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I Keep My Heart Inside My Grandfather’s Cigar Box
I keep those old letters to feel their love, but I forbid myself from reading them
My grandfather was a haberdasher all his life and, ironically, it was menswear that killed him. Well, sort of — he suffered his final heart attack while he was putting on his tie one morning. Does that count?
“Sometimes I just want to do nothing,” I’ll say to my eight-year-old son, in a half-assed attempt at describing depression.
“Well, Daddy — you’re always doing something,” he will inevitably reply, raising one eyebrow with age-appropriate, lil’ lawyerly cheek.
Folding silk over silk, slipping around and through the knot — that was the something my grandfather was doing when his heart had declared that it had had enough — enough flank steak, enough golf, enough wives, enough loss, enough cigarettes. You’re always doing something and so, by that logic, you’ll always be doing something the moment death swoops in to say hello. Or is it goodbye?
I don’t want to die driving my stupid antique car, mostly because I know it will hurt like a rabid sonofafuck as that unflinching steering column rockets through my sternum and my face gets macheted by the vintage windshield glass. I also don’t want my wife to be subjected to a…
