Simple is Good
originally published in Signet
I snake through the mountains rubbing Molly’s head as she sleeps in the seat next to me. My husband and daughter are in Charlotte, only an hour and a half by car, yet it feels as if they are on a distant planet. I have come to the North Carolina mountains with my dog to escape the realities of home.
Waylon sings with Willie, and I sing along, cranking up the volume on the CD my father made and listen to Waylon Jennings wail about the shortness of life and his contribution to shortening his own. I remember Dad sitting at his computer searching on Napster for songs, everything from Merle Haggard to Hot Chocolate, to burn to CD. Molly opens her eyes and pricks her ears at the sound of Waylon’s heavy base, and I lower the volume. We played this song at my father's memorial service, knowing that Waylon's music suited his passage to the afterlife.
While driving between the Cascades trail and The Lump overlook, I pass a church and cemetery in a small hollow. The cemetery is dotted with headstones, which seem simple and small compared to the ones my mother, brother, and I browsed at Patterson Monument Company in Carbon Hill, Alabama. Four months ago, we shopped for a marker for Dad at the white clapboard house, the yard filled with headstones of various sizes and color. Mr. Patterson's daughter, a petite woman with bleach-blonde hair, helped us decide on the stone to mark his grave in a family plot outside Parrish, Alabama.
“Trust me,” she had said. “You don't want marble. Turns black, then people complain about trying to keep it clean.” She sat behind a veneer-topped desk littered with various forms and papers. Her grandson marched in during the middle of our meeting. "The television won't work," he told his grandmother, and she told him to entertain himself. "I've got business," she said with her thick Appalachian accent, emphasizing the "b" in business. Her grandson stomped out muttering, “I want to watch Animal Planet."
"Kids," she said and rolled her eyes.
My mother looked down and fiddled with her hands. Her gold wedding band winked as it caught the sunlight streaming through the window. Despite the circumstances in which we found ourselves, we snickered at the exchange between the grandson and grandmother. We’ve all been there we said in one way or another.
We learned about the different colors of stones, the etchings, the inflated prices based on the availability. Other customers milled about in the yard visible from the window behind us. Business seemed to be booming. "Simple is good," she told us. This was a family business, three generations to be exact, so she was the authority. "Trust me. I've seen lots of ugly stones."
My mother has always had impeccable taste and her selection of a marker for my father was no different This was the stone where her name would be etched next to his. Mother selected a dark granite double headstone, a recessed box in the back would read "Pennington." Because of the lengthy ordering and inscription process, we would be unable to see it before we left Alabama. We would have to return later to view the stone that marked his grave.
Now the road unfurls before me. At mile marker 273, I turn right and follow the curve of the asphalt past the farm, then left onto a gravel road. Three days ago, I feared that I would be making this trip alone as Molly recovered in an animal hospital from pancreatitis. Losing my father and the prospect of losing my dog was like a bad country song that I didn't want to live. Molly is my second rat terrier. Sissy, my first, I had to put down a couple of years ago when her liver began to fail. I grieved for weeks, missing the sound of her nails clicking on the hardwood floors. Molly seemed to mourn the loss, too: she moped aimlessly around the house, slept more, and seemed unsure of what to do when she went out into our backyard alone.
The mourning I had then and the concern for the dog that remains feels silly when I know the loss cannot equate with the hole my father has left. I think of Dad when I listen to this music, when I finger his wedding band on my dresser at home, when I drive through these mountains that I first saw with him.
My first trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway was with Dad, when he chose to take it in on a trip back from Connecticut. At an overlook, he snapped a picture as the rest of my family sat on a stacked stone barrier. I am a bored, lanky teenager clutching my dachshund, sitting next to my brother and mother as the wind whirled through our hair. Then I only wanted to return to my friends and the busy social life of a teenager, grateful that Dad never stopped for long when we traveled. He was all about driving and seeing as much as he could from the road.
When I married, my husband and I took road trips and stopped to hike through the forests I had only seen from a distance with my father. I welcomed the crunch of leaves under my feet and often remarked about how much my father would have enjoyed the woods we traversed. But my father's failing health and steadfast ways would not allow him the joy of walking through a forest filled with tall, fat firs. Dad's idea of hiking was not using a cart on the golf course. His hikes consisted of tee boxes and fairways, his latest driver in hand.
