The ugly Christmas sweater, bells and all, remains in the back of my car, jingling each time I turn. The dollar bill, petrified into a tight fold after a few spins through the wash, sits in my wallet.
When my father died, I kept only a few things. Among them: the ring he had always worn when I was a child, and the sweater I had bought him for his 78th birthday, his last one. Silly reminders that make me smile.
The ring still sits in one of my jewelry boxes, along with assorted other keepsakes, there for no reason other than, well, for the sake of keeping. Unworn and useless souvenirs of other places and other times. I had assumed I would get the ring appraised, maybe do something with the raspberry red stone that might or might not be a ruby. Eighteen years later, all I can say is I have kept it.
It's different with the sweater. He wore it the day I gave it to him, at the tail end of what we knew to be borrowed time. I had convinced him and my mother to abandon the comfort of proximity to his doctors and celebrate his birthday in Chicago. I was hanging on to our new normal, pretending that it would last. Cancer had made my father thin, overly thin, but in the sweater he looked almost like his old self. It was tan and it looked warm, kind of like dad. It had maroon piping on the v-neck and on the cuffs, the same color as the first of many Cadillacs he drove. My brother used to call it (the car, not the sweater) "the Maroon."
Only a month later, just before Thanksgiving, the new normal was shattered. His cancer was back with a vengeance, and there was no more putting off the inevitable. I still have the picture of us on the stairs at my cousins' home, smiling with the bittersweet knowledge that this was it. The last time we would gorge ourselves on turkey and stuffing and pecan pie together. In the picture he is wearing the sweater, the tan sweater with the maroon piping. The sweater that is still in my closet, long after the clean and comforting scent of my father has faded away. I still throw it on sometimes, when I am cold and don't have to go anywhere. It's strangely soothing, in an itchy sort of way.
It's been only two months since Adam died. Adam, my dear friend's son, a son to so many of us, at least in the way that we raise our children together, as a village. I like to think I shaped him a little, imparting to him my own special brand of wisdom, quirkiness, and bad habits, just as I like to think his mother did the same for my children. I know my daughter may have shared some lessons she had learned from me, like the carelessness with money that led him to leave wads of singles in almost all his pants pockets. Years ago, we took him shopping for "nice" jeans one day. He worried that the pair he had chosen might be too expensive; he searched in vain for the price tag. Becca told him not to worry; he would find out at the register.
I helped my friend, the other day, as she emptied out whatever was left Adam's possessions in his apartment. No baby clothes, like the ones I still carry with me, the boxes of useless items I cannot seem to throw away because they remind me of my own children in other places at other times. These were Adam's things from his adult world, his life as a twenty-something. Nicely folded jeans with wads of laundered one dollar bills in the pockets. Orphaned socks. Nice sweaters with the tags still on. An oversized Michigan banner, torn and bearing the stains of undergraduate beer pong.
And the ugliest Christmas sweater I have ever seen, loud by virtue of its colors and its many bells. I wore it as we carted bags of trash down the hall. I wore it as we loaded bags filled with Adam's still good clothing onto carts, headed to Goodwill. With every move, it jingled. I know his roommates wanted it, but I could not let it go. I never saw (or heard) Adam wear it, but it is so Adam. Bold, a little out there, snagged and imperfect, notwithstanding all the eulogies and the glowing articles. His mother always wants to interrupt people as they gush, tell them how he never wrote thank you notes.
The snagged, jingling sweater is just like Adam was, perfectly imperfect. Music to my ears.
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