Glen

My sister's father-in-law passed away Friday at 3am. I followed her over Saturday in my own car, not in a mood to be left behind, but not in a mood to be stuck there, either, should she end up spending the night. I expected the house in which somebody recently died to have a different feel to it. It didn't feel any different than any time I entered it in the past twenty-two years, except perhaps a little more welcoming. Certainly, I thought, the room in which he died will feel different, haunted. It didn't, not really. If anything, there was a relieved air soaking into the fuscia shag carpet along with the sunlight it hadn't properly seen in years. The house was quiet without the constant hum of the oxygen machines, but louder with barking and children shouting than it was ever allowed to be. The phone kept ringing and the chimes on the door kept clanging, announcing friends that hadn't felt comfortable visiting in a long time, and there was the sound of the frying pan cooking onions, something else he had forbidden.

We went down to the nursing home to tell Grandma he was gone, someone she had once known well and, I think, liked quite a bit. She didn't seem to feel loss. She may not remember today that he is gone. A boon of old age. Despite being in a clear mood, she kept doggedly circling, returning to his age, only fifty-eight. (She remembered the woman who is now his widow visiting with one of her small dogs on Thursday, the day before he died.) Fifty-eight. "That's the same age as your mother," she'd say, her oldest child. (The younger son is already gone, buried in Rock Springs between Grandma's husband, dead over forty years, and the place where her matching headstone already rests, with an empty space for the date of death.) Later, in the bathroom, she made me promise not to include her age in her obituary. Like hearing his age suddenly made her realize her own, something she isn't often exposed to.

Inconsiderate relatives were already requesting items they felt entitled to. I am confident his widow and two children and their spouses will distribute his belongings in a thoughtful and decent manner, the way he would have directed. The kids and grandkids were allowed to each pick their favorite thing from a collection of valuable items of his, because they were things he treasured and may best represent his memory, and the rest of that group will be sold so the widow can keep her home. I was asked if I wanted to choose something to remember him by, though I am not directly related, because I was there and because I have been since I was three. I hastily picked the first thing to catch my eye, a small old-style die-cast yellow JC Penney delivery truck, and discovered later it's a bank, with a clever little key to open a panel in the bottom to get at the change. He was consumed by all things historical and the first JC Penney ever to open its doors was in that town almost a hundred years ago, and Penney's house is a wonderful museum there, something he was involved in bringing about. Even so, the charming little truck somehow reminds me less of him than the occasional tiny twinge in my ankle, remnant of an injury I sustained falling stupidly down the two steps at the back door of his home, on the Fourth of July three years ago. He was uncharacteristically tender but characteristically authoritative (read: delightfully know-it-all) dispensing advice to heal it.

It's hard to find truly glowing things to say about him, because I remember recent times when he hurt me and hurt someone I love, and it's hard to get past that, even when you know why it was done. We've been saying recently that we wish he'd gone before the littlest kids got old enough to remember him this way, before he had to suffer the indignity of becoming this way: weak, intolerant and spiteful due to the discomfort and frustration of being very, very ill. Most likely that will fade, though, and they'll remember that he was indeed a remarkable person in many, many ways. Who isn't? As for me, I will remember that he once took me to one of my favorite local historical events, on which he was quite an authority, and on the drive back told me that as a child he had dreamed about jumping from cloud to cloud (Wyoming often has spectacular puffy white clouds) or curling up on one, cottony soft and billowing like down. I like to think of him there now.

If I learned anything from Glen, it was the pros and cons of extreme pride. I'll remember him in his pale doe-skin mountain man get-up, describing his collection of artifacts and skins, skulls and weapons. He'll be teasing the students in my class, myself in particular (which pleased me), thoroughly enjoying the spotlight, something he must certainly have desperately missed these recent years. Fifty-eight, and not a moment too soon.