Picking Raspberries

(In Memory of My Father)

by Camden Chaffee

“If there's another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none, he made the best of this.” - Robert Burns

It is summer, mid-July, the heat and the smell of pine sap slips through the air, bringing peace. Happiness. I feel my father’s large, cool hand holding mine. I’m safe and not so alone. We are walking through the woods, carrying little orange buckets to gather the ripened raspberries growing from the bushes in our forest of a backyard. I let go of his hand and run into the bushes, eager to begin gathering the berries for Mom’s pie. I don’t get very far in before thistled branches latch onto me and hold me in place.

“Hey, I’m stuck.”

“Hold on, I’m coming.” Dad’s quiet, gentle voice booms in the forest. He walks through the brush, brandishing his red, swiss army knife - the one I now have in my nightstand drawer. He cuts me free of the raspberry thorns I have become stuck on.

He’s my protector - the person I know will always be there to cut me free of life’s weeds, who will find me in whatever I’ve become lost in.

. . .

I’m 13-years-old, we’re sitting in the wooden row boat that belonged to his grandpa. I cast my line, watching it fly through the cool summer air and landing in the water, causing tiny little ripples. We’re the only ones on the water. It’s silent.

“My grandpa used to take me fishing in this boat,” he says.

“What was he like?”

“He was the best grandpa.”

I wish I could tell him how much he means to me, how he is ‘the best’. I wish I could tell him how I’ll always remember this moment - feeling close to him. I wish I could tell him not to ever leave. But I don’t. I sit. The birds sing overhead.

“I think you’ve got one,” he says, pointing at the line jerking in the water.

. . .

The saddest moment of our lives comes one morning, as I awaken to the sound of cupboards opening and slamming shut, glassware being knocked together. I get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. He’s standing, frantically searching for something. “Hey, what are you doing?” I ask. Turning to face me, I see his eyes filling with tears - something I hadn’t seen since his sister died. “Camden,” he says, his voice trembling, his hands shaking. “Where is the milk? I can’t find the milk.” I show him that it’s in the refrigerator, and as I pull it out and sit it on the counter, he breaks into sobs. I hug him tightly.

. . .

The day we take him to the dementia care facility, he cries. I sit with him in the office, holding his hand, listening to his pleas, begging not to be left there. “Please don’t do this. Don’t leave me here. I can do better.”

Part of me dies.

. . .

“Hey Chief,” I say. I place my hand on his shoulder and kneel next to the wheelchair. He has lost the ability to walk, spending most of his days sitting in front of the lounge windows, watching the world pass away each day. “Well what are you doing here?” He doesn’t remember that I have come every day for the past seven months, that each day I sit with him for a half-an-hour, and that I hold his hand and talk to him about his childhood, about his family, about his work, about all the things he loves.

“I just wanted to come see you,” I answer. He smiles genuinely, warmly - an image that will always be at the center of my mind, of my heart.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

He grabs my hand and squeezes it before placing it to his lips and offering me a kiss.

. . .

“There’s my special little boy,” I hear him say as he is being wheeled down the hall, back from a haircut. “I’m so proud of him.” I walk up to him, and take the wheelchair from the nurse, wheeling him into the lounge. “Hey,” he says. “We used to have fun together, didn’t we?”

. . .

The phone rings at a quarter to four in the morning. He’s being taken to the emergency room. Another fall, I think, as I slip back under the covers. Always, I will carry with me a profound guilt and shame for not dragging myself out of bed, and dressing, and being with him, telling him that things will be alright, that they always are in the end.

At eight, as I’m having my coffee and reading the New York Times, the phone rings again. I answer, and before I can complete a greeting, the voice cuts me off. “You should come down here.” I know what this means. I had anticipated this call. But not yet. Not now.

. . .

“It was not supposed to be this way,” I tell him, my voice ringing out in the empty hospital room. I hold his hand, feeling the memories and all the love he still had flowing through his veins. I watch as his chest slowly rises, then falls. “You told me once that life goes on; that regardless of what may happen to us, life just keeps going on,” I say. “I never thought I’d have to say goodbye to you, that tomorrow, life would continue without you. But it will.” I pause, not able to let words come out of my mouth. “Maybe I’ll see you again, somewhere else, on a new plane of existence.” He is unresponsive, but looks as if he has found peace - peace with his fellow man, with his God, with the life he lived.

Death comes.

It’s 1:46 a.m. on a Tuesday.

. . .

I picked out the suit he was buried in - the same one he wore to my baptism and my receivement into the Church. As I peer into the casket, staring at the man who was once my whole world, I feel an unprecedented hurt, the unique feeling that accompanies the loss of a person who had so much to give; someone who never judged, and who always carried with him a profound love for everyone and everything.

. . .

The cool spring breeze kisses my face while I sit on the soft, freshly manicured grass. His gravestone has just been delivered. Adorning the front of the granite, heart-shaped stone are large letters reading: ‘Love One Another’. My father lived his life using the fourth chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter as an example. “Above all, love each other deeply.” “I feel real lost right now without you, Dad.” My words disappear into the silence of the countryside. “I wish you were here to guide me, to tell me what to do. To tell me how to move forward.” I sit for a while before getting up; and walking to the car, I see an old, small slanted stone with a weathered inscription, “Oh, how we miss you at home.”

I fall to my knees, burying my face into the grass. Tears flow like the creek we used to play in when I was young. I feel his hand on my back. I feel his presence in the wind, in the near-cloudless sky, in the hope that still was inside of me - the hope of a better tomorrow, the one he always said was coming.

. . .

It is fall again, the temperatures dropping to the mid 60s, as they do in an average Northern Indiana September. I walk the trail that we used to walk each summer, making my pilgrimage to the raspberry bushes, to see if there is anything left. I come to the clearing, and see the empty branches, the empty raspberry bushes. But unlike the bushes that have slowly become bare and fruitless, preparing to embrace the coming of a cold winter, my father’s love thrives, blooming in and around me - in an enteral summer, like the ones we so faithfully shared.

Camden Chaffee