My Father’s Turquoise Socks

My father died of a heart attack when I was twenty-three. The night before he died I sat beside the hospital bed and watched him breathe. Half asleep, the stiff hospital sheets slid up under his neck, he opened his sad green eyes, pulled me close to him and said, “I love you.” My heart ached and I shook off the empty feeling in my stomach that told me he might die. But, at the same time, I couldn’t find the voice to reply back to my father, “I love you too.”

He then asked me to bring him his turquoise socks to keep his feet warm. Those socks were his prized possession. He wore them around the house and called them his blue feet warmers. Tired and late at night, he’d snuggled his toes into the cotton corners and devour a gallon of whatever ice cream was in the refrigerator. The turquoise socks brightened his day. On the days he’d come home early from a wedding or bat mitzvah he’d slip on his socks and my sister and I would sit at the kitchen table nibbling finger foods still warm in their platters. He’d tell us about the crazy bride who threw a dish at her husband to be, or the wild aunt who stripped down because of too much champagne. The blue socks and my father’s stories went together like the moon and the stars.

So when he asked me to get him his socks I felt the warmth of a story to come. His request made me feel safe that he was going to live. I drove home grabbed his socks out of the drawer when the phone rang. Hesitantly, I picked it up. At first I didn’t hear what the female voice on the other end was saying. Confused I just kept asking. “What? What?” Until my ears, woke out of the muffled fog of denial and shock, and I heard, “Your father died.” I sobbed until my eyes were sucked dried, grieved by the thought that I had never responded with an, “I love you too daddy,” before I left to retrieve his comfort socks.

A year after he died I took those socks to a medium. I wanted to contact my father from the beyond. Hear his voice one last time and give him the warmth of my love that I felt cheated of. The medium had dark black hair and was bejeweled with crystal necklaces. She reached out to the socks and said, “I’ll take those.” I held tight to them like a baby to her mother’s breast. The psychic stood with her hand out, staring through me. I placed them in her hand. As she cradled them, rolling them around her palms, she said, “Your father died of a heart attack. He knows he wasn’t the best father, but he loved you.” Then she glared straight at me. I felt her energy enter my psyche, “He says, he knows you loved him. You didn’t have to say it. It was enough you went to get his socks. You can forgive yourself. And he’ll know that you have forgiven yourself when you accomplish all the things he was against you pursuing. He says, Go for it.”

My breath stopped, and a well of grief and tears tumbled out of me. She gave me back his socks and I left. To this day I wear those socks on cold nights and feel the comfort of the love my father and I hold eternally.