Memory Essay

After a week of the bedside visits, through tears, frustration, anger, and a shifting memory of those that surrounded him, my father passed away at the age of 59 in the spring of 2003. He had been sick for eight long years, and the time we did have with him, we were more than lucky to have. But on that Tuesday, in the wee hours of the morning, my mother came into the blackness of my bedroom, and with the flip of the light switch, she bathed the room in the harsh 60 watt light that told me immediately and without any doubt, what had happened. i could hear it in her voice before i even opened my eyes to look at her standing in the doorway. As she called my name, i could hear the desperation in that voice of hers, growing shorter and closer to breaking down with each word. 

 

I sat up in bed, and when our eyes met in the still of the morning, she could hold back no more. She told me everything. He had passed no longer than thirty minutes before, and she had just got off the phone where she had heard the news. I hugged her tight, not wanting to let go for anything, and began going through my mind, the things i would have to endure in the days to come; telling my friends, dealing with the end of my sophomore year of high school, the funeral, and just coping with the immense loss that had just ripped through us. At the time i heard the news, i was too tired to cry, as was my sister. And i wouldn't until the viewing, but when i did, it came cashing down hard.

The weather was hot and balmy in the days leading up to the funeral. I had to buy a suit, because i had never owned one. What an occasion. Spring had been kind with the rain, but it would prove miserable on that friday, the day he was buried. Sitting at the burial site, we were surrounded with family and close friends my father had known since his younger days, who would pull me aside and tell me the stories of their youthful conquests and all the awful trouble they all used to get into as young men – war stories my father had been an important part of, and that these men thought i would like to hear – they were kind and respectful of him, they loved him. Older men now like my father was, they had known him in a different time. I thanked those who had taken great care of my father in his final years, and one thing i saw that day i have never forgotten. Circling the casket, flying in and around the bouquet of flowers on top of it, was a bumble bee. Trying as it might to get to the pollen that was to be had from them, at first i was annoyed at it. Maybe it was my sad state, but i thought to myself "can't you leave well enough alone?"

 

But the more i thought about it, i began to realize that maybe it was something greater than i could have ever imagined. I had heard sometime before that bumblebees were supposed to be physically incapable of flying, yet they do anyway. So i watched this creature, whose only drive in life was to get the sweet nectar of flowers zipping around the flowers on my father's casket, thinking about how even though nature had given the bumblebee an unfortunate set of circumstances that should have prevented it from doing the only thing it wants to do in life, it did it anyway. I had stopped crying just long enough to realize this, and i began to laugh to myself at the beautiful irony that nature, God, or whoever had put in front of me, and i think that's the moment i started dealing with my loss in a positive way. And all because of one bumblebee.