We arrive at the cabin and Molly hops into my lap, ready to exit the car. We spend our afternoons this way: driving on the parkway, taking a short hike, and returning to a small patch of green outside our temporary home. Molly scoots across the grass on her back as I unlock the front door of the cabin. I grab a beer and return to the porch where I sip and listen to the wings of hummingbirds circling the feeder banging from the rafter above me. Molly perks up, sniffs the breeze, and finds yet another spot to roll onto. She’s much better than she was four days ago when she continually vomited yellow bile and could barely stand, but I know from experience that her condition could quickly change.
My father's health was often the same—sudden shifts from manageable illness to mysterious ailments that impeded his everyday activities. Thanks to a generous health insurance policy, my father’s life was prolonged by the advances of medical science. He was a human experiment with a defibrillator in his chest designed to shock his heart back into rhythm should he need it. On two occasions, the device proved to be faulty as it shocked him over twenty times. We watched him flinch with pain as the electric shock from the small machine jolted his heart repeatedly and unnecessarily. On another occasion, he spent a night in a crypt of oxygen when he suffered a stroke in his eye. Dad often remarked that he was humbled by all the medical treatment he received, wondering aloud how he had been so fortunate to be blessed with the attention of his doctors. He called himself an enigma of modern medicine. With each health issue, my father recovered to return to the golf course and the careful attention of my mother, which often irritated him. And with every recovery, there was the eventual return of a condition, one we thought he had overcome.
As my father aged, the gap between recovery and relapse narrowed. The day before my father died, he showed signs of a rebound. I took him coffee and an oatmeal cookie as he sat in the office chair at the dressing table in my parent's large bathroom. Later that night, he would die in that same chair and fall to the floor as my mother watched in horror. But that last afternoon I spent with him, he smiled, sipped his coffee, and ate his cookie. When he finished, I helped him as he fumbled back to bed, then kissed his cheek. “I have to go home," I told him. "Do you want me to close the door so you can sleep?"
"Just crack it open," he had said, then adjusted the sheets and lay his head back on his pillow. “Love you, baby girl."
It was the last exchange I had with my father. Hardly remarkable, hardly different I know, but it is a memory that I hold onto when the loss feels too fresh. l am not a stranger to loss. You could say that it was loss that tethered my father to me. When I was an eight-week-old infant, my father survived the car accident that killed my birthmother. He was a twenty-four-year-old widower with an infant daughter and an honorable discharge from the Air Force. For almost three years, it was just Dad and me. The bond forged between us because of our shared loss, his loss more acute than mine, is stronger than any tie I have ever known. I am forever attached to my daughter and my husband, but it is different. My father had suffered a great loss, and my life was his reason to live. The burden of being his reason was heavy at times; especially when I felt that I had failed him because of some bad choice I had made. His reason for life expanded when he married my mother, a double blessing that gave me a mother's love and later a brother to bother.
When my father died, I lost the stories about my birthmother and how she loved me those brief eight weeks. No more stories about me and him riding around as we traveled from place to place. He would not rub my head again and mess up my hair, something that made him giggle as I vainly tried to fix my do.
For weeks after my father’s death, I heard his voice telling me some mundane little something and calling me “baby girl,” convinced that I had made up the phrase. My brother confirmed that my father had said it often. Months later, when I helped my mother with yard work, I heard Dad laughing as I struggled with a wheelbarrow in their garage.
My mother still hears the doorbell ring every morning. As we watched a University of Alabama football game at my brother's house, a red balloon, a party favor for my brother's birthday, floated into the room and rested at the chair my father once preferred. We cheered on my father's alma mater, and the red balloon remained at the chair's side. There is probably a logical explanation for these occurrences, some synapse in my brain that fires off these memories of his laughter and voice, but I hope it is Dad haunting my family and me, resisting the urge to leave us completely.
I feel his presence even here in this place that he has never been. I lay my head on the back of the rocker and breathe in the fresh mountain air. Molly returns with a tennis ball that she has found in the yard. The ball bounces under the rocker and she barks, shrill and loud. I stop the rocking and hurl the ball. A red-throated hummingbird hovers and watches me, his stomach fat and full. The black blur of his wings hum as he zooms toward the feeder.
