A year of goodbyes

 I opened the top drawer of my father's dresser and peered inside. 

A four-leafed clover key ring, set in glass and edged in silver, sat in the jewelry tray along with a half-dozen safety pins, a St. Christopher's medal, some coins and a tiny ceramic pair of Dutch shoes.

Memories came flooding back.

The room hadn't changed much since I was a kid. Its furniture was arranged for storage more than purpose, and sedimentary layers of dust had accumulated since age and infirmity encroached. 

It had taken me more than a year following his death to shake off the dust of dread and finally clear out his things. 

I had said goodbye but I hadn't been ready to let go, just as he hadn't been able to part with the things my mother had owned. 

All of it here still. 

There were official documents, yellow-edged, folded and fastened with age-dried rubber bands; flax-colored notebooks he used to bring home from work, some of them filled with numerical figures of some unnamed accounting while others were empty; and so many mementos, including a personalized wrist cuff with my name on it bought at the county fair while I waited anxiously for the craftsman to line up the letters that would rend my name into a length of leather with a snap at each end. 

It still fit, if only barely. I put it on and continued to extract items from the collection, separating each into bins or bags depending on their final resting places. 

At the very back of the drawer, wrapped in brown paper, lived the small hand puppet I had fallen in love with in a Boston toy store. He must have saved it -- a white rabbit with wood block for a head and polyester fur for a body -- from a bag of my toys headed for Goodwill after my final departure. 

I may be taller now, but feeling my calves harden into a cramp as I pressed up into my toes to get a better view brought me back several decades into my childhood.

Back then I would furtively drag my mother's camel-saddle hassock over to the high-boy bureau as quietly as I could, trying to keep its paired ornamental bells from announcing my treacherous snoopery.

I have authorization now. 

Still, my heart raced at the sight that startled me most way back then. And there they were: four rifle cartridges tucked inside the snug elastic loops of a leather holder. 

I knew he had the hunting rifle somewhere in the house, but I'd never seen it. My initial search of the closet I'd been warned away from as a child had nothing but old clothes, cobwebs, and perhaps the ghosts of Christmas presents past. 

I had just about decided my father had disposed of it himself as he was putting his affairs in order. Something I had hoped he'd do so I could stop thinking about the unthinkable.

My son found it.

Unloaded and zipped into a soft case my father has stowed under his

Bed. Discovered after we'd disassembled the bed frame and hauled off the old mattress. It was heavier than I imagined and imposing for an old gun. 

I still don't know if he'd ever fired it; the stories he'd told about its acquisition circled around being vetted by a hunting party he'd been invited to join but never zeroed in on a target. In my mind - the childhood one that refused to speak to him for two weeks after a mouse died in a trap he had set - I had concluded his interest in deer hunting was more social than practical.

For a moment I wished I had asked him. But then I decided it was probably best to keep my doubts. 

My husband secured the gun and stored it temporarily under lock and key. It would not live with us for long.