Have a Good Grief

When my dad was sick, we went to a gathering at the house of one of his Naval Academy friends. While there I was regaled with tales of his wild young days, stories each new face was glad to tell because that’s what the reunions were for, but also because it was hard to see my Dad in his neck brace and crutch, smiling and laughing, but not able to tell ones of his own.

At this party one of his friends asked me what I went to school for. When I told her I was a writer, she replied instantly, “Just like your father.” I felt so confused. My dad, who I had never seen read a book for pleasure? Who once said of a short story I wrote for my creative writing class in high school, only “he didn’t come up with that,” (he was right I stole the plot of the Prophet, but how dare he!).

1.   After finding a good medicine cabinet and picking it up in the suburbs. I had to take it apart enough to remove the mirror and replace it with glass. I asked someone who works with glass for advice on how to score and break some panes to the right size, cutting off smaller and smaller pieces as I attempted a rounded corner. After a few practice pieces I got a couple cut to good size, only for them to not quite fit (1/8 of an inch too wide), so I attempted to sand them. And let me tell you, even with a mask and gloves on, that was a truly terrible experience. The grating sound, the almost imperceptible itchy glass dust (sand?) getting everywhere, but I finally got it to fit the frame, and then I dropped it while cleaning it up.

This a common rhythm of my relationship with my father. A sort of offense at coming into contact with him, before a resettling. And for a long time, I took offense at my father. When I was little I’d always ask mom for anything I wanted, and when I went looking for her and found dad in her place, I would freeze. Calculating if I should ask or make up an excuse. And then when he died, offense at the things he kept to himself, like his chili recipe or the stories of his first loves. This is all I really wanted from him, but in the end, he wasn’t able to give them to me. Once I finally accepted that, I became curious again. I gathered what material I had to make something new.

The intention of wanting to hang my work formed after taking a year break from prioritizing art. Coming back up for air, I not only missed the long hours in the studio talking to myself and endlessly fiddling, but felt a call to take that art out and show it. I looked around at my collection of pieces, and figured I have enough of my “stained glass” style birds to do a small show. But, more excitingly, I could make something new, like the layered piece I did for the Vox Populi fundraiser. I didn’t know where to begin, only what I wanted--a chance to try some new things on a more ambitious level, with a built-in deadline.

2.   So I moved from glass to acrylic(essentially plexiglass). Bought special blades for my jigsaw, switching them out every few seconds of cutting so they wouldn’t overheat and turn the clear plastic into an orange-pink sap that bubbled like chewing gum. This time little plastic slivers lined the pavement of the studio courtyard, instead of glass dust. But ultimately it was way more forgiving and I got it done it a day and moved on to the poem itself.

About 6 months after my personal declaration I got an email asking me to be a part of a pitch for a group art show on grief. I have never said yes so quick. I instantly had an idea for how I could visualize my poem, “Practicing in the Mirror.” I would make an altar / funhouse mirror. Julie, who curated the show and invited me to participate said I could do 2 or 3 pieces, not all of which had to be poems. I buzzed as I typed.

As the first piece came together slowly, I kept buying equipment I didn’t end up using in an excited haze, followed by a stinging financial regret. But soon I really believed myself when I said, I’m here to try new things. I found my often missing beginner’s mind, and started savoring the trial and error. Fell in love with the problems I was blessed with. Following through on type of idea I had been having for the past few years, only to have to watch it float on and fade away from lack of time or endeavor. Now I had both. 

3.   I used black vinyl and made a quick design for my die cutter and cut the poem. Then came the long process of cleaning the letters off the sheet. Removing all the parts that aren’t the words themselves, including the little eyelets hiding in the hollow letters. I used transfer tape to pull the vinyl letters and reapply them to the acrylic, dotting my I’s and crossing my t’s.

I had a realization that young Greg wanted so badly to be doing EXACTLY THIS. Ordering tools, and playing around in my studio workshop, and the mistakes are all part of the fun. I returned from my fear and grasping and came back to the land of ideas. I visualized the things that would make me excited about the piece as a viewer just stumbling in. And I continued to try and remember my father as an important exercise and not in the court of internal opinion.

