Emotional Stew (2)

Emotional Stew in Father's Gut

["Happy days in the late 1970s at a family reunion"]

In the early 1980s, when my father declared whole-heartedly he wanted to be buried at sea, I didn't have much to say. I knew he had been in the Navy during WW2 and supposed his words were driven in some part by that experience, but a clearcut notion that I could somehow help him out didn't spring to mind. I think stunned silence ruled the day, except on my mother's side of the dining room table where she sat.

"What's going to happen to me?" she said. "Am I going to be buried alone?"

The tension turned thick that afternoon, as my mother made it clear she didn't want to be buried alone, that husbands and wives were supposed to be buried together, making me realize my parents hadn't discussed their last wishes regarding burial arrangements too fully before Dad laid claim to the sea in front of his startled witnesses.

I think today there were many reasons why my father wanted to be buried at sea, and those reasons worked together and created, about thirty years ago, some type of emotional stew in his gut. He thought long and hard about it, reacted deeply to it, and the words just spilled forth that fateful day, and damn the consequences.

["Both parents likely dealt with heavy doses of emotional stew"]

According to my father's Navy memoirs he was crazy about ships starting at a very young age. He writes, "I used to make boats by folding paper in a certain way and then sail them on the creek." I believe it. He showed me how to fold paper boats a certain way when I was quite a young boy, and as I recall, I didn't get the hang of it and stuck to my game of tossing twigs into roadside puddles or sticks into Little Otter Creek, west of the ball park in Norwich.

As well, more than once he recounts a story about how he stole a costly board from his mother and, with the help of pal Sonny Bucholtz, turned it into a fine sailing ship, the Bluenose.

More to follow.

Link to Fading Footsteps, WW2

Photos GH