![]() ![]() The previous day, Dad and his brother Al had spent the day going through documents and papers at my grandmother’s house. ![]() But when Gillian Welch was on, I sung along softly and almost cried, just as I had the night before. They were in there (had been for weeks, I suppose), so we just let them play. Five CDs were in the Acura’s changer: some opera, some classical, Disc 1 of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a Phish CD, and Gillian Welch’s Time: The Revelator. Today we listened to music much of the drive, but it felt unintentional, not the result of any mutual desire or eager choice on anyone’s part. There was a time in my family’s history when that would have been unthinkable there was always music. What music were we listening to at that moment? It’s possible we’d reached a silent spot. When I looked at the image my camera captured seconds later, there was the most aged version of my father I’d ever seen. When I’d looked at him before taking the picture, he’d looked tired and unhappy, his mouth set in the shape of an unused staple, the familiar furrow between his eyebrows (partly to blame for his many headaches, my mother believes) deep enough to sow seeds in. He was not so asleep, I found, and good-humoredly mumbled something about his hair being awful wild for picture-taking. And I followed up on that urge with my digital camera. I felt, then, an uncomfortable urge to take my father’s picture. A canister of fat-free Pringles had spilled open on the seat beside him, crumbling all over a bag of books I’d brought along and a cutting of resurrection fern Mom was bringing back. There was a crusted dribble of something on the front of his flannel shirt. His eyes were closed, head tilted back on the seat. The day after the funeral, his voice had gone fully hoarse, making him sound as though he’d become a very old man overnight.Īt one point on the way home, I looked to the backseat to see if Dad was awake. His throat was so sore he didn’t want to swallow even the Miller Lite my cousin offered him. I’d spent Christmas night with him, typing while he dictated the words he’d written to read at Irma’s funeral. He was suffering from a bad cold, made all the worse over four days of preparing for and attending his mother’s funeral, held the day after Christmas. Mom and I drove most of the way, while Dad slept. A few miles later, a billboard advertised Montgomery’s main tourist draw: Civil-Rights History. We passed SUVs with patriotic stickers on their rears, and a sign that has stood for as long as I can remember on the side of I-65 North: GO TO CHURCH… OR THE DEVIL WILL GET YOU, it threatened, that last part in red letters. From Moss Point, Mississippi-Dad’s hometown-we cut a diagonal north through Alabama, en route to Nashville, Tennessee. ![]()
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