The Man in the Shoebox

The Man in the Shoebox

By Rich Strack

They came into Sheenan’s Funeral Home, men wearing dark suits and ties. Women in black. One young boy squeezing his mother’s hand was shuffled to a seat far away from the front of the room. A suffocating scent of flowers surrounded the open casket. A few sniffles and whispers I heard behind me broke through the thick silence that hovered around us.

A woman smelled like she soaked in a bathtub filled with cheap perfume bent down before me and said she was so sorry in a gust of bad breath made worse by the stench of cigarette smoke. The odor reminded me of my grandfather who died from smoking four packs of Camels every day. He was the only person I had ever seen in a casket before now.

Mom hugged all the visitors, one by one. I sat with my hands folded and stared at the dead body. He never looked so good in life. Hair combed. Face shaven. Dressed in actual clothes, not just boxer shorts that had Mom shouting, “Somebody’s here, Nick! Go put some pants on!” anytime there was a knock on the door.

A Catholic priest arrived. He chanted what seemed like 100 Hail Mary’s followed by loud sobs and breath hitching wails from all the old women. For a moment I thought the body was going to tell everyone to shut up and say, “Trying to get some rest in here!” After the mayhem was finished, everyone left the room except for us relatives.

Mom kissed his face, something I had never once witnessed when he was alive. My aunt wiped the mascara off her eyes with a clench of tissues before she scurried out. My neighbor placed her palm upon his chest through a rush of tears.

I was last to leave. I was chosen to be present while the funeral associates closed the casket. I stared down at him, hoping to feel something, wanting to feel anything, but nothing came to me except a question that never escaped my lips.

“Who is this man?”

The year was 1970. I was 19 when my father died. I went home that day, spun a Grand Funk Railroad album on my RCA stereo record player and turned up the volume so loud the speaker vibrated right off my bedroom dresser and crashed to the floor.

27 Years Later

Mom died in the summer of 1997. Her house sold in a week. I held a sale to rid the place of furniture, and I hoped all my storm - clouded memories would go out the door with it. A group of men carried the kitchen table and chairs out the back door. As my eyes followed the table, my mind flashed back to Sunday mornings when I had found empty whiskey and beer bottles, standing in perfect order like obedient soldiers. They had been lined up on that kitchen table as if they had been in a war.

And they were.

On Saturday nights when I was 11 I lay in my bed squeezing my pillow over my ears to muffle the battles that raged over that table between my mother and father.

“I should have listened to my mother and never married you,” said Mom, her voice thickened with Miller beer. “I quit school and never graduated because I believed in you.”

“I told you we should have gone to Maryland when my boss asked me to go with them,” Dad shouted, “but no, you wanted to stay here. Now nobody wants to hire a 51-year-old man who has bleeding ulcers from all the stress and can’t take five steps without grabbing onto something to catch his breath.”

The battles lasted through the early morning hours. Back and forth they yelled with liquor laced language that would have gotten my mouth washed with soap if those curse words were said by me.

With him out of work, Mom ironed rich people’s clothes to give us more income. One night at dinner, she said, “We don’t have enough money to pay all the bills this month, and you stopped looking for a job.”

He threw a pork chop across the table that nearly hit her. I stood up from my kitchen chair. I was 14 then, angry at him, angry at everything.

“I hate you!” I screamed. “You’re no father to me and you never will be!”

He jumped up, wheezing to catch a breath. He reached for me, but his hand grabbed the edge of the table. I picked up the pork chop from the floor, slid it across the table, and ran out the back door.

*****

With Mom’s house emptied, I decided to take one last look around. Something told me to make the attic my last stop. My eyes moved past the place on the floor where there once was an American Flyer train set that never made its way downstairs. Not once did that beautiful blue engine circle a Christmas tree.

Just when I was about to leave, I saw a shoebox jammed into a corner under an eave. The lid was covered with dust. Inside, stacked neatly in a row, were small envelopes, yellowed from age, each addressed to my mom from my dad to her maiden last name. Three cent stamps were fixed at the top right corners.

I opened one. The date was February 14th, 1936, written in ink that looked as fresh as if the pen had crossed the paper just yesterday. I read the letter out loud to myself.

Dear Darling,

I feel so alone right now. It’s Valentine’s Day and I miss you so much. I must keep working and save money to pay for our wedding. I can’t wait to see you dressed in a beautiful white wedding gown. My heart will be jumping out of my chest.

We’re going to have such a wonderful life together. Me and Johnny will build us a Cape Cod house out in the country. We’ll raise a family there. I hope we have a son. I can teach him how to play baseball, and we’ll go fishing together and my brother Joe said he’d give me his train set. I’ll put it around our Christmas tree every year.

Darling, I love you so much it keeps me awake at night. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms. I’ll write you every day until we can be together again.

Love you forever,

Nick

PS- I’m so sorry I couldn’t get you a box of Valentine candy with all the chocolates you like. I promise to bring you some candy that’s as sweet as you are when I come back in three months.

I dropped to my knees with the letter held against my heart. My eyes filled with tears. I opened more envelopes and in each one, he had pledged his love to her.

That man that lay dead in the funeral home 27 years ago was not my father. My dad was the man in the shoebox, a man filled with dreams and hopes long before he helped bring me into the world, long before life would bring him ulcers and a lung disease that would send our family into a black hole filled with joblessness, welfare, and food stamps.

I have but one photograph of him. He’s 15 years old and he’s wearing a baseball uniform, looking happy and healthy and never like that guy who walked around our house in his boxer shorts because he said wearing clothes made it harder for him to breathe.

I believe that God wanted me to find the shoebox, to find the man who wrote all those love letters. God wanted me to find my dad to be. I have since forgiven that dead guy in the casket. My dad is alive inside his letters, and his words have taught me to do the best I can to live a life filled with love.

I remember when Mom had a heart attack. She was 43. Dad came home from the hospital.

“How is she?” I asked. “Can I see her tomorrow?”

He glanced at me and grabbed the top of a kitchen chair to steady himself.

“She’ll be okay,” he said, fighting to get the words from his mouth. Then he did something I had never seen him do. He cried. A bucket of tears rolled down his face.

I said nothing, but my disgust for him filled my mind with an angry thought. You did this to her. Now you’re crying like a baby.

Every Valentine’s Day, I read the letter out loud that I pulled from the box 29 years ago and I think back to that moment he cried. I wonder if his tears fell because that man in the shoebox had failed to deliver his promises to the only woman he ever loved.

With a tear in my eye, I look at his photograph that sits upon my fireplace mantle. I hold him close to me and look into his eyes. I speak the four words that I had never said to him before.

“I love you, Dad.”