After visiting the doctor (a scheduled check-up), my lawyer (skewed inheritance lines will hinder my inevitable dispossession of what was once our home), and lender (credit check, probable loan, likely mortgage), I saw my fathers girlfriend.
Years ago, I had a premonition about this meeting. Aware of our mortality, I nonetheless did the childish thing and either ignored or dismissed those signs. Seeing them again later, I failed to prepare adequately.
Or I refused believing that either parent would ever cease existing anytime soon. Obviously this behaving like an adult stuff will be tougher than I thought.
Fathers girlfriend still cant accept hes gone. Wonderful. His other woman is in denial while my mother, his widow, has zipped through all the stages of grief.
Me? Im coming out of stupor and going into stumbling purposefully. Finally steps in the right direction.
I visited his girlfriend because hed bequeathed her some money. Malice insists I say its for services rendered. But mercy and being male myself give me understanding.
Loyal as I am to mother, I realize I was only a product of their marriage. They shared matters -- or hid them -- whose other side can no longer be heard.
Whether he tired of mother or merely succumbed to our male prerogative of seeking the new, I can only suspect. While it wouldve been informative, it also wouldve become awkward if Id asked his girlfriend what hed seen in her.
In other words, how did she supplement mother? I couldnt. Cruel and unfeeling Ill leave to the two-legged vermin who troubled his last years and are now trifling with me.
The greatest threat to world peace isnt terrorism. Its ignorant, itinerant and marginal money-hungry relatives.
The gift surprised fathers girlfriend more than me. Having waded through and culled decades of papers, my capacity for amazement ended upon surmising hed arranged his finances the same week the doctor informed him of his disease. I matched financial maneuvers against the doctors prognosis.
Father almost lasted the whole two years predicted him.
There was no reckoning or settling accounts with anybody in the time allotted him. Not even with his one true confidant. Hints, maybe, slipped in now and then. But solving the whole puzzle wouldve needed his public, casual and concealed lives to merge.
As far as discreet women go, I suppose fathers girlfriend met the nebulous criteria. Mother was aware of her. However, as long as the other woman didnt flaunt the relationship, his wife muted any complaints. Public complaints. Between them perhaps an occasional tart comment from her mayve filled a room or two.
The afternoon of our meeting, a mild Thursday here, fathers girlfriend and I reminisced. She was circumspect. I appreciated her grace. In her way she confirmed my esteem of him.
Whether he ever considered me worthy of his respect is immaterial. He was father; I merely his son.
That kind of judgment passes down, not up.