Up in Michigan

Washing Off WInter end of March or early April. It involves vacuums, pails of water filled with Spic and Span, scrub brushes, Oxi Clean and dusters. I reach into places I usually don’t go to remove the residue, to get rid of the evidence of the cold and white.

Last year, washing off winter took on new meaning.

When I came back Up North last spring after a few days away, the lake was still frozen but in the process of thawing. The ice heaved and sighed, the way my father did as he died on March 17th. The sound haunted me and kept me awake at night. I will never forget that time in my life. It’s strange how sorrow makes you acutely aware and so alive. The memory of an experience sticks in ways it might not otherwise.

I remember that—almost from the moment I arrived at the cottage—a huge

I put a black and white photo of my father there along with his pitch pipe and his favorite Frisbee. Then I cleaned some more.

One day while I was scrubbing, I found the silver Alzheimer’s identification bracelet my father wore as a precaution in the event he became lost. The funeral director handed it to us along with the box of my father’s ashes: “I AM WOODY” was etched along with his phone number and address on a small oblong medallion next to the purple medic alert insignia. I held it in my hand. I wanted to feel it against my skin the way he felt it against his. I remember thinking, This silver chain still contains his DNA. I placed it next to his photo. And began cleaning again.

By the time the first hepatica bloomed in the woods, it was as if the image of the man my father became at the end of his life—the man with Alzheimer’s—began warm wind began to roar. It blew waves over the ice, melting most of it in just one day. The next day, within what seemed like a matter of hours, tiny bulbs of hyacinths appeared. The leaves of ramps shot up like green flames out of the soil. The stems of trilliums reached out of the earth, grasping for spring. A strange heat wave arrived. It was 79 degrees on a day in late March. The neighbors and I kayaked along the shore, all the way down to what we affectionately call “the foot”—Walloon Lake Village—bought ice cream, and kayaked the several miles back. My grief went away for a few of those sunny days. It felt like a gift my father had sent. melting away along with the spring snow. For the first time in a very long while, I could visualize him as president of his company, sitting behind his oak desk. I remembered him leading discussions at the dining room table and telling us stories about his life. I could see him performing with his beloved a capella singing group. I was able to recall him whole, all of a piece, before Alzheimer’s began to take him from us.

The neighbors and I kayaked along the shore, all the way down to what we affectionately call “the foot”—Walloon Lake Village—bought ice cream, and kayaked the several miles back. My grief went away for a few of those sunny days. It felt like a gift my father had sent.

Then, just as suddenly, a blizzard hit, scaring off the peepers and covering up the bulbs. I made a fire, wrapped myself in a blanket on the couch, and let myself go back to grief again, sobbing. It always seemed worse in the morning, when I realized he was gone.

I made a little memorial on the surface of my grandmother’s marble-topped table.

I went back to washing the windows. I rubbed the glass until all the streaks and fingerprints were gone. The glass shone and let the light in. I thought about how we come back inside our cottages to let the living move back in where the dead have been. The cottage was ready for summer, and ready to be inhabited again—ready for lives that will go on without my father.

Mary Ellen Geist is author of Measure of the Heart: a Father’s Alzheimer’s, a Daughter’s Return. (Hachette, 2008) She is a freelance writer, radio journalist, and singer, and lives on Walloon Lake. megpie123@earthlink.net