DIED 2014
HAVING NOW SPENT MORE of my adult life single than married, I have collected quite a treasure chest of kindnesses from other’s people’s husbands. Put that credit card away. We’ll pick you up in twenty minutes. You girls sit down; I’ll do the dishes. One or another of these guys has helped me arrange everything from my fortieth birthday party to my divorce, has dealt with my flooded basement, my dying computer, and my incompatible video format, has stood with me against egregious invoices, evil lawsuits, and greedy charlatans. And then there was the very much bigger problem, my sons’ father having died when they were six and four.
The silver lining of this tragedy was collectively provided by an all-pro team of loaner dads: two gourmet journalists, a conservative lawyer, a Cajun partier, a bipolar (but very sweet) neighbor, and a Texas outdoorsman: from a big Italian family in a small town, the kind of guy who still got together to throw the football and drink beers with his fraternity brothers, still a big kid himself. So tall, dark, and handsome, he could have played that guy on TV.
With a rare lack of snark, he and his wife split up when our kids were in preschool; he moved two blocks away to a townhouse overlooking the creek. His son, my son, and a third Musketeer would plan elaborate expeditions from our house to his, through the reeds, over the footbridge, up the incline to the apartment where he would cook them a he-man dinner of steak and spinach. Popeye the sailor man in his teeny bachelor kitchen. Not for long, though. There was a lovely blonde at work who had once announced during a discussion of engagement rings that she didn’t want one at all; she would marry the man who gave her a fishing rod. One day he showed up at an office happy hour with a large, oddly shaped bag from the sporting goods store.
Fourteen years later, she found him in his armchair in front of the History Channel, still flashing its battlefields and galleons. He was fifty-six, just like my own father who died the same way: the heart in the dark of the night that loses its place. Like me, his son was out of the nest by then. Old enough to know how lucky we were.