The Bench

On loss -- and what remains.

My wife and I have been married for 21 years. And we dated for several years before that.

So let’s call it 25 years that we have been together. Yes, she has a huge amount of patience. And tolerance for my terrible dad jokes.

But, I am getting sidetracked. The point is this: Every other year of those 25-ish, we have spent Christmas in Dallas, Texas at my in-laws’ house.

And the day after Christmas in (most) of those years, we got up early and drove to Montague County where my wife’s grandparents owned property. It was — and is — largely undeveloped land. There’s a pond. Some trails. And a shooting range.

And my father-in-law loved it. He had spent time out in Montague as a kid and, even though he had gone on to enjoy a bunch of success in the corporate world, he always, I think, was more at home in the country.

You might think that someone like that might look, um, skeptically at his eldest daughter’s boyfriend who a) grew up in Connecticut b) went to prep school c) had never shot a gun in his life and d) thought “roughing it” was being out of range of reliable wifi.

My father-in-law wasn’t that guy though. As much as he liked being out on his property, I think he liked the idea of introducing me to the country even more. Showing me how to load a gun (surprisingly complex!). And to shoot one (surprisingly simple!). How to start a fire in the fire pit down the trail. Where the beaver had set up shop — and how he (we think it’s a “he”) was building a dam. What he had done to the property and what he was fixing to do with it next.

He never made me feel dumb for not knowing the stuff he knew. And he always celebrated any time I showed even the most minor aptitude for, well, anything. (He even cheered me on during my attempts to hit a full liter soda bottle on the gun range. Notice I said “attempts.” Not “successful attempts.”)

Ken was just like that. He was a fan of me. And, well, everyone else too.

For those of you who have followed me for a while now, you know that Ken passed away very suddenly on St. Patrick’s Day 2023 — while we were all together on spring break in Colorado.

While I felt his loss less intensely than my wife and her siblings and, obviously, Ken’s wife, I still have struggled with it over the past 18 or so months. I loved that man. He was a good person with a kind and true heart and a willing and charitable spirit. I truly wish you all could have met him. You would have liked him. Everyone did.

This most recent trip to Texas for Christmas was the first time my family had been back to Dallas since Ken’s funeral. I think my wife and I both looked forward to it and dreaded it — because we would be staying in the same house we had stayed in when Ken was alive. We would be going to the same ice cream shop —Braum’s! — that he used to treat us to. We would be going to the same church that we last sat in when his casket rested near the altar — before I (and his sons and sons-in-law) carried it to the hearse. And, yes, we would be going back out to Montague Country — the place he loved so much…but without him for the first time ever.

Let me pause here and talk about how I — still a nonbeliever but someone trying to walk the path of faith — think about the afterlife. (This will be relevant in a minute.)

For me, I see the people who have died in my life as existing in a sort of Heaven-like space that, at times, abuts the living world. Which means that sometimes those dead folks are closer to you than others. Like a liminal space where the barrier between the living and the dead is tissue-paper thin.

And, yes, I think much of my belief — and how I envision the afterlife — is based on the Disney movie “Coco.” (If you haven’t seen it, you should.)

Ok, back to this trip.

I didn’t really feel Ken’s presence in the house he lived in — and where we were staying.

And I didn’t feel his presence at church on Christmas Eve, even though I was sitting in almost the same place I sat during his funeral mass.

And I didn’t feel him while walking around his old neighborhood with my wife the way the three of us used to.

Or even when I went to the grocery store he and I would always frequent when we went on last-minute missions to grab something we needed for the Christmas dinner.

I didn’t even feel Ken when we pulled up on the dirt road that leads to the property he and his brothers own in Montague County.

But then I saw this bench — a bench that wasn’t there two years before when I had last set eyes on the property:

The bench had been put there by Ken’s family to commemorate him. To remember that a good man had lived a good life. And he had loved this patch of land.

I sat down. And my wife did too. And we looked out at the pond — named after Ken’s father — and the land beyond it.

Unbeknownst to us, our sister-in-law snapped a pic of us sitting there:

When I sat on that bench with my wife, I felt Ken.

Now, look. I am not saying I heard his voice. Or that I felt him sitting beside us. But I felt a sense of happiness — that he was somehow there and he was pleased that we were there too. That he knew my wife and I loved each other and loved him. And that his whole extended family had made the trek to Montague to remember him.

It passed. I went and watched my kids and their cousins shoot some soda bottles and targets. (My brother-in-law is the king of gun safety so I always feel good when he is in charge — as he was that day.) I sat in the passenger seat while the nieces and nephews tooled around the property in a four wheeler. (Sidebar: Those things go faster than you think. And they are so much fun.)

I didn’t feel Ken in any of those activities. But just before we were packing up to head home — the light was fading fast — I went back to that bench and snapped this picture:

I don’t totally know how to explain this but, for me, Ken is in that picture. He’s sitting on that bench as night falls, looking out at the reflection of those trees on the water. Maybe his dad is sitting there next to him. And maybe, one day, his wife and his kids will be there too.

Man I love that idea. That the afterlife of Heaven or whatever is really just being in a place you love with the people you love. I think that’s why I loved this scene from the final season of the TV show “Ozark” so much (spoiler alerts contained in the video):

I hope that’s what is to come for all of us. I hope Ken is there now. If anyone deserved it — for the life he lived, for his faith, for his goodness — it’s him.

When I think of Ken now, I am going to try like hell to not have it be those final hours when he was just so sick. I am going to try to push that memory away — and replace it with this one: Ken, sitting on the bench, hand slug over the side, smiling and looking out over that pond.

That’s where Ken is now, for me. And it makes me happy to think how damn happy he is.