Last night I went into a bookstore for the first time since Ficre died. Ah, I thought, I have been avoiding this, for he is the ghost of all bookstores. He is in the history section or the art section or the gardening section, reading books and piling them up. He would gather books for the children’s library, more books than they could ever read, more books than I thought would interest them, and we would fuss about it. I’d suggest taking a few off the pile. He’d say, That makes the whole design fall apart. I’d say, where will we put them? He’d say, we’ll get a bigger house, and then we’d laugh.
My darling you are not in this bookstore. Carrying home a bag of books I think of all the books I will never know about because you will not show them to me. I think of the loss of knowledge, all the things I will never know because you are not here to tell me. I cannot ask questions, I cannot be reminded. I can no longer say—though I still do—to the children, “That’s a Daddy question,” when they ask about the Peloponnesian War, or the Khmer Rouge, or Latin declension, or the quadratic formula, or how sinkholes are formed on limestone beds. You of all knowledge, you of all curiosity, god of books and deep knowledge, enemy of facile pronouncements, Ficre Ghebreyesus, ghost of all bookstores.
Ten
You were six and your brother was four, my mother said. The whole day passed, a lovely day, and at the end, I knew something was different, but I wasn’t quite sure what. Ah, that’s it! I said to myself. Nobody cried today! For the first time in six years, nobody cried!
We used to laugh at that story when my boys were young and the cries would come and go, dried up by the vanished sunlight like summer storms, fast-finished but ever-present.
I thought that phrase tonight. “Nobody cried today.” It is ten months, almost one year. I did not cry today. I cried yesterday. I may well cry tomorrow. But I did not cry today, and neither did either of my sons, though mostly I am the one who still cries. It is not an accomplishment, just an observation, but one that marks the passage of time.
The next day, Simon weeps, remembering the day his father died, remembering finding him, being the first to find him, wondering if dying hurt him, remembering that the last thing his father said to him before he went downstairs to the treadmill was a cheerful, “Check on me.”
You did check, I tell him. And then I came, and then Brother. And we were there with him when his soul left the room. He was in his own home, and he was with us.
The tears subside, and melt into a few strong shudders.
A bit later, the shower, Simon calls out to me, I was a ten in sadness when I was crying, Mommy, but now I am a six.
Whoops, he says, it just went down to five.
He comes out of the shower and puts on his pajamas.
Now it’s just a three.
He brushes his teeth.
Now it’s all gone, he says. We were with Daddy when he died.
Eleven
Today Ficre’s younger brother Sahle reminds me that he can always hear his father’s words, plainly—he was the same age as the boys when he left home and only saw his father a few times after. But the mold was formed. His father was in him, and is in him.
I look out at the backyard where Ficre sat and smoked and drank coffee and think to myself, he is not there. Not sitting in that chair. Is the goal to no longer see him there? Or to always see him there? Is the goal to replace these cherished vistas with new vistas?
I listen differently now to people who talk about the energy on earth that never dies. When we leave this house, what changes? When we return, do memories await us? Is it sad?
It is time to leave this house for a while and know that what is left of Ficre has a different form now. It is less sharp, more permeating, more essence, more distilled. It is less his body here, his body there, and more, he is the ground beneath us and the air we breathe.
I go to yoga for the first time since he died. Kundalini, chanting, rhythmic rocking, waving our arms in circles which they say opens our compassion. Compassion for others, compassion for yourself.
Compassion, waving my arms in circles.
Compassion, my capacious heart pumping.
Ficre’s great heart, a heart so big it exploded.
He was not tired. He was not done.
Twelve