The poem I was working on was about seeing my Dad’s face more and more in the mirror. And the idea of letting him back into my life in the present tense. Having his sneeze, clearing my throat like him, having an itchy nose and clenching my jaw like him. And to take those similarities further. I always saw myself as so separate, and I am quite different in many ways, but he’s in my biology as well as having raised me. So I began to delve into the oneness. And really look at that part of our relationship.

4.   The poem was now legible on the acrylic. This turned out to be the hardest part of the whole endeavor. The wallpaper design that surrounds the medicine cabinet only needed to be adjusted from an old card of mine into a repeatable tile. But after that, making the 30 or so tiles I needed is about as automatic as breathing. The hardest bit was figuring out how to make an oval that big. I ended up using my oft forgotten art-o-graph.

At some point in all this visualization and remembering, I began to chuckle at how much he probably would have enjoyed helping me with this. How it would be the perfect kind of project to finally involve him into my world. Better explain to him my artist’s mind and help him see the similarities with his engineer brain. The way he saw everything as a process that could be improved upon. And how he could help me improve this process in little ways while I showed him the value of sharing your interiority. The function of making something practically functionless. The only purpose to share an uncanny and hard to describe sensation.

Of course the only reason this project exists is because he died of ALS in 2016.  I can imagine what it would have been like to learn all this from him while he was alive, and it would have take persistence. I would have received a lot of “Why do you want to know this?” And if I was brave enough, I could have probably explained it, and maybe we could have gone from there. But I rarely felt brave around my Dad, mostly just nervous, seeking vague approval, while also feeling the need to scurry to the safety of middle distance (whether physically or emotionally).

But here he was, with me not just in the mirror, but on my trips to Home Depot. All the sudden I heard his voice (had it been here all along?) talking me through the tools I would need. Should I go corded or cordless? For his trusted DeWalt or a cheaper but effective Ryobi which I already had the battery for? I could imagine him humble about the skills he didn’t know I could imagine him even backing off at that point, having to ask him for his help figuring out what neither of us knew.

5.   For the interior I made the objects out of paper clay, using balled up tin foil as the armature. At first I painted them with their branding, but ultimately I decided keeping the natural paper clay color would not only make it easier to read the poem, but work to keep with the theme of recreating something from memory. And the imperfections and fill in the blank-ness of that work.

 

But also I could see him reveling in using his skill set on something other than a bathroom remodel. Other than woodworking furniture to store his wealth of tools. And so he spent time with me for the first time in 10 years. My first time as a man with a retirement account and conflict resolution skills I developed from living away from home (though mostly from therapy). And so I built an ode to him in a bathroom vanity. In choosing objects, I tried to remember him plainly. He was out of the ordinary in some ways, but at his core he was a humble person. He didn’t ask too many questions when it came to things like hygiene.

I once told him about wet wipes after discovering them from someone else in college,

Me: “It’s been a game changer for me. Cause I’m hairy down there, maybe you aren’t?”

Dad: “I am too”

Me: “So how do you get really clean afterwards? I always had issues until I started using these wipes”

Dad:“I just always take a shower after”

Me:“Like every time?”

Dad: “Well it’s usually just once a day”

 

What to do with the accoutrements and accessories of a human once they are gone? All the maintenance of being alive and having to be cleaned, maintained, moisturized. Your smells. Both built in and as an added signature. I wondered if his dad taught him to shave, or if he just learned it like I did, from media, watching other men, and trial and error. I tried to remember what his dad smelled like, but my childhood nostrils only filled with mothballs, iron from the radiator, and the damp smell of basement.

He was once young, and feeling stuck, wanting to venture out into the world. Leave his small town and go on an adventure. And he did, just like me. I know he was very depressed when his parents died. I can only imagine what he needed from them that he didn't get. What good it would have done him, to find his parents again after they left. To write a new chapter with his father, who was hard and quiet too. I'll have to ask him sometime.