My father’s obituary dropped off the newspaper websites on Friday. I think I actually felt the link break and disappear. There was a feeling of finality to it to me, as though April 11, 2008 was another significant day of his life. One second after midnight, a simple if/then statement archived his picture, my words and the guest book which carried with it the possibility that I might get to know more about him.
I’ve had a bit of an obsession with his online obituary. Yes - I wrote it, and I was proud of it, but it wasn’t about that. I have several copies from the paper. I can read it whenever I want. It’s the fact that it was online and there was a guest book that left me with the feeling that part of his life was carrying on. The guest book was dyanamic. It changed every time someone added a comment and as long as the guest book was still active, there was a possibility of someone sharing another story or picture or some new piece of information that I could hold on to. This online obituary turned into an almost tangible connection linking him directly to me. One I never felt I had when he was alive.
I was completely taken by surprise when my mother asked me to write his obituary. I spent the least amount of time with him. I have the fewest memories of him - not only because I was born so late in his life, not only because I was only still a child when he started working a lot of overtime and nights in order to build up his retirement, but also in large part due to the absence of many memories prior to the age of twelve, as a result of years of various (some experimental) medications to treat my epilepsy. I suppose that’s something my father and I ended up having in common – he also had the fewest memories of me.
I wasn’t sure why I was so aware of this April 11 deadline. I have the print out of the comments. I have the obituary, the DVD and the audio of the funeral. Why do I even care about the website? Here’s the embarrassing reality. First a disclaimer - I don’t believe in anything. Don’t take this the wrong way. I don’t think there’s an afterlife. I don’t believe there’s a layered system of heavens or purgatory or any of that. But I guess there is a part of me that really wants to. I checked that guest book every day to see if somehow my dad had any added a comment about what I had written. It’s completely bizarre - silly, optimistic, whimsical even, but I think that’s how he was about life at times.
