Flannel

My brother’s house is full of us, all gathered for some post-funeral dinner and decompression. Pan after pan of enchiladas and rice have disappeared, the cousins have run off, and five of my brothers have shed their pallbearer suits and converged in the garage to take part in their decades-old ritual of brotherly bonding: The Hack. (Also known as Hacky Sack.) Kicking a tiny, crocheted bean bag around a close circle of bros might be the best kind of therapy.

With my daughters off giggling somewhere and my son lost in the world of Wii, I make my way down to the playroom, a temporary storage spot for boxes and boxes of my father’s belongings—files, yearbooks, VHS tapes, life stories, even pre-marriage love letters between my adorably unknowing parents.

I’ve just spent the greater part of Thanksgiving weekend digging through these boxes with my siblings. We set aside items to display, quoted snatches of journals in quavery voices, laughed at forgotten photos, and gasped at the evidence of a goodness so encompassing you barely take note of it until it’s gone.

But now there’s something new among the boxes. A stack of neatly folded shirts just brought over from Dad’s house. I paw through the pile and they all fade away as my eyes find the one at the bottom. Flannel. Red, blue, and green plaid, lined inside for warmth. A shirt that is him above all others. This is the shirt that should be coming through the front door right now, to calls of “Grandpa’s here!” I’m sure I have rested my cheek on the front of this shirt more than once.

Faster than thought, my hands grasp the soft fabric. Yearning rises up and struggles against my desire to be fair, my awareness of the number of siblings versus the number of our father’s personal items. But I’m walking nonetheless, up the stairs, through the kitchen. I struggle to swallow as I pass spouses and children and piles of food and open the door to the garage.

The Hacky Sack plops to the ground. Five heads turn to see me standing on the step with a men’s extra-large shirt clutched in my hand.

“How do we . . . ?” I falter. “I mean, who gets what?”

And these sad, tender brothers—these tall, bearded men—look from me to the shirt to each other and confer. In moments it’s decided. It wouldn’t fit them anyway, they assure me. They want me to have it.

“Really? You’re sure?”

I slide the shirt over my shoulders. My fingers barely peek out the ends of the sleeves. And my tears are a deluge and here comes my baby brother, the tallest son, a father himself in three more months. He murmurs, “Aww, Aim,” and pulls me into his arms.

I’m used to the hole my mother left, the absence of her, the pain that is dull but can spark at the scent of her perfume packed away in a box of my dad’s. The wound still hurts but has long felt familiar. I’ve fashioned my very self around that sorrow. Without it I wouldn’t be me.

But this.

This plaid-flannel ache sits heavy on my shoulders and enfolds me in loss. This hole is new and surprising, filled with echoes of a voice still as close as a phone message, and whispered words that sliced through delirium like a beam as I leaned over his bed only days ago.

I pull the billowing shirt in tighter around me.

I could drown in it.