Grandpa's in the River

Pamela Villars

"We threw Grandpa in the river!"

 

My daughter's thin, high voice rang across the crowded room. The gray-haired woman, her grinning husband and travel buddies looked at each other and chuckled.  Oh, no, please let's not go there, I thought. But we were trapped, in line to board the flight that would take us home to Austin. It had been a long weekend, a family reunion in the pre-Katrina New Orleans, my father's birthplace.

 

My daughter was answering an easy question.

 

"What did you do in New Orleans?" the kindly tourist had asked.  And my four year old had answered with the experience she remembered the most. Never mind the beignets, the voodoo shops, the trolleys or playing with her California cousins. No, she remembered throwing Grandpa in the river.

 

As I caught my breath, the conversation continued.

 

"Does your grandfather like to swim?" the woman asked, gazing at my child's upturned face.  I had no idea what my daughter would answer. Nor should she have to.

 

My father had died two years earlier. Our ambivalence about him paralyzed us and he had since lived (well, was stored) in a Houston garage in a large off-white plastic cube. Finally, my two sisters and I, along with our children, had traveled to New Orleans to scatter his ashes in the Mississippi. We held hands, said brief prayers, grayed the waters with his memory and walked back to the hotel in the Louisiana dawn.

 

I leaned in to the woman - I didn't want to embarrass her.

 

"My father passed away," I said softly. "We scattered his ashes in the river."

 

The group of elders gasped and moved away from us faster than the river current took my dad.

 

I took my daughter's hand and we pre-boarded the flight. The elders passed us later as they entered and never looked our way. Lepers, we were, too close to death.

 

 

Pamela Villars still talks freely about death and enjoys it. She blogs at http://pamelavillars.wordpress.com