From seventh grade through most of high school, one of my chores was to do the family’s ironing. Because my dad wore dress shirts to teach in five days a week and another on Sunday, he was my main customer. I tried gifting him sweaters, but he would just wear a dress shirt under the sweater, so that didn’t ease my burden. Turtlenecks were a “no sale.”
To this day, I really, really, really don’t like ironing and am so glad the steamer was invented.
On a recent Saturday, as I helped pick out my dad’s final and maybe most important outfit, I saw his shirt needed to be ironed. As I opened the ironing board of my youth and began to iron, fully intending to only iron the collar and front because he’d be wearing a suit, and no one would know otherwise, I realized that I would know. I would know that I’d put in a less than 100 percent effort on my dad’s final shirt.
As I tried to keep the drops of salt water from falling onto the garment, I struggled with clogged cans of spray starch and stubborn wrinkles that, no matter how much steam I used, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t good enough. My work wasn’t good enough. It had to be perfect for my dad. He had to look his best, not like someone who had his shirt ironed by a seventh grader. I continued to work on the shirt until I couldn’t.
As we drove to drop off my dad’s clothes, I looked into the back of the car to see the shirt hanging in front of his suit, the suit’s arms wrapped around my work, bringing about tiny wrinkles in the shirt and causing my heart to break just a little bit more.
I know my dad is in a place where he now wears a much better shirt than the one I ironed. It’s probably a wrinkle-free fabric; so, in the grand scheme of things, the shirt he wears here today is probably not really that important. It’s just a shirt. But, besides memories and photos, what you see here today is the piece of him that we’re left with, and I wanted to honor him by giving him my best.
As we get older, first our grandparents and then our parents gradually become this quiet presence in the background of our lives. Even though we’ve grown to be independent and don’t need them as much as we used to, we know they’re always there until, one day, they’re not. Once that happens, you reflect back on your last conversations and final words. Other than a weak “Hi, Honey,” on the phone, the last time I spoke to my dad in person, his last sentence to me was, “I’ll see you on the other side.”
I’ll see you, Dad. I’ll see you.
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