palace of winds

It’s been five years today. Writing this remembrance is always overwhelming, and has in the past largely been private. There are the odd moments through the year it slips in, bubbling up unexpectedly amidst some other tale, taking over. But this day, this month, is for grief I do not show.

He loved to sing, and not once do I open my own mouth for it without a pang, without a wish for his talent. Without wishing I could honor him that way.

Rachel, Rachel, I’ve been thinking, he would sing whenever he saw me. What a world it would be. Often it was just this first part, low and easy. Rachel, Rachel, I’ve been thinking.

On my uncle’s wedding day they stood together on the little stage before the dancefloor, my grandfather laughing and insistent, my uncle accomodating, drunk enough. Another bride. Another groom. Another sunny honeymoon.

As the cancer spread it pressed into the place in his brain that regulates speech and often he could not make the words come. It was terrible to see, his eyes frustrated, grown enormous in his increasingly gaunt face. All the thoughts he could not voice. His hatred of the picture charts. His now-quiet rage.

But he could still sing, and the nurses sang with him. They gave him notes to get him started and he would sing what he wanted, what he needed. The everyday things trapped in his head slipping past the tumor.

We sang at his funeral. Amazing Grace and the Battle Hymn and something else, I think. I remember my sister on my left leaning to me and saying He would want us to, and my voice wobbling and whispering through the tears. Fractured and ugly, but for him.