My Father’s guitar
MARCH 15, 2023
It’s been more than a year and a half since I’ve played on my father’s guitar. It’s difficult to write this. It’s difficult to know I’ll likely never play it again. Two decades in my care, roommates for most of my life. I was rarely separated from it and I always felt a bit uneasy when we were apart.
My father promised it to me just months before I turned 18. I remember that moment, sitting on the floor in my parents dark bedroom while my dad took a rest. it had been close to a year since he was diagnosed with stage four renal cell cancer and he was perpetually tired, often nauseated and nearing the last months of his life. I was playing It Is Well on his guitar and when the hymn finished he said quietly that when he passed he wanted me to have it.
He loved to hear me sing and I loved to sing for him. Especially that last year. I took so much pride in being able to contribute something good to his life in the midst of so much sadness, fear, and pain. That guitar was a trusted partner in my love of singing. It provided space and depth and background. I have always thought of myself as primarily a vocalist and the guitar as my patron, providing the resources to bring dimension to my voice. That guitar allowed me to accompany myself. It provided dynamic range and gave me goosebumps when we would hit something just right together.
One of my most favorite things about this guitar was the prominent buzz the big dreadnought body produced. I would push it tight against my chest and lean into that feeling. I did not know this was a self-soothing practice until the year my dad was sick. It had always been there — since I started playing in elementary— but I was not aware of the comfort it brought until something like 7 years in.
That year the buzz soothed me through the weeks and months of much uncertainty in the face of the certainty that life would be drastically different very soon. Sometimes after school I would sit under the dining room table and play. If I spent time somewhere so did that guitar.
There was no specific place for it except with me. I really can’t express the depth of comfort that instrument brought to me. When my dad gave it away it felt like he was formalizing something that had been happening for years. I had been growing closer and closer to it since elementary. This was perhaps the most affirmed I have ever felt by him.
It’s sitting in a closet now. A break in the neck glued back together a decade ago has loosened, the lacquer is flaking off, and the bridge is pulling up, only half attached. Parts of the wood have darkened. It’s hard to look at and it’s even harder to think of how to honor the memory of what it used to be and the reality of what it always will be. It was taken from the church I work at last year. I was confused as to why they would take it given its age and compromised neck. I wondered why they would even open the case in its worn and taped-together state. It was the case of a guitar that was well traveled and well worn. I spent months trying to find it at pawn shops, posted a reward, cried, called music stores, and cried again. I thought to myself, “it doesn’t matter what it looks like. I just want it back again. Give it back in pieces. Back is all I need.”
As I’ve said above, I didn’t like being apart from the guitar and I remember feeling nervous to leave it in the back of the sanctuary but I assured myself that it would be less than two days. I had worked on and off at this church for over 5 years and during that time I had left it over night just once before (and felt nervous then too). A day later, I got a call that someone had broken a window and taken a bunch of sound equipment along with some instruments. I held my breath and felt the butterflies and pressure building in my chest as I waited to hear whether it was still in it’s spot. Nothing was there.
I spent a week crying. It was disbelief and confusion and fear and despair coming and going. And I felt the loss of my father again. I felt panicked realizing I might never play it again and even more panic sitting with the reality that it was the only guitar I had ever really played. It felt like I would never play again. using other people’s guitars always felt uncomfortable. They sounded and felt so different. Thin, tinny, weak reverberation. How could I replace it?
I spent full days piecing together specifications I had never thought to know before in order to best ID it online. I scoured through years of pictures trying to find different angles to piece together a full serial number, make, and model. It was obscure and very hard to find online.
I got the news the first week of January, 2022 that they found it in the woods behind the adult center on campus. It had been thrown over a walkway on the side of the sanctuary and had spent months being rained on, exposed both very hot and cold days. The case was caved in to the point that it came back to me crumpled, in a plastic bag, covered in mold and looking like a pile of garbage. The airline stickers that had been there for so many years— Northwest Airlines (no longer around), Singapore Airlines and the iconic torn “Fragile” sticker— were destroyed. Seeing the guitar was worse. I was so happy it was home, but seeing it like that felt much worse than I anticipated. I kept that stale, moldy air in my chest for weeks and only exhaled my grief privately. It was and wasn’t back.
We’ll hang it on a wall. The unique relationship the two of us shared, the partnership, its patronage has ended. Not being able to play it feels like a death. I am learning slowly to think of it as a new thing. It’s still precious, it’s still how my father and sister taught me to play.
Who is even reading this far through? Who would spend this much time sitting in my grief soaked words? Perhaps no one and that is just as well. Here is my gratitude, my grief, and some hoarse and honest words. I’m glad I typed them out and sent them into our virtual public square….
…
I’m two dreadnoughts in now and I feel a buzz again. We’re growing more familiar and I think the panic is growing less and less. I known now that I will be able to take it out of the closet. Maybe soon.
I didn’t know that before.