My father’s oversized leather jacket is the first item I’d save in a fire. It has a broken zipper from my heated impatience and a splotch of neon green acrylic paint on the left pocket from my tired clumsiness. The collared jacket is reversible, with smooth tan suede on the inside, but I rarely wear that side, for my father loved black leather, probably because he thought it made him look cooler (it did). His booming laughter is soaked into every fiber, ringing in my ears on red-cheeked Friday nights out. When walking from Hitch to Jenkins with friends, I look down at the jacket and unmistakably hear his howling laugh, smell the smoke from his Marlboro Golds and the notes of vanilla, cardamom, and lavender from his Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male cologne. It’s a good thing I wear contacts, for I can blame my silent tears on lens irritation.
I hate and love that I own the jacket, for it is both a constant reminder of my loss and his love. To separate the loss and the love would be like trying to sift salt from ocean water with a spoon. I used to listen to Sinatra in the jacket and hear my father’s deep baritone voice in my head. I used to watch Love, Actually and see his tear-stained face when Emma Thompson discovers her husband cheated on her. But after a while, the memories turn into white noise, just another nothing that fades into itself. I feel myself forgetting all the beautiful little details, the smallest reminders of a larger past.
I think partly why I wear the jacket so much is in the earnest hope that someone, anyone, will comment on it. I’ll take any opportunity to discuss my father, how he saw angels in the faces of those around him and found God in his backyard–how he discarded the monotony of mediocrity for vibrant velvet intensity. When I talk about him, I tend to talk at instead of to people. I won’t (or maybe can’t) shut up about the man who showed me what safety feels like.
I am determined to gather all the remaining remembrance and hold it firm until my fingers are blistered and my knuckles burn white. I must ask my sisters and aunt to tell me the stories I love about him again, and again. I must walk around a college campus he never knew about while wearing his jacket, thinking of how memory fades (but love does not).
Writer | Gracie Rowland ’25 | growland25@amherst.edu
Editor | Jorge Rodriguez Jr. ’26 | jrodriguezjr26@amherst.edu