Will The Circle Be Unbroken

on the edge of a new year

Poppy and Beau, With Nonny Over His Shoulder, by McKenna Blanton.

My father, Kelly Blanton, aka Poppy, died one week before Christmas. We buried and celebrated him in our hometown of Bakersfield three days after Christmas. We spent the between-time holiday in my grandparents’ home in Morro Bay with our children, grandchild and four dog babies.

These last weeks of 2024, the time between death and burial, confused me, with grief rubbing up oddly against joy. I was so relieved to be with our children, decorating cookies, building fires, walking the beach, hanging seashells on a tree topped with a ridiculously improbable lobster shell. So much laughter and baby-and-dog shenanigans.

I arrived at this Christmas gathering feeling lucky to have been at my father’s side when he died, one hand in his, the other resting on his heart, and I knew he was lucky to remain in his own home, surrounded by loving caregivers. His death was peaceful, without pain or struggle. We’d known he would be passing—he’d been in hospice for months, and during every visit in the last several weeks, he’d grown weaker, quieter. But still, somehow, his death surprised me. He’s always been an incredibly vigorous, lively person. It seemed improbable for him to slip away.

We focused hard before Christmas to make sure to send him out in his very particular style—a dustbowl cotton-picker who became a school superintendent and co-founded an internet company with his son.

Cotton bolls, potatoes and burlap—artifacts of his childhood.

The Bakersfield Bell Tower building where we would celebrate him was filled with potato and cotton boll floral arrangements. Fiddle music greeted us at the door. My brother Tim wrote my father’s obituary and spoke about family proclivities—”I’ve got a bad idea!”, my Aunt Penny and my father’s beloved work friends, Patrice, Kenny and Jenny, filled walls with my dad’s family photographs, my husband Andy talked at his burial about his being a bad boy who turned into a great man, my uncles Martin and Ross served as pastors, my son Henry wrote an essay about Poppy’s tall tales for the program, my son Will spoke for the family, welcoming guests to the celebration of life, my niece McKenna and her little brother and sister made touching art (see above) on display at the door, and my nephew Bailey sang Johnny Cash and Amazing Grace at his burial. It was all full of family feeling. (This isn’t family but Buck Owens’ house band, Stan Ellis and the Stampede, sang I’ll Fly Away and Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Perfect.)

Everything went so well. So smoothly.

But also I see how I’ve struggled to write something myself about the loss of my father. Even my journal entries have veered away from anything true. It’s too easy to be trite. It’s why people say, thoughts and prayers, because it’s hard to be fresh and honest and accurate when you’re feeling deeply. That’s why we have Hallmark cards.

My reflections are incomplete.

But I’m telling myself that what I know about writing may relate also to grieving. It takes time. Something true does not (at least in my case) emerge swiftly. It’s got to stew.

I listened to my father’s stories for decades before I wrote a protagonist (Jane Benjamin) who appropriated his dust bowl stories, his riveting charm and the motivating chip on his shoulder (which I have inherited).

Understanding that it will take time to sort what I know and love about my father, I will keep returning to my journal, recording whatever nothing sort of thoughts emerge, until they finally clear the pipes well enough for the clear water of honesty to flow to the page, so that I can make sure the circle is unbroken.

I hope that this happens in the new year. This idea, to keep showing up to the page to sort out my feelings, may even work it’s way into tonight’s resolution.

I hope you have a very meaningful new year.

Shelley