Chapter 4
Two months after my mother’s poignant death, my father took an early retirement from his construction job with Merle Windows and moved to the cabin in the woods. He packed only the essentials: shampoo and soap, a razor and shaving cream, BVDs, provisions, a new axe to chop firewood, matches, three bottles of Jim Beam, heavy duty socks, Timberland boots, a denim jacket, cotton shirts, wash cloths, a kerosene heater, his glasses, Tom Clancy paperbacks, stamps, a Mead notebook, two pens, his Canon EOS-5 camera, and a shoebox filled with film.
He called the move “his survival.” A term I didn’t fully understand because I didn’t feel or think that he had loved my mother. A term that lacked meaning to me because he had not attended his wife’s funeral. An action that I only agreed to
