{ The mis sion}
declares out of the blue, as we wander single-file along a hiking trail in the park where we are camping, the dog off-roading through the brush beside us. We are procrastinating, none of us eager to visit my father’s grave. “Yeah?” I’m surprised. He has never
m o
evinced much interest in Johns Hop- kins University, whose main campus
y son is planning his escape from our fam- ily already. “I’m going to go to Hopkins,” he
placed a flag and, strangely, a ceramic deer on his grave. My son grows preoccupied with the
deer, its ear broken off. “What’s with Bambi? Did he have a thing about deer?” I shrug. My husband continues his obsession
with the location. “I still don’t under- stand: Why did your mom bury him here?” I shrug. Their queries join the long line
ing the horse into a gallop as I clung on behind him. “Just tell me when you’re stopping,”
I’d beg. I hated it when the horse pulled up fast and I was unprepared, pitching forward and plowing into my father’s back or teetering dangerously off to the side if the horse stopped and turned at the same time. My father would always forget the
warning. “Dad!” I’d yell, and pound his back. “You were supposed to warn me!”
I scrutinized every man I ever passed in Air Force blues for the angle of his envelope cap, his gait, his profile. ...
sits seven blocks from our house (and where I occasionally teach as an ad- junct). “That way, I could live in the dorm
room right above Cold Stone Cream- ery,” he says, referring to his favorite neighborhood haunt. “I could drill a hole in my floor, and late at night, I can drop through the ceiling on a rope, eat all the ice cream I want then just climb back up the rope when I’m done and plug the ceiling.” He turns to smile back at me, trips on a log with his gangly legs, recovers — and doesn’t miss a beat. “Waa-la!” he says, meaning voila, his future all mapped out.
n the first day, we can’t find my father’s grave. “There were no trees in this part of the grave- yard,” I tell my husband and
Zack as we spread out, combing through the tombstones. “And I know it was to the right of the central road.” But that was almost 33 years ago. Trees have grown. Time has shifted. The next day, embarrassed — who
forgets where her own father is buried? — I ask the woman in the cemetery office where Paul Houppert’s grave is located. I am prepared to pretend I am simply an old friend passing through, but she doesn’t ask why I want to know. She is used to these requests, incurious. Lot 29, space 536. We find the grave
— he has neighbors now, nestled in close, valuable real estate. Someone has
of questions, never answered: Pilot error? Plane malfunction? Suicide? Deer? Selma? All I know for sure is that one minute he was, and the next, he wasn’t. Don’t forget to walk the dog. Parting words, a final nag. And a death so abrupt that my teenage self denied its reality, scrutinizing every man I ever passed in Air Force blues for the angle of his envelope cap, his gait, his profile, to be sure it wasn’t my father. Many years later, in 2005, I would
read Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking,” a memoir about her hus- band’s sudden death of a heart attack at the dinner table. She refused to throw out his shoes; he would need them when he came home from his business trip. I recognized, suddenly, that my fantasy was not unique, my mourning a process. And as I look at my father’s grave,
I realize that growing up also is a pro- cess; each year a child takes a step away from his parents, freely pushing back to define himself. But when you have lost a parent, you are walking backward, still moving away but always looking to the past for clues and hints about the separation. So many moments with my father
have been lost to time, I think; strange, if I were to die today would I leave as faint an imprint on my child? But this trip to Selma has stirred up memories. There were the rides along the Alabama river on our horses. “Hold on tight,” he would warn, kick-
22 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | june 20, 2010 He’d tell me to squeeze my knees and
feel the horse’s movement instead of clinging to his back: “Don’t rely on me for balance.” The dog is barking furiously, bring-
ing me back to the present. We have left her in the open-windowed car parked in the shade of a giant oak, and she is going crazy as squirrels taunt her on the branches above. I get her leash and take her out for a moment. Walk the dog. As we leave the cemetery, the car
windows are still open. A hot Alabama wind whips the dog fur that covers the upholstery into a tornado, spinning it into our hair, our eyes, our mouths. One by one, we close the windows and, as though the volume control has been adjusted, I can hear my son is talking. He has never been in a cemetery
to visit someone, he says, only to cut through on the way to someplace else. He would not like to be buried in one, he decides. “Why not?” I wonder. “Creepy,” he says. “I would rather
be cremated. Then, I want my ashes ground up in a smoothie for my family and relatives to drink.” “Strawberry or banana?” I wonder. “Strawberry, I guess,” he says. Then
explains: “I would live on forever that way.”
Karen Houppert is an author and freelance writer in Baltimore. She can be reached at wpmagazine@
washpost.com.
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