the presence of absence III

We saw him hours earlier. He was flattened against his pillows, milky eyes fluttering, shallow breaths barely fogging his oxygen mask. Fluid gurgled in his lungs, his hands cold and twitching. The foam boot that had kept his diabetes-ravaged foot in place lay on a nearby chair, infection now feasting freely on the bone. He had no assets, no possessions, no teeth. Just a nursing-home johnny. He died yesterday at 7:21 PM. He was Richard Vielmetti. Child of the Depression, youngest of four brothers and a sister, World War II veteran, cross-country hitchhiker, ice cream maker, vacuum peddler, donut salesman. Chris was his middle daughter.

This morning’s sky was crystal blue and I saw Richard everywhere. In the frosted leaves in the driveway, in the lone goose peeling off from the line, in the rutted streaks of cloud that reminded me of the back roads he used to travel, truck loaded with vacuum bags and parts. Stenciled on the back window: “Lifetime guarantee if you promise not to live too long.” Many of his customers were poor and missed payments. He called on them at their rural homes and sometimes accepted a power tool or dinner instead. Richard grew up with nothing, the son of immigrants, his mother a one-lunged cripple. These were his people. Most everyone else thought he had a screw loose.

One of Richard’s favorite pastimes was Skip-Bo, a simple card game of sequence. He wore out deck after deck and passed them on to us. Richard and I once played Skip-Bo for six hours straight. Last night, Chris, Shea and I dealt a round in his memory. When we were done, we separated out one of the wild cards to tuck in his shirt pocket when he’s cremated on Wednesday. When Shea asked to play again this morning. I grabbed the lone card off the counter but Chris stopped me. “We should play without it.” She was right. It was a beautiful thing. The three of us sitting around the woodstove, dogs at our sides, none of us playing with a full deck.