When my father left he took little with him. Some, but not all, of his clothes. A few books, a few CDs. His telescope. And the skillet we’d just gotten him for Christmas. He’d cut down the tree from the woods beside the church next door. A red cedar, it was incredibly sparse and lopsided, having seen little sunlight during its short life. I decorated it for him with a few small glass ornaments that wouldn’t weigh down the branches and a string of blue lights shaped like snowflakes. It was lovely. 

            On May 1st, 2020, my mother passed away. I woke up that morning to a text message from my father to my brother and I that simply said “She has passed on.” She’d been in hospice care less than a day, having endured a sequence of surgeries and sedations and transfusions and intubations that continues to horrify me. We buried her on May 7th. The service was outside and we handled almost everything ourselves, with help from my parent’s friends. Most of the flowers came from my mother’s garden. The arrangements overflowed with purple and yellow iris, red kniphofia and white peonies. My brother carried her urn to the gravesite and during the service I gently lowered it into the small square hole they’d dug the day before. It was cold and sunny, a little windy. People fanned out among the headstones. May 8th was our first Mother’s Day without our mother. 

On March 16th, 2021, my father drove 14 hours to Florida the day after his second COVID shot to move in with his girlfriend. On May 26th they married. My brother and I were not invited.

In the time between Mom’s death and Dad’s departure I spent at least two days a week with him. We had dinner together every Wednesday night at his house after work. He did the cooking, with a limited but improving repertoire of dishes. He found a simple shrimp paella recipe in the newspaper and cut it out, and that became a kind of specialty. He remembered my favorites and made them often. When he cooked for me, I felt loved. 

On Sundays my husband and I brought him dinner, big, hearty crockpot meals with plenty of leftovers. We spent our birthdays together. Went to an art museum, made baguettes from scratch. We talked about black holes and elections. Dad and I were, as I once told him, two peas in a pod. 

Everything left behind became mine. The spiders sensed the emptiness of his house and started to take over. Webs were soon draped across every room. You couldn’t walk anywhere without feeling them against your arms and face. I checked on the place and sat in the quiet family room on Wednesday night after work. I didn’t stay long. 

Spring came and Mom’s flowers bloomed in her absence. 

In Dad’s desk drawer I found a stack of photographs spanning at least eighty years. I found other photographs stashed in a chest of drawers. Two boxes in the closet. If he took any pictures with him when he left I couldn’t tell. 

I must be four or five in the one I’m holding in my hand. We’re with Santa, probably at Cloverleaf Mall, which has long ago been torn down. On Santa’s right knee sits my brother, smiling serenely, his blond bangs a blunt line across his forehead. On Santa’s left knee sits my father, with me in his arms. Poor Santa. I look bewildered. I’m not looking at the camera, but into the distance a little desperately. Maybe I’m looking at my mother? My father smiles and holds me tight. Santa has his arms wrapped around us all and somehow doesn’t look like he’s broken a sweat. I can’t imagine we sat there long, just enough time to record this moment on film. It is one of the most adorable goddamn pictures of me in existence.

I remember none of it, I only remember this picture and its accompanying story, told with a laugh and sympathy for the stranger with the white beard and glasses who had to put up with a little girl who wouldn’t stop crying. And here is the evidence, tucked away in an abandoned desk with a bunch of useless shit, shuffling around a wooden drawer with pens that no longer write, keys that go to god only knows what, and a bunch of paperclips no one fucking needs.