The Day Begins
What will it hold for us?
We’re on a journey toward a new phase of life. I’ve taken a position as “Front of House” at Daily Provisions down the street at Q and Connecticut NW here in DC.
I’m looking forward to it as it will get me out and about on a regular basis. I’ll get my steps in too. It will be a change from having my leisure here in the bunker though. I’ve been fortunate to be able to take eighteen months off from earning a regular paycheck and to get the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC off the ground.
It occurred to me yesterday that it was the two year anniversary of the last time I had the opportunity to talk with my father. I am grateful for that. I posted a note about it last night before I turned in:
Another day in the bonus round for me. Earlier this month, I noted that I very nearly wasn’t here after almost succumbing to pneumonia thirty years ago. My father and I were 30 years and 19 days apart, so I’m right about the age he was when he went through the experience of driving up from Williamsburg not knowing if I’d be alive or dead when he got there. I cannot imagine the terror of this. It got worse before it got better and yet, I pulled through. I feel I must have been a great disappointment, but I never got that impression from him. He was, as my old Musick Master once told me, “steady.”
It’s hard to know what to do for those we love when they are going through life. His example, to me, tells me that I should simply love and hope for the best. Attempting to control situations and others just gets me into trouble and I think he knew that.
One of the last things that he was reading was a volume of Walt Whitman works that he’d bought as a student. I found it near his chair.
“…a Kosmos…” and so he was and remains. I love the motto on the bookmark and read it during the service after we interred his ashes.
“The heart that loves is always young.”
At 91, I can say with certainty that he was still very much the young boy who, upon the arrival of the groceries in 1939 when his aunt was looking after him while his parents and older sister were at the New York World’s fair, called out “The groceries done come!” When his aunt was slow to respond, he added “The cookies done come too!” I’ll be missing him forever and am grateful to have had a relationship with him in the 28 years that were added to my life after surviving that pneumonia episode that grew richer and deeper over time.
Two years ago today. I got up and got dressed. I stopped into the bedroom where Dad was still stretched out and said goodbye to him. He often was in bed well into the morning at the end of his life. My mother would bring him a muffin and coffee. His mind was sharp to the end but his body failed him by degrees. That was the last time. When I arrived on April 7, he was unresponsive and would remain so until he breathed his last. I was able to get word to his 93-year-old second sister and she was able to be at his side before he passed, her son and daughter-in-law having driven her from Charlottesville to the hospital. I stood at his left side as my mother was at his right when I noticed his breathing stopped. The heart beat a few more times and stopped. The color left his lips. The doctor came in to call the time of death.
Since then, my main purpose is to ensure that we Harold B Gills are not forgotten.
Onward!
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What a beautiful tribute to your father, Hal.