451

We just finished 451. Well, I finished reading it to them. I could have had them read it silently, but that doesn't go over very well. Many struggle with Bradbury's overly descriptive and lyrical prose. They also struggle with his metaphors and allusions. At least if I read it, I can explain those things.

Here is a beautiful passage that I had forgotten about. Montag and the other book men - several miles from the town - witness it being bombed and destroyed. Montag laments Mildred's death. At that moment, he can't really remember anything about her.

Granger, one of the book men, offers this account of his grandfather, and what it was like to lose him. His speech reminds me of my father -

"When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for all the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world is bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on."

I haven't read those words since Dad died. How many things the world is bankrupted of because he is no longer with us. How Kenzie won't know his gentle hands and his slow, southern drawl. How she won't know he patience and his eyes full of kindness. How she won't get to ride in the truck with him or see him laugh.

How I miss our arguments. How his stubbornness. How I miss his slow, patient way of doing things.

But then I remember . . . it lives on in me.

Kenzie will know him and love him . . . through me. And Kristie, Casey, and KoKo. And Barb, Arnie, Matt, Amanda, and Ashley. And Kevin, Deeann, and Damara. And Gail. And all those other people dad touched and effected.

Then I read the piece below. I never realized how this stuck with me and struck me when Mom died. It must have lodged in my subconscious because the poem at the bottom of this post was what I read at Mom's wake. It echoes the same thing Granger is talking about. Yet, I never saw the connection until I just read this in class now.

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that three or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime . . . Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint."

Fingerprints