The Grave I Dug for My Father

Five in the morning

I didn’t sleep much. At four I got up and showered, and when I came out of the bathroom Lisa was sitting up in bed with the lamp on and a white shirt across her knees.

It was my funeral shirt, the one I’d brought to wear Friday.

She’d ironed it the night before while I was on the phone, and now she was holding it out to me without a word, because she’d been married to me for twenty-six years and she’d heard the stories about Dad’s rule a hundred times.

I put it on with my dark jeans and my work boots. I buttoned it to the top and then rolled the sleeves to the elbow, the way he always did.

Lisa came over and fixed the collar and kissed me on the cheek and told me she’d see me at the church.

The cemetery sits on top of the only real hill in the township, with a row of old cedars on the north side that my great-grandfather’s generation planted for a windbreak.

Floyd’s pickup was already there by the tin shed, parking lights on, exhaust curling up white in the cold.

He climbed out when he saw me, a lean old man in a brown canvas coat, with a gray beard.

He had a shovel in one hand and a thermos of his own in the other.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning.”

He looked at my shirt for a long moment. Then he nodded once, like that answered something, and went to roll up the shed door.