A month later, on September 1, 1990, he died. He was sixty-nine years old.
* * *
—
Randy avoided Dad’s memorial. He never called Mom to see how she was doing. He remained silent.
Twenty-eight years later, as I rummaged through my journals trying to piece together Randy’s response to our father’s passing, I came across a letter I never sent.
Dear Randy,
You missed Dad’s memorial. Robin said he went like a broken bird. It made me think of all those sparrows and blue jays mom tried to save over the years; all those little winged friends who’d flown into our sliding glass doors, or fell out of the sky for one unknown reason or another.
When I’d looked at Dad in his hospital bed just five months ago he seemed fine except for the bandage covering a shaved section at the top of his head, and the long plastic leash filling his body with clear fluid. It reminded me of those bird feeders you buy at The Builders Emporium. Dad, like the birds we tried to save, had a bad fall. Mom said he died facing the window that framed the ocean slit in half by the blue of the sky.
It’s hard to imagine what our dying bird saw. Hands adjusting his head on the pillow? The shadow of Dorothy’s face gliding in for a last kiss? Did death at the very least grant him a final glimpse of the world through a hazy blue tint? Do you think he had hopes? Or was hope a thing with feathers?
As you know only too well, Dad didn’t struggle to connect through feelings. His words, the things he said, the lessons he wanted us to learn, constitute a rigid, blank slate; it’s almost as if the spoken word had no place in his relationships. Words were not to be trusted. Perhaps all those multiple meanings led Dad to his almost religious belief in sound bites. Am I on to something here, Randy?
You are one of four people who can help me remember Dad in sentences and paragraphs. You’re the only one who’s written down your woes on long nights of unhappy days. Remember when we were the only two Hall kids, in diapers? We had a couple of years there when it was just you and me, our bunk bed, and Mom and Dad. Remember how he used to curl up on the beach when he was just a kid himself, when he was still part of an ordinary family making his way to success before all the complications that ensued. Do you remember seeing him so obviously in love with his “Mud”? Maybe the responsibility of accomplishment was too much. All those Toastmasters torture sessions, all those right things to do for the family in order to get ahead. Ahead to what? I know it’s been rough for you, Randy. If you’ll let me, I’ll help you try and remember his eyes spinning visual rhapsodies as he stared, drink in hand, at the waves coming and going for hours at a time. Remember?
When I die, as you know the oldest goes first, I promise to give you a pair of his fins, and the snorkel from the old Bob Blandon skin diving days. I also promise you the striped tie I stole from his closet and the button-down cashmere sweater. Oh, and even all the nickels and dimes he collected in all those jars over the course of a lifetime.
I also intend to include two jars of sand, one from Huntington Beach, the other from Dad’s final resting place in Tubac, Arizona. These mementos are for you to remember, not just the difficult times, but the times his face lit up with joy on those rare occasions he let himself appreciate you for who you are. I know I’m reaching here.
What are we, but aspects, infinitesimal aspects, both good and bad, of who our father was. You have to forgive him while you can. Someday we’ll be joining him, just a couple more broken birds on our way to where.
Love, Diane
* * *
—
Over the course of several decades, Randy kept hidden a host of impressions based on his perceptions of the father/son relationship. The truth of Randy’s unspoken rage in “Letter to Pop from a Suicidal Son” is hard to read, hard to understand, and hard to forgive.
Now that you’re about to eat the big one,
now that you are curled like a fetus, helpless
in your tent of bone and flesh…let me tell
you how I love you; I love your worthlessness,
your money crumbling in its hiding places,
your body full of drugs that keep you out of my
life. I love your clothes with the stink of your
death. I love the stink of your death, how it sweetens
my life, how it makes you small enough to crush
under foot. Father you are a balloon about to
pop. I love you enough to hold the pin, waiting
to poke you when you open your mouth. Open your
mouth Pop and I’ll kill you.
I’m so tired of you, I’m so tired of me. We are
fossil fuel for our own driven madness that feeds on itself.
We have come to an intersection
in which there is nowhere to go; you are turning
toward death. I’m turning toward reluctance.
We are bound to each other but lost to any
reconciliation. Pop, we are fucking Siamese twins,
and I mean that literally, I mean cock-tied. I mean
useless dead things; prehistoric reptilian
flesh turning to oil with unmixable water. I fuck you.
You fuck me, and we are never satisfied. I didn’t
start this and when you die, you will not end it,
and for that there is a certain finger I give you long and hard.
I’m spam in a can, dad; food for the populace.
You were the chief slice and dicer.
You took my potential and burnt it,
You carved it into dollar bills and fed it to human
Dogs fresh from the fluff factory. Your death is not only staring me in the face,
it is eating me inside out.
Sonny Spam is my name, suicide’s my game.
And I do so much want to thank you.
* * *
—
Later, among Randy’s papers, I found a less tormented perception of their relationship. With time, Randy had had second, even third thoughts. A lifetime of unexplored feelings and memories on the subject of Jack Hall began to creep in.
I will not forget September 1, 1990. A broken bird left the earth. The living could not follow, could not see the wings expand, nor hear the sweet song echo in the heavens. Until now I have never thought of my father as a bird, but something about death makes us small and fragile. “Our father who art in heaven,” you trundle us with the wind of your feathers, you make us cry with fear and love. Destination, oh destination, what manner of nest awaits our troubled bodies? If we too are birds what happened to our song in this hour of absence?