It's raining ghosts in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh was under construction the week in August that I buried my father. The roads were dotted with orange cones. Buildings adorned with scaffolding.
I flew in from L.A. on a flight that was delayed by four hours. I drove from the airport in a rented red Nissan Sentra, checked into a Marriott, and cranked the air conditioning because the heat was stifling. It would stay that way the five days I was home which is a word I don’t use often when I think of Pittsburgh since I haven’t lived there in eighteen years.

Another word I don't use often is "dad." He was always father. Dad didn't quite define it. Provider, yes. Father figure, yes. Mostly he was on TV. A journalist reporting the news for me every night at six. I watched him like everyone else in the city watched him. Work was everything and meant the world to him. That's not a slight, and it's something I'm sometimes guilty of but have made a concerted effort to remedy.

Two days after my arrival, I stood jet-lagged in a cool, still funeral home, watching a group of news reporters reminisce about the man who worked with them, worked for the same TV station for forty some years. I was both son and outsider. Family member and observer.

His colleagues shook my hand. Most wondered who I was, because work was always separate from family, and few ever met me in person or knew anything about me even though I watched them every night, had in fact watched one reporter do a story on my father's death two days before. He was there looking worse for wear, shaking my hand with tears welling in his eyes, sorry for my loss, and his loss, too. My father had meant the world to him. He was objective, and kind and a hard worker. All the people in the room told me how hard he worked. As if I didn't know it from his absences at Christmas and Thanksgiving growing up.

Later, in the procession, I was car number one, following just behind the hearse, driving to the cemetery with the hazard lights flashing. It was ninety degrees. I kept the window down any way, letting the smell of fresh cut grass and brand-new asphalt take over the car like a rear-view mirror air freshener.

I thought about death. How after burying both parents, I wanted no funeral and wanted to be cremated. I also thought that even though death is unavoidable, there is also the unavoidable renewal taking place all around me. On our trip, we swerved around construction sites, passing homes with fresh coats of paint, and new live/work/play spaces in various states of build. I thought of an old joke: There are four seasons in Pittsburgh: Fall. Winter. Spring. Construction.

He was eighty-six. Died just a few days shy of what would have been his forty-ninth wedding anniversary although my parents had divorced ten years before, and my mom died in 2013. My brother suggested he chose to die so close to that date for a reason. I thought it was giving him too much credit, especially since he had dementia. Life was a fog of smiling people in the nursing home, some he might have recognized at times, but who could say what goes on in that state?

The burial was uneventful with antsy people checking their phones. The thirty minute drive to the cemetery from the funeral home was odd and strange that he was being buried so far away, but that plan had already been laid before I’d flown back. Most of his colleagues hadn't joined the procession as they had to go to work, just as he'd had to go to work. I don’t think he enjoyed down time even in retirement. Fall all I know, dementia was a macabre coping mechanism.

My brother and I drove back the way we came, with hazard lights, and suit jackets off and shirts unbuttoned. Massive clouds rolled in, and with them violent lightning and thunder storms that made driving and walking impossible. It held off just long enough but it hung in the air even as the sun shined down on the grassy hill and tombstones. I thought of another joke: What follows three days of rain in Pittsburgh? Monday.

We stopped in the mall to wait it out. The same mall that used to have an arcade where I fed so many quarters into so many games. Last year, I published a collection of short stories. One of them was about that mall and that arcade, and a video game that might have been God. In the story I described just such a rain storm. Pittsburgh sees so much rain it made me who I am. I love rain of all strengths. April showers, quiet night storms, icy drizzles, hail-filled bangers, and everything in between. But in a storm like the one that came on the day we buried my father, the best thing you can do is wait it out. Kind of like grief.

Just a few months ago, my brother moved. A freak flash flood occurred in front of his old place. It was so severe, a woman drowned trying to drive her car through it. But as much as rain can destroy, it makes things grow, just like asphalt covers up potholes and building renovations make things look as good as new, even if they aren't.

I left Pittsburgh this week with a deeper appreciation of where I came from, and how I grew up. Childhood was happy, and while we had very little money when I was younger, it didn’t matter. We had each other. Now there are less others of us left to have. My parents are officially ghosts. They may have gone their separate ways in life, but I want to believe in death they're still in Pittsburgh, haunting the city like raindrops at night. But ghosts could just be another name for memories.