yard. She rarely saw me, as I left early and often and spent the majority of my time in the field. But she was happy, and vibrant, and constant. She was sweaty, her hair curling tightly against her forehead and she had a deep and guttural laugh that exploded from such a small frame. But this hurricane of energy was impulsive, and demanding. And one time, at an amusement game/restaurant she had played the midway challenges and won enough tickets to buy whatever she wanted. She got some larger prizes, a bundle of trinkets that would likely be thrown into her closet and never again played with, and in the end she had only two tickets left.
This is important, because she had already expended her efforts on the toys she really wanted. A fact that apparently was lost upon her, because suddenly those two tickets were just enough to get a pair of sparkly shoelaces that she suddenly and desperately needed. As an annoyed young parent, I had worn myself out with the day, and this was a line that I wasn't going to allow her to cross. In hindsight it seems so fucking trivial as to border on the insane, but she had had her way all afternoon and I was ready to go and for some reason this became a firestorm.
I can remember her screaming as I carried her and her other toys out, screeching for the shoelaces like I had literally just pulled her teeth out. I was completely vindictive in not allowing her the final small pieces that would have completed her day, but I was the parent and I wasn't going to be bullied by this little girl, shoelaces or not.
In those moments, they became something much more important to her, perhaps the literal icing on the cake for her day. It wasn't that big of a deal to me, but how could it have been? The only time I bothered with shoelaces was really when I was in college, and I wore forbidden Chuck Taylor's with my cadet uniform and needed to know how to make them remain untied but also unmoving. Only time I really cared at all.
But I reflect on the fact that to her they were her redemption and that they were the only thing that mattered at that moment. And I didn't let her have it. And I feel, 19 years later, almost her lifetime, like I could have let her have her way. And given her those fucking shoelaces so she could be that forest princess dancing underneath the planes that would take me away. From her. Again.
My second chance encounter into the power of such lowly items was actually at my maternal grandfather's funeral, the one where I didn't give the eulogy. It was a very nice service, and a lot of people spoke about him, his quiet and calm demeanor, his gentleness, his love for his children and his grandchildren and his humble beginnings and endings. I remembered we swam a lot in his pool, but we were never allowed into the hot tub, a memory that seemed harsh and somewhat ridiculous in even feeling harsh about it. But it was a comment that my mom made, when she was describing some of her last conversations with her father, that made me remember about these stupid shoelaces.
She was recounting that when she saw him in the hospital people were asking what to get him to make him feel better...a card, a gift, flowers or something to eat.
"Shoelaces" is what he said he wanted. Shoelaces.
And as mind-numbingly bland as it sounds, I think it meant that he needed to have his shoes tied and ready for when he walked out of that hospital. That he was thinking of a detail that most wouldn't really consider and more importantly he was planning on leaving that place.
And he never did, and he never got the shoelaces, my mom dismissing such a notion like I did with my own daughter. And he never did because he never left the hospital.
It's funny, not in a ha-ha kind of way, but in a peculiar way, how something so trivial and uneventful can be the thing that I remember. And its memory is a regretful one, and in a way a redemptive one, to remind me of the ties that bind us to each other, and how easily they can be pulled undone and let go forever.
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