Writing the obituary of someone you are close to, say a father, isn't as easy at task as someone not trying to accomplish it might think. Or even someone who has been trying to cobble together something passable for six weeks or so. I think it's been eight weeks since Dad died and for the first two weeks I was too busy just lying about feeling sad to think about the practical aspects. And since my sister who lived with my parents for the past six years has been busy with even more practical aspects (like forms and certificates and things of that nature) it has been my task to do write my father's obituary. I'm a writer, it makes sense. If he needed new shoes for burial, if he hadn't been cremated and need no shoes at all, if he needed shoes and one of his children were a cobbler, then that cobbler sibling would be the one called in. It only makes sense. Maybe the cobbler kid would hem and haw for a few weeks too. Maybe bring out all the shoe designs and struggle to decide. What kind of shoes does a person who will never walk really need? The fact that heels and soles will never contact earth and would solely (ha) exist for the sake of being a disguise for feet, would that fact make the cobbler feel differently while going about the task? And the words that would describe my father as he lived, will they serve any purpose beyond disguising the absense? Celebrating the presence that isn't?