My father passed away over four months ago. He is buried on a hilltop in north Alabama. The sun rises and sets on his headstone I have yet to see.
Waylon sings with Willie, and I sing along, cranking up the volume on the CD my father made and listen to Waylon Jennings wail about the shortness of life and his contribution to shortening his own. I remember Dad sitting at his computer searching on Napster for songs, everything from Merle Haggard to Hot Chocolate, to burn to CD. Molly opens her eyes and pricks her ears at the sound of Waylon’s heavy base, and I lower the volume. We played this song at my father's memorial service, knowing that Waylon's music suited his passage to the afterlife.
While driving between the Cascades trail and The Lump overlook, I pass a church and cemetery in a small hollow. The cemetery is dotted with headstones, which seem simple and small compared to the ones my mother, brother, and I browsed at Patterson Monument Company in Carbon Hill, Alabama. Four months ago, we shopped for a marker for Dad at the white clapboard house, the yard filled with headstones of various sizes and color. Mr. Patterson's daughter, a petite woman with bleach-blonde hair, helped us decide on the stone to mark his grave in a family plot outside Parrish, Alabama.
“Trust me,” she had said. “You don't want marble. Turns black, then people complain about trying to keep it clean.” She sat behind a veneer-topped desk littered with various forms and papers. Her grandson marched in during the middle of our meeting. "The television won't work," he told his grandmother, and she told him to entertain himself. "I've got business," she said with her thick Appalachian accent, emphasizing the "b" in business. Her grandson stomped out muttering, “I want to watch Animal Planet."
"Kids," she said and rolled her eyes.
My mother looked down and fiddled with her hands. Her gold wedding band winked as it caught the sunlight streaming through the window. Despite the circumstances in which we found ourselves, we snickered at the exchange between the grandson and grandmother. We’ve all been there we said in one way or another.
We learned about the different colors of stones, the etchings, the inflated prices based on the availability. Other customers milled about in the yard visible from the window behind us. Business seemed to be booming. "Simple is good," she told us. This was a family business, three generations to be exact, so she was the authority. "Trust me. I've seen lots of ugly stones."
My mother has always had impeccable taste and her selection of a marker for my father was no different This was the stone where her name would be etched next to his. Mother selected a dark granite double headstone, a recessed box in the back would read "Pennington." Because of the lengthy ordering and inscription process, we would be unable to see it before we left Alabama. We would have to return later to view the stone that marked his grave.
Now the road unfurls before me. At mile marker 273, I turn right and follow the curve of the asphalt past the farm, then left onto a gravel road. Three days ago, I feared that I would be making this trip alone as Molly recovered in an animal hospital from pancreatitis. Losing my father and the prospect of losing my dog was like a bad country song that I didn't want to live. Molly is my second rat terrier. Sissy, my first, I had to put down a couple of years ago when her liver began to fail. I grieved for weeks, missing the sound of her nails clicking on the hardwood floors. Molly seemed to mourn the loss, too: she moped aimlessly around the house, slept more, and seemed unsure of what to do when she went out into our backyard alone.
The mourning I had then and the concern for the dog that remains feels silly when I know the loss cannot equate with the hole my father has left. I think of Dad when I listen to this music, when I finger his wedding band on my dresser at home, when I drive through these mountains that I first saw with him.
My first trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway was with Dad, when he chose to take it in on a trip back from Connecticut. At an overlook, he snapped a picture as the rest of my family sat on a stacked stone barrier. I am a bored, lanky teenager clutching my dachshund, sitting next to my brother and mother as the wind whirled through our hair. Then I only wanted to return to my friends and the busy social life of a teenager, grateful that Dad never stopped for long when we traveled. He was all about driving and seeing as much as he could from the road.
When I married, my husband and I took road trips and stopped to hike through the forests I had only seen from a distance with my father. I welcomed the crunch of leaves under my feet and often remarked about how much my father would have enjoyed the woods we traversed. But my father's failing health and steadfast ways would not allow him the joy of walking through a forest filled with tall, fat firs. Dad's idea of hiking was not using a cart on the golf course. His hikes consisted of tee boxes and fairways, his latest driver in hand.
