His Gray Sweater
The worn, cloud-gray cardigan hung undisturbed in the back of my closet. It was a find I rummaged from father’s own closet years ago, an over-sized thing with asymmetrical holes bestowed by dedicated moths and other critters.
One winter, I wore the cardigan nearly every day. The faint, but there, smell of cologne and cedar lingered throughout the white brick hallways of high school. It was immensely warm and comforting.
At winter’s close, I stored it away again, tucking it between the folds of shirts and blouses and faded blue jeans.
And there it stayed.
My grandfather passed last October.
That gray wool sweater with holes cratered into the shoulders was his a long time ago.
I remember hearing about his death on a cool Sunday morning. Somehow, I knew what was coming on the other line. “Grandpa passed away last night,” Aunt said calmly, the existing cracks in her voice masked perfectly.
At first I felt relieved. It seemed his 90 year-old body was finally collapsing under the weight of years suffering from dementia and a stubborn episode of pneumonia.
But it never sunk in. His death was devastatingly anti-climatic.
Maybe it was because I never knew him well. When I was younger, he and grandma visited every summer, treated my family to Sunday brunch at the officer’s club, and played card games with us around the dining room table. But I never knew him.
With death comes sadness, as it usually does.
But I think my most heart-wrenching sadness blossomed from the simple realization I had no idea who this man was that I was crying about. As people teared and sniffled around me — mourning his memory — I found myself tearing and sniffling because of lost time.
Lost time not knowing the very person who raised my own father.
Lost time not knowing the man who taught me how to putt.
Not knowing the person who retired from the Navy and traveled the world — perhaps inspiring my own wanderlust.
Not knowing the person staring at me from a photograph in the living room, the bluest of blue eyes twinkling in the most literal sense.
(He had beautiful eyes.)
I cried because I didn’t know.
I pulled out his gray sweater a week ago.
Hoping it would somehow connect the bonds of lost memories. The holes in the shoulders were still there. The smell of cologne and cedar were more faint.
We’re continuously reminded not to place stock in physical objects. They don’t last — memories do. But what if you don’t have those memories? What if all you have left is a gray wool sweater? I’ll never commemorate his life the way my father and relatives can. But even the physical things, the things I can hold and touch — I can remember him through that.
I’m wearing his gray sweater now.
It’s snowing. The sky is a sheet of milky white layers, with fluffy snowflakes cascading down. The sweater is warm, a little scratchy. I can’t help but wonder about all the places its been, all the memories woven between the stitches of wool.
— TheLou
