Dad’s Passing

The year 1942 Greer Garson was 31 when she hit it as an actress, a very mature time for a woman to make it big as an actress. I enjoy watching her films. I enjoy her strength, femininity and intuitive strategic nature.  Watching Classic films is so comforting. The films are the same year after year but somehow change with time. It is a matter of perspective; a film viewed at 5 is understood differently at 55. It is movie magic and in times of grief and sorrow films bring comfort and friendship. Today is such a day where the line –up of films accentuates the durability of eternal grief; the motifs and archetypes of life and films.

A long night of seeming madness and then with a couple of button pushes the classic films begin at late morning and without even eyeglasses or coffee. Three Coins in the Fountain, Notorious and Dial M for Murder will embrace me today. Now an awake child of the cosmos I find my eyeglasses, coffee and make cabbage salad with bacon, red peppers, avocado, jalapeño, and dill-rye bread.

Yet, the real focus of this little dilly-dally of a transforming short story is about three things which are: two songs, my dad and death. It was a week ago today that he passed. A nurse from hospice, three siblings, and myself attended as classical music played in the background. Intense and with a call to my heart. I asked my brother to change the CD,

“Put on that CD you got for Dad a few years back for his birthday, or was it Christmas!”

It was the best of Frank Sinatra. We watched Dad move into the eternal and listened with a pleasant release and joy.  He left us, dancing away with the spirit of our deceased mother, in a moment’s time between the songs The Young at Heart and Three Coins In the Fountain.