Daddy's Drawer
What I learned from my father's nightstand.
by Kevin Keck
June 9, 2008
I visited my father's drawer a lot over the next few weeks, and learned a painful lesson about the law of diminishing returns. After a while, my fantasies of the women inside grew wearisome, but I'd just had a taste of the thrill of discovering the hidden world of my father — I wanted to know more; he was an enigma. My whole life he'd seemed a prudish man, reluctant even to tell a mildly off-color joke. And here, right under my nose, was evidence that he was not the man I thought he was — he was filled with desire just like I was.
After exhausting my interest in the magazines, I returned to the top drawer — his checkbook confirmed my suspicions that we had slightly more money than he let on. (But that was to my twelve-year-old brain — in retrospect I realize we were only one minor disaster away from destitution, a fact which helps explain my father's tired look in those days.) I found a few photos of his brother and sister in the old wallet, but nothing else. Then I opened the cigar box to examine the papers.
Most of the contents were of no interest to me then — little notes to or from people, mainly my mother. But what chilled me completely was finding the eulogy my father had written for his father.
At that time my grandfather would have been in his mid-sixties, though he looked younger — he still had enough hair to slick back with Vaseline, and he was barrel chested with muscular arms. He wasn't remotely close to dying in my estimation, but here was the proof that in my father's eyes it was necessary to be prepared.
I sat on the floor and leaned back against my parents' bed and read my dad's summary of my grandfather's life.
What chilled me completely was finding the eulogy my father had written for his father.
It was what you might expect to be said about a man of that generation: he had answered his country's call during World War II, he'd come home and humbly resumed his life in the textile mill, raising his family on minimum wage, but they never wanted for anything.
The whole thing was quite moving, but it was the ending that got me. It was an anecdote about how my grandparents never told each other goodbye, but rather so long because the word goodbye seemed so final. And that was how my dad concluded his eulogy, which the touching dramatic flourish, "And so today we do not say 'goodbye' to Clyde Keck, but rather, so long, dad."
©2008 Kevin Keck and Babble
About the Author
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Kevin Keck is the author of the memoir Are You There God? It's Me. Kevin., and a collection of personal essays, Oedipus Wrecked. Visit him at www.thekeck.com.
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