600 Hours of Edward

1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are called in to investigate the theft of nearly $200,000 worth of jade from a wealthy woman’s safe. Even today, $200,000 is considered a lot of money; in 1967, it was an extraordinary amount, the equivalent of about $1.2 million in today’s dollars.
    As Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate, many things about the story told by the jade’s owner, Francine Graham, don’t add up. They do some more digging and discover that Francine Graham had long since sold many of the pieces that she claims were stolen. Confronted with this, she confesses and says that, when he died, her husband left her with no insurance and little in the way of liquid assets. She slowly unloaded the jade to maintain her lifestyle, until she could do so no longer.
    I have seen this episode four times a year since recording it in 2000, and I had seen it many times before that, although I didn’t count my viewings back then. Today is the first time that this episode has left me worried.
    My father, like Francine Graham’s husband, is dead. Unlike Francine Graham’s husband, my father has left my mother no jade to sell off to maintain her lifestyle.
    – • –
    When
Dragnet
is over, I head into my bedroom and retrieve five thick green office folders and one less encumbered one, which I carry into the next room, where my desk and computer sit. I spend several minutes counting and organizing and thumbing through the sheets of paper, occasionally stopping to read one. I then turn on the computer and pull up Microsoft Word to compose a letter.
    Dear Father,
    This will be the final letter I write to you. Even if I sent my letters of complaint, which I have not done since what you call the “Garth Brooks incident,” this one would not get a stamp. There is no mail service wherever you have gone.
    I have counted 178 letters of complaint to you over the past eight years. This will make 179. This one is notably different from the others in one way: The complaint lies with me, not with you. I never could find a way to make you proud of me, and at some point, I think I stopped trying. When you were here, I blamed you for that. I think now that the failure is mine.
    The 178 previous letters of complaint are full of indignation about ways in which you slighted me or made me feel bad or disregarded me, and while I remember many of the instances and feel justified for the things I said, what difference does it make now? You are gone. I am here. I thought maybe someday we would reach an understanding. Now we never will. These are facts, and I accept them. I’ve always said I prefer facts, and that means I have to prefer them even on a day like today.
    Had I known that it would end up this way, I would not have taunted you yesterday in Jay L. Lamb’s office. It occurs to me that death is a funny thing—not funny in a laughter sort of way, but in a twisty sort of way. It’s the people who are left behind who have to grapple with the regret. The one who is gone is just gone. I don’t think that is fair. Wherever you are, Father, I hope you have regret about what happened yesterday.
    Finally, I will close with the hope that you have taken care of Mother now that you are no longer here. She misses you. That’s also a fact. She is deifying you, which I will not do. I am not a bad son. I am bad at pretending things are different from what is obvious.
    You weren’t a deity. You were my father. I love you.
    And I am, as ever, your son,
    Edward
    I put my father’s 179th letter in the third green folder, then reach into my pocket and pull out a picture that I took from one of the albums in my father’s office.
    It’s from Easter 1976. We had made a family trip to Texas and went to Six Flags. My father is younger in it than I am now, with a head of bushy brown hair. He and I are mugging for the camera. The grins on our faces are huge. I can’t remember ever grinning like that. And yet I have photographic proof, and so I know it happened.
    I place the picture in with my father’s letters. Then I clutch them to my chest, and I rock slowly in my chair.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31
    On the 305th day of the year (because it’s a leap year), I awake at 7:38 a.m., the 225th time this year that I have done so. It is my most common waking time, and yet today is the most uncommon of days. It is the first full day of my life that my father has been dead. I consider whether this is something I ought to add to