It was cold the day my father died. The only reason I knew he was cold was because someone told me. I knew it was cold, and I knew he died alone. And I was sad. I had been sad for a great long time. For I hadn't known he was to die, and I suspect he hadn't known either. What a great disappointment for both of us when he went out with a whimper, not a bang. Or at least I think he went out with a whimper because everything I know I was told.

So it was me and a letter he sent two weeks before he died. That was it. That was all that was left of him. And I felt sorry for myself for a long time, and then I read it. I had read it before. Of course, it would have been rude not to. But I read this time, not in a glance or a flash, but I sat down and I read. And when I read it, I learned nothing. I don't know what I expected. He hadn't expected to die. But to my foolish dismay, I gleaned no loving nugget of thought or dispensed wisdom. It was just a letter, that's all it was.

He told me about his day. His stupid fight with Larry from down the street. A man I knew well. Larry and my father shared a friendship that only neighbors share. A special commission, a distinct quasi-comradery. They wouldn't be friends if they did not live near each other, so they weren't. But they were, in many ways, they were. That's how people are; we love those closest and who we see. It's possible that there would be better friends and better love a thousand miles away, but we wouldn't love them. And they don't love us. Instead, we love those around us. We use what we have. And such was the nature of Larry and my father. They drank together and often went to things around the neighborhood together, and if one needed something, the other gave it to them. But if they hadn't lived across the street or bought a house near one another, they wouldn't know each other, they wouldn't bother, and neither was special enough to the other to be so wanted. But they were great friends, what great friends they turned out to be.

When Larry returned from his house down at the beach, he was sure his friend would come around to discuss where to host the poker game. My father was insistent on it being at his house. I think he wanted the company. My father loved the glow of a party, the aura of it all, a feeling of uncontrollable talk and jabber, and then after the drinks had run out and goodbyes had been said, and then second and third and final goodbyes. It was silent, and all that was left was a life well lived. A life lived loudly. Of course, my father's house was smaller, had a less capacious porch, and did not have a table that would suit a poker game, but he didn't care. He never cared about appearance, presentation, or formality. 

Larry fought him on this until he left for the beach, but my father told me he wasn't worried about him. Larry would come around. They always did. So what a great shock it must have been when he returned to find that his friend had died stubborn and, in claimed victory, for he had gotten the last word, he had gotten all of the last words, and Larry couldn't fight him on it any longer, because he wasn't around to fight anymore. It was just like my father to die before admitting he was wrong.

He told me how he missed my mom. He told me he visits her almost every day. It was his daily cardio, to the granite and back and back again. He wasn't very good at talking about things like that, so he usually wrote them. It was easier that way. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that he didn't call or write again. It was easier this way. Maybe he knew, maybe. But I think that he hadn't expected to die. No one does. A little voice tells us we will go on again. Until we don't. Until the voice stops, you are left with you and yourself and a reflection you can't see. I hope my father didn't know, I hope he didn't, the knowing must be worse than the dying. So it was easier this way, easier for him. 

I haven't stopped thinking about the last sentence of what my father wrote. When I went to his house for the funeral and looked at his parchment and pens, I found that I had the last of his writing. He wrote to me and never wrote again; it's that way for everyone. Everyone has the last thing they write, the last time they speak, the last room they enter, and the room they never leave, or the one they leave and never enter again. The letter was my father's last room. It was the door shut on a life of which I was always learning again about. My father's last sentence was, “I can't wait to see you again.”

I've thought about those words a lot. What they meant, what they meant to him, to me. I tried for a long time. I tried to uncover the meaning left behind by my father. I tried for a long time, and I never found it. He didn't know he was to die. All it meant was that he loved me.