July 6/First Quarter Moon

May his memory be for blessing.

My dad has died. It wasn’t unexpected and yet it came as a surprise. His mesothelioma diagnoses had been more than 2 years ago, and the last time I wrote about him he had just started hospice care. I write this from his house. After a medication adjustment he had been doing better and had a few weeks where he was breathing easier and had more energy. He was back to doing puzzles and receiving visitors and answering his phone when I called.

I will keep it short today and let you find his obituary here.

Here is the piece that I read at the funeral:

All my sisters are here. There are five of us altogether. Becka and I from my father’s first marriage to Carol. Karlene and Elena, the step daughters he folded into his life with his second marriage to Shirley, and Rachel, a daughter from Carol's second marriage, technically no relation to him, and yet he claimed her as his half daughter in a statement that was surprising, charming, and a riddle all at once.

Becka and I have traveled by airplane to visit my father ever since he followed his mom and brothers out here in 1979. Mom would hustle us off on one end and Dad would scoop us up on the other. We’d leave the land of patchwork farmland and manicured lawns to spend time in the land of tangled hedgerows where the mountains meet the sea. Everything orderly in Minnesota and Washington was rich with reunion - time lapses of being together and being apart.

I have learned to trust this creeping vine path of time.

Though he was heartbroken by the divorce that tore the fabric of our family unit, that split defined how we did things. The time together was used to make as much of time as we could. He took me camping. He took me cross country. He took me to National Parks and Kalaloch and made me feel like I could figure out how to do anything by myself. How to hike and travel a long distance on my own, make my food from scratch and anything else I could dream up. How to stay out in the woods. That I don’t need much but a mat to sleep on and shelter over my head. From him I learned of geodesic domes and Buckminster Fuller. That with enough ingenuity you could lift your own house from its foundation to provide headroom for your shipbuilder’s workshop and how to make a joke from a weird word like gibbous.

What did father moon’s children always say? Gibbous some more time with our dad.

In Dad’s office is the melted clock of Dali. Like a warming slab of camembert it is oozing it’s way off the top of his bookshelf even as it displays the time.

The persistence of memory. The constancy of coming together, of reuniting. That what has come before, or hasn’t, just doesn’t matter. Because time makes itself, as that is all there is, until there isn’t.

And I will insert Dad’s Haiku right here-

Night mist makes trickles
As gray pearls form on a branch Drop then form anew

The first time he visited my new house, he built us a firepit from the discarded cobblestones of the old Nicollet avenue. He made sure to leave gaps where plenty of air could circulate. Better for a strong fire. Because of the extremes of temperatures it would have to endure in my Minnesota backyard, each morning and night he’d run the hose to wet the cement mortar so it would last all these many years.

We sent him a photo of me shoveling the ash from the fire pit just the other day, to show him that it had lasted the test of time.

And like cobblestones, the sisters are in a row. The mortar that binds has been cured slowly and space fuels the flames

Here is a link to the YouTube of the funeral.

Here are some photos:

Dad and Me

Dad and Henry and Me

Dad and Nathalie

Dad earned the name ‘Butterfly Grandpa’ by taking the kids to their first Butterfly Tent experience.

He was a sweet, tender, patient, tender, and fiercely protective son, brother, father, grandfather, partner, male role model. His loss is deeply felt.

More soon.

Much love, Tina