Gold

My Dad has started selling his gold. It alarmed all of us at first. Is this what happens when you don’t save your money? When you live hard and fast and do all the stereotypical things in the 80s? Fast cars and women and cocaine and reckless nights you don’t remember? Is this what happens when a lifetime catches up with you? When you never thought you’d have to be responsible for anything in your 70s and then there are you with no income and a house and a wife and you didn't think it was going to go this way. 

Dad has started selling his gold and there were pieces I wanted and I find myself being mad when I have no real right to be— it was his gold after all and the price is higher than it’s been in a while and if he needs the money he needs the money. But there was that gold horseshoe ring— studded with diamonds, those probably went for a lot too. I always pictured myself wearing it after he died. That ring was going to be mine. Dad is a cowboy— or he used to be— or so he likes to think he is. He’s misplaced in the suburbs but never had the courage to live in the country. So much talk of it, of owning a ranch and training horses and riding and being out in the wild. But something always chained him to the sad streets of the burbs— with his too-expensive cars and too-big houses and too much alimony from too many wives. 

He’s sold the gold cufflinks with little horse heads on them, and the one gold chain that grandpa gave him, and the rings, the old wedding band— maybe a few of those, and that goddamn beautiful horseshoe ring that was meant to be mine. 

It’s silly to want something from a person when they die, as if their energy is still wrapped in the thing, but maybe it is. When I was home alone I went into Tom’s closet and was suddenly hit with a wave of grief I couldn’t kick down— seeing all his shirts, sweaters, and shoes lined up perfectly just as he had left them. I sobbed in that perfect closet with his folded t-shirts and sweater vests and all the pigeon sweatshirts I had ever sent him. Is there something more of a person than their closet— where all their STUFF is— just sitting there waiting for them? He’s not coming back I told his shirts. I huffed his polos and laughed when I picked up his ugly Christmas sweaters, I touched the dust on the shoulder of his jacket and watched stray pigeon feathers fall to the ground. 

I asked Mom if he had any jewelry, anything, I took a black cashmere v-neck sweater and a pigeon racing t-shirt but I wanted something more sacred. She gave me a gold cufflink with what looked like a greek god riding a horse– here, take this one, I’ll keep the other one she said – this is real gold, I bought these for him years ago. We talked about making rings of them or wearing them around our necks on a chain. I held it in the palm of my hand, terrified of losing it on the long way home. This precious metal, it sits on a shelf in my bathroom where I look at it every morning– maybe I’ll leave it there– a constant reminder, a sacred stray thing.