My dad died in June. He was beaten to the punch by my mother about a decade before. There is a certain manic retrospection that grips a person when they suddenly find themselves an orphan on a sunny, summer day. At least, in my experience.
I have a brother, whom I love very much, but somehow it is a singular, personal experience. Isolating, intense, and enveloping.
I had a strange relationship with my father, and frankly that’s the subject of a different kind of writing. There’s much to say about who he was and wasn’t, both to me, to my brother, and to my mom, and the forum for that exploration is decidedly more private.
That said, watching the people who brought you into the world leave you behind is more… universal. I’ve found it refracts the light of your life like a prism, fragmenting your relationships into radiant strings of untouchable color. An un-masking of the lives in your orbit; a revelation of who is there in reality, who has been there, and who quivers in the illusion of half-hearted platitudes, dissipating in the light of unpleasant emotional effort. The evaporative phantoms of connection.
Anyway, when you’re making pancakes, separate the whites and whip them with cream of tartar to stiff peaks before folding back into the batter. They’ll be extra fluffy.
10 Chickens to Maine 