It was what was propped on the chair beside his bed.
PART 2 — THE WAKE
My father died in the November of 1985. I was eighteen.
He played guitar. Badly, and constantly, and he taught me on the same instrument, which was a cheap thing from 1961 with a repair on the headstock where he had dropped it in 1974 and glued it himself with the wrong glue.
You would know that headstock anywhere.
After the funeral there were about twenty-five people back at our house.
I had the guitar out because my uncle had asked me to play the one my father used to do.
And my mother came across that front room and took it out of my hands.
She did not snatch it. She took it, put it back in the case on the floor, and clicked the catches shut.
And she said, to twenty-five people:
“Give me that. It’s going, Roslyn. We can’t eat a guitar. Put it down, people are watching.”
