January 3^rd, 2018

Dear Daddy —

This is the third day of my first year without you. I want to tell you all about Christmas—not that you had time for such things—and all that’s been happening otherwise. But, before I do that, I had to tell you—

I get it!

In one of my favorite Monty Python sketches, Graham Chapman wants to do something about the noisy church bells next door, and he opines, “If only we had some kind of missile!” Well, I DID have some kind of missile… until we gave them to museums.

All those late, endless nights that we spent working, when I was yawning, my eyes were closing, and it was usually cold—because we were usually working outside—I never understood what it was that drove you to work so hard. We worked on cars, we worked on the house, we worked on building shelves to hold the stuff that you kept bringing into the house, we went and picked up the stuff and brought it into the house. And, might I remind you, the stuff included B-52 gun-sights, half-ton antenna mounts, giant darkroom enlargers and 12-foot long gas lasers. Oh, and missiles. Five missiles, At least their noses. Those, at least, you wired up and used for your actual, paying work.

But I never understood how it was that you kept going until all hours. You never seemed tired. You actually seemed cheerful, for a change. Cheerful, that is, until something didn’t go the way you wanted it to. But you were especially cheerful when the rest of us told you that we were tired, bored, cold, and just wanted to stop.

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November 29, 2017

Dear Daddy—

The Chocolate House in 2015

I’m going to stop writing for a while, and go back and read what I’ve written. I’m not sure what all I’ve talked about, and I need to take stock. There’s so much ground I need to cover, it’s hard to hold it all in my head. I guess that’s the point of putting it in writing.

Did I talk about the plumber’s first visit, or the day I realized you had not actually run any supply lines through the house? Did I talk about cleaning out your rented storage space? I know I talked a little about how we came to move in here, but did I tell the whole story? How many rooms have I touched on?

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November 27, 2017

Dear Daddy—

I’ve allowed another long break in writing to happen. It’s been a very busy time, and, of course, it’s been Thanksgiving—our first Thanksgiving without you. Mother’s first Thanksgiving without you in 66 years. It went well. There were irritations. There were arguments. I think that’s the definition of a family holiday gathering.

We ordered a turkey from Maple Lawn Farms. As long as we’ve lived in Clarksville, just around the corner from them, we’ve never done that. I think I was three or four the time, just before Thanksgiving, that Mother drove by and I saw all those turkeys on the lawn and asked, “Are we getting one of those turkeys?”

For some reason, we never did. But this year we did, and my whole family spent the night before in your house. Renee brined the turkey the night before, and got up at four in the morning to start cooking it, so that dinner could be ready by noon. Susan had to work the afternoon shift.

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November 15, 2017

Dear Daddy—

I suppose it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect to undertake a task as big as this one and never lose my temper; never come to the point where I think maybe I should just walk away; never feel despair.

Of course it’s not reasonable. I’m a human being, and I have feelings. More, I’m a strong human being, and you always told me strong people have strong feelings. Over the course of the past week, those strong feelings have gotten the best of me. I won’t go into detail. What upset me is my problem, not yours, and I have to solve it. And it involves others who don’t deserve to have half of the story told in public (since I’m sharing these letters publicly) without the chance to tell their side of it.

It’s enough to say that things started to get to me, and I came to the point of asking myself, “Do I really care that much about this project? About this house? Am I really willing to commit the rest of my life to maintaining a house that I could not afford to buy on my own?” Because, let’s be honest, I never could. I consider myself professionally successful, but my household income would buy maybe a third of this house you left behind. There are those who would say that it’s a white elephant, and that I’m throwing good money after bad trying to hang onto it. To say nothing of the fact that Mother may need the money that’s tied up in it, someday, so it’s still anybody’s guess whether it can stay in the family at all.

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