For several reasons, my brother and I are just now able to take my father’s ashes to the Upper Peninsula, 12 years after his death. We have only the weekend, and I drive two hours north to meet him at a Park and Ride, so together we can drive the remaining 6 hours to the northern shore of the UP. Unbelievably, even here at the end of September, the hotels are almost fully booked again, and I’ve been lucky to get us rooms on the outskirts of Munising.
I can’t remember the last time I hung out with my brother, alone, just the two of us. We are polite as we compare memories. So many years have passed since we were two kids growing up together, and even more years since our dad was living with us. My memory is shoddy at best, but we discover I remember things he doesn’t, and vice versa. The beauty of sharing, a tradition my family has not regularly partaken in, brings us just a little bit closer, slimming ever so slightly that immense gap that’s grown between us over the years.
My brother and I remember the cabin my parents had just outside of Melstrand, on perhaps 50 acres bordered by state land and the great Lake Superior, though I was very young. When my parents divorced, my father sold his share to my uncle, in hopes that my brother and I would continue to enjoy the land and property. We never went to the cabin again, and some years later, my uncle sold it at a nauseatingly large sum, which still to this day makes the stomachs of myself, my brother, my mother, and at least two of my cousins churn with loss. I think my uncle couldn’t resist a good business transaction, and also just didn’t think it was something that would be so missed by the rest of us. It’s sad to me, that our family is so disconnected from each other’s hearts, but I also accept that things happen for a reason, and perhaps the selling of the Cabin is an impetus for great things that I cannot see or even fathom. We just don’t know why things happen, but I know that when I remember to trust that they are happening for the greatest good, I can let go a bit, and ease the pain, even just a little. There’s no point in blame or bitterness. I can do things differently in my life. I can trust.
I remember the agonizingly long drive from our home in Ada to the Cabin back when we were kids, and the excitement when, many many hours into the journey, my dad would tell us to start looking for the white post, which was the only marker for the logging trail back to our property. The trail itself went about 2 miles back into the woods, and was another excruciatingly long journey, the truck packed with our supplies going maybe 2 to 5 miles per hour. Eventually my mom would let us get out and walk, and I remember watching my brother run ahead of our slow moving truck as it traversed the trenches of the two track on the way back to the Cabin. I remember a bear cub crossing the road in front of me just as my brother went out of sight on the trail; I remember the sound of the bears gnawing on the corner of the cabin, next to my head just on the other side of the wall from where I slept on the top bunk. I remember us not being able to start a fire in the big cast iron stove one time even though it was bitterly cold, because my dad had to first relocate a family of mice that had taken up residence. I remember seeing a momma bear and her cub playing in the sunny field just behind the cabin. I remember a snow storm that trapped us, my mother’s worry, my dad’s relief when some snowmobilers came to rescue us; I remember my dad saying “don’t let go” as he placed me on the snowmobile with the kind stranger.
Walking along the shore on our way to say good bye to our dad and his wife of 25 years, we see something floating in the water. I first think it’s a plastic bottle, then a log, my brother thinks a part of a boat, and we can’t quite get a good look as it bobs and sinks in the large waves. As we get closer, we realize it’s a dead goose, getting tousled by the waves. It’s a strange sight, and helps to lighten the mood, as my brother and I joke that it’s my dad’s way of playing a final prank on us.
My dad was a joker, telling bad jokes followed by “yuk, yuk, yuk”, and telling absurd stories that I was never sure if they were made up or real. He told me his very deep belly button was a result of carrying the flag pole when he was in marching band. He once told me my mom divorced him because he used to keep cheese in his belly button to dip his crackers in in bed. He also loved music, and I have some lovely memories of my dad dancing around his home in Florida, a towel over one shoulder and a toilet brush in hand, singing to Nat King Cole while he cleaned. My dad was a lot of fun.
We take a moment to say our goodbyes, and I thank my dad for so many things: a healthy appreciation for sarcasm, a love of the outdoors, a work ethic and confidence to do and try anything, for teaching me how to make doughnuts and how to make “shit on a shingle” and how to grind bologna in an old cast iron hand grinder. I wish my step-mother well, and thank her for turning me on to so much good music and so many good books, and for showing me that even women with very large breasts do not need to wear a bra if they don’t want to. I thank her for loving my dad as much as she did, for as long as she did, until the very day she died, and probably longer still.
Heading back from Twelve Mile, I feel a weight has been lifted, having finally been able to say good bye after so much time. As we drive toward town, my brother mentions that he remembers other cabins or cottages on the logging trail that used to go back to the Cabin, and even thinks he remembers where the trail met up with H58. We do some driving and find what we both think is the trailhead to the property. How a two-lane road can feel familiar, I do not understand, but it does, awakening a feeling deep in my memory I can only describe as “home”.
We drive into Munising for dinner, reminiscing about our dad and our childhoods, talking a bit about his life with his wife and two children, my life, my daughter and her husband. We say good night at the hotel and my brother hands me a box of my dad’s papers for me to look through. I spend the evening reading cards my dad and step-mom had written to each other over the years, cards they’d kept that I, my brother, and my sister by my dad’s first marriage had given them for various occasions. For a long time I can’t figure out why they send Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards to each other, since they’d had no children together, but then realize the cards are from their pets, the numerous dogs and cats they loved over the years.
I run a bath and continue looking through the box while the tub fills, coming across my dad’s death certificate which took my breath, my step-mom’s GED certificate, the funeral expenses receipt from my dad’s burial, his birth certificate!, and his honorable discharge from the Coast Guard. I get absolutely lost in comparing dates and piecing together their 25 years together lived largely without me. I am so consumed I manage to forget all about the bathwater until I walk in to find two inches of water on the floor of the hotel bathroom. All I can do is laugh.
Good one, Dad. You got me again.
