And she’d be right if it wasn’t true.  It was the weekend before Thanksgiving.  He had just turned sixty-three the month before.  Had just retired from a job he disliked a few before that.  And it happened moments after he’d driven past the building where he had worked for 20 years.  He was happy, finally, after many years of discontent.  I think that’s what stays with me like a slow-fading bruise, like the lingering streams of vapor in the sky from an airplane long flown by.  He was happy.

This should comfort me, but instead it slices through like tire tracks in snow —straight green lines cut into white— like the tire tracks that remained for days after it happened.  Tire tracks that veered off the road, over the sidewalk, and directly into brick.  Lightish brown, 1960’s municipal-variety brick — the Town’s water pump station.  It had been his heart, completely unexpected.  And his son, my husband, is a cardiologist.

Gavin was on-call at the hospital here in Bend, Oregon when I got the phone call from the hospital clear across the country.  He’d had a horrible night, his pager repeatedly piercing the midnight air with its shrill, insistent beep.  He’d gone into the hospital at 3 am.  Was probably rounding on patients when his own father’s heart stopped working hundreds of miles away.  Impossible.  Just that morning I saw the comment that my father-in-law had written, right before he died, on the family photo I had posted online the previous night: I so love this picture.  It brings tears to my eyes.  A moment of weakness.  Gavin’s dad rarely posted anything on Facebook.  Tears were even less frequent.

My husband is just like his father.  Same red hair, same temper, same posture, same fingernails bitten down to their beds.  Same aura of invincibility.  Same tendency, when upset, to disappear into the garage and tinker, rather than allow emotion to bubble up.  He’s been spending a lot of time in the garage lately.  He made an amplifier from scratch last week —circuit board and everything— and is working on another. 

How does a cardiologist grieve when his father’s just died of an unexpected heart attack?  When he lives hundreds of miles away and was certain he had a few more decades to diminish that space?  A few more decades of talking about home-grown hops and home-brewed beer, a few more decades of sharing our girls with him, of learning about what else to expect as a dad. 

The first day back to work after returning from the funeral, Gavin told me he had a patient who smoked so much that he had to wash his hands three times afterwards just to wash the smell away.  I know that Gavin has many of those — people who care less about their health than he does.  People unmotivated to change their habits to keep a heart attack at bay.  These are the people who enrage me now, because it seems downright unfair for any of them to be living when Gavin’s healthy, 63-year-old father has just passed away.  Me? I would have a hard time keeping the F— you’s from slipping out. 

But my husband just goes out to the garage, clipping wires with the tools his father gave him.  He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing.

It’s relatively easy for me to process my own grief: I’m a writer, so it’s okay for me to be emotional, even when I’m at work.  And I can take cues from our girls, welcome the tears triggered by some harmless family tree crafting activity from an American Girl activity book.  It’s okay for me to climb into their beds and hold them as we cry.  It’s not as easy for Gavin.  He has to stand in an Oxford shirt and a white lab coat, smile meekly while the wife of a patient expresses her condolences about his father.  “Oh, Dr. Noble,” she says, “You’re so good at what you do.  I hope it wasn’t his heart.”

Gavin’s been playing in a band lately, taking his home-made amplifier that he built with his father’s old tools to someone else’s garage to play.  Evading his sorrow with the company of men and the sound of electric guitar.  Last week they had a gig on a night before I had to leave town. —Which, I’m embarrassed to say, annoyed me.  Then I found out that it was a benefit for someone from work who is facing terminal cancer. 

He stayed out late, later than usual, and didn’t answer any of my calls or texts.  I paced the halls at home because everyone knows that tragedies often happen in pairs.  When he finally came home, I was short with him, my temper flared by our missed opportunity to debrief on the kids before I left town, by the beer I smelled on his breath.  “My phone battery died,” he told me, “And I took her out for a beer.”  Meaning the woman who is dying of cancer.

Maybe it was being able to do one small thing for this woman before saying goodbye.  Maybe it was not being able to do either of those for his dad.   In bed, finally, he whispered, “Why didn’t I catch it?  This is what I do.” 

I climbed under the covers and molded my body around his.  Held him as he cried.

The post Heartache appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

I did not come from a very happy home, and so whenever I encountered this writing prompt, I found myself defaulting to a different home, to my husband’s home, and the family that adopted me.  So here’s what I often think of when I think about home:

Cars filling the driveway.  The scent of smoke from the wood stove on a crisp December night.  Chainsaws and gasoline lingering in the garage.  Sweat-stained baseball caps hanging on the wall.  The sound of the door, the creak of the stairs, the dance of pet hair on the floor.  The fruity, yeasty smell of homebrew on the stove.   Sports jerseys and newspaper clippings stuffed into a drawer.  A Mustang under the bedspread out in the barn at Grandma’s farm.  The sight of Les and his older brothers leaning over the hood of a rusty Ford.

I think of brothers—his brothers, and the brothers that he fathered: Gavin and Brian, how much they look like him.  I was standing with them by a campfire, eating catfish by the canal when I first really noticed this, when I noticed that the man I love stands exactly the same way his father did: weight on one leg, thumbs hooked into front pockets, spitting into the fire.  And his hands—exactly the same.  Same shape, same knuckles, same nails bitten down to their beds.

What else is the same?  His hair? His nose?  His temperament?  Dare I say: his heart?  Ah, see now I have your attention—because maybe we’re not supposed to talk about that.  But I must, you see, because Les’s heart is a big part of the reason I think of this as home.

It’s the way he always came out the front door to greet us with his arms open wide.  The way he brewed a batch of my favorite beer, called it “Honey Grad” and brought it to my college graduation back in Ohio.  It was the way he labored over the heavy wooden arch under which Gavin and I would stand to say our vows—painting and swearing at it when he loaded it onto the truck.  It was the way he was always there for you whenever your time of need.  It was his own vulnerability: the quiver in his voice when he called our house once to atone for his mistakes, the way he said, “Don’t give up on me, darlin.  I really need you now.”  It was the way he loved being a grandpa, the way he cradled the tender heads of our newborn baby girls.  The way he rolled around and played on the floor with them, the way their faces lit up whenever he walked into the room.  It’s the same way they light up now when Gavin comes home from work.

My girls have a father who would do anything for them, who will caress their faces and stay with them until they fall asleep.  Who, every night—long after bedtime is done, goes back in their rooms to kiss them and whisper goodnight before he goes to bed.  My girls have a father who is unafraid to show his love for them because that’s what he was shown.  Heart.

Les’s heart has taken him away from us, but not before it gave.  We grieve today because he left us too early, too suddenly.  Too unexpectedly.  But after the shock and the tears and many sunrises and sunsets have passed, I think we will see that Les has prepared us well in loving one another, in forgiveness, in being devoted to another’s needs.  We’ll see that he has prepared us in what it means to call a place home.

The post Some Things About Home: A Eulogy for Les appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.