We arrive at the cabin and Molly hops into my lap, ready to exit the car. We spend our afternoons this way: driving on the parkway, taking a short hike, and returning to a small patch of green outside our temporary home. Molly scoots across the grass on her back as I unlock the front door of the cabin. I grab a beer and return to the porch where I sip and listen to the wings of hummingbirds circling the feeder banging from the rafter above me. Molly perks up, sniffs the breeze, and finds yet another spot to roll onto. She’s much better than she was four days ago when she continually vomited yellow bile and could barely stand, but I know from experience that her condition could quickly change.
My father's health was often the same—sudden shifts from manageable illness to mysterious ailments that impeded his everyday activities. Thanks to a generous health insurance policy, my father’s life was prolonged by the advances of medical science. He was a human experiment with a defibrillator in his chest designed to shock his heart back into rhythm should he need it. On two occasions, the device proved to be faulty as it shocked him over twenty times. We watched him flinch with pain as the electric shock from the small machine jolted his heart repeatedly and unnecessarily. On another occasion, he spent a night in a crypt of oxygen when he suffered a stroke in his eye. Dad often remarked that he was humbled by all the medical treatment he received, wondering aloud how he had been so fortunate to be blessed with the attention of his doctors. He called himself an enigma of modern medicine. With each health issue, my father recovered to return to the golf course and the careful attention of my mother, which often irritated him. And with every recovery, there was the eventual return of a condition, one we thought he had overcome.
As my father aged, the gap between recovery and relapse narrowed. The day before my father died, he showed signs of a rebound. I took him coffee and an oatmeal cookie as he sat in the office chair at the dressing table in my parent's large bathroom. Later that night, he would die in that same chair and fall to the floor as my mother watched in horror. But that last afternoon I spent with him, he smiled, sipped his coffee, and ate his cookie. When he finished, I helped him as he fumbled back to bed, then kissed his cheek. “I have to go home," I told him. "Do you want me to close the door so you can sleep?"
"Just crack it open," he had said, then adjusted the sheets and lay his head back on his pillow. “Love you, baby girl."
It was the last exchange I had with my father. Hardly remarkable, hardly different I know, but it is a memory that I hold onto when the loss feels too fresh. l am not a stranger to loss. You could say that it was loss that tethered my father to me. When I was an eight-week-old infant, my father survived the car accident that killed my birthmother. He was a twenty-four-year-old widower with an infant daughter and an honorable discharge from the Air Force. For almost three years, it was just Dad and me. The bond forged between us because of our shared loss, his loss more acute than mine, is stronger than any tie I have ever known. I am forever attached to my daughter and my husband, but it is different. My father had suffered a great loss, and my life was his reason to live. The burden of being his reason was heavy at times; especially when I felt that I had failed him because of some bad choice I had made. His reason for life expanded when he married my mother, a double blessing that gave me a mother's love and later a brother to bother.
When my father died, I lost the stories about my birthmother and how she loved me those brief eight weeks. No more stories about me and him riding around as we traveled from place to place. He would not rub my head again and mess up my hair, something that made him giggle as I vainly tried to fix my do.
For weeks after my father’s death, I heard his voice telling me some mundane little something and calling me “baby girl,” convinced that I had made up the phrase. My brother confirmed that my father had said it often. Months later, when I helped my mother with yard work, I heard Dad laughing as I struggled with a wheelbarrow in their garage.
My mother still hears the doorbell ring every morning. As we watched a University of Alabama football game at my brother's house, a red balloon, a party favor for my brother's birthday, floated into the room and rested at the chair my father once preferred. We cheered on my father's alma mater, and the red balloon remained at the chair's side. There is probably a logical explanation for these occurrences, some synapse in my brain that fires off these memories of his laughter and voice, but I hope it is Dad haunting my family and me, resisting the urge to leave us completely.
I feel his presence even here in this place that he has never been. I lay my head on the back of the rocker and breathe in the fresh mountain air. Molly returns with a tennis ball that she has found in the yard. The ball bounces under the rocker and she barks, shrill and loud. I stop the rocking and hurl the ball. A red-throated hummingbird hovers and watches me, his stomach fat and full. The black blur of his wings hum as he zooms toward the feeder.
My father passed away over four months ago. He is buried on a hilltop in north Alabama. The sun rises and sets on his headstone I have yet to see.