In the days following my dad's passing, I often thought about how much or little I'd want to remember from that time. I thought about writing everything down, or at least as much as I could remember every evening (like a director runs the
dailies), but there was little time to do that. Weeks later I tried writing about that first day, I mean the day I first heard the news, but that proved too hard. I still block that day out. But something easier to do was to write about the next day, April 3rd:
The next morning I woke in my old bed and thought it might be a weekend morning like the ones we used to have. For better than a decade -- until I turned eleven and Stephen went to college -- weekends at my house unfolded with a familiar pattern. My dad usually got up first, went out to get the paper, then read it at the breakfast table before any of us even stirred. I usually woke up second, but by the time I'd trundled my way from the bedroom to the kitchen, he'd already be well into the columns of the business section, scanning the numbers for something I never saw. I'd climb into the seat across from him -- some natural process that didn't need explaining -- and go through the rest of the paper until I hit the comics section. The news would chirp out of an old AM radio. My dad always kept it low; he didn't want to wake us.
On chilly mornings he and I would share a treat, hot chocolate. We'd get Nestle Quik down from the cupboard, spoon it into tall glasses, and pour in hot milk from the stove. If the milk wasn't hot enough, the mix wouldn't dissolve, and you'd have to stir until you busted up the clumps on the bottom. These were our mornings, this was my apprenticeship, my dad and me at the breakfast table, reading until my mom got up next and opened the curtains to let the sun in.
Years later, after my brother and I had both left home, my dad still got up early in the morning. I knew this because I'd come home from college and just lie in bed without the same enthusiasm for the comics that I had as a kid. By then my parents had had an alarm system installed -- changed the locks on the doors too so you needed two keys to get in -- until opening the door in the morning required ten steps. My dad didn't always remember the ten steps -- by then his movements had started slowing too -- and he'd sometimes go straight for the paper in the morning, opening the door before turning off the alarm. The siren would go off, this terrible whoop-whoop! you could all the way down the street, and I'd hear my dad fumble with the keypad, hear him say "oh-oh" like he did on minor blunders and the keypad beep in disgust when he entered the wrong code.
By then something else was undeniable: the dark centers of his eyes had started to cloud. I wondered if he still saw the world as crisply or as brightly as before. I wondered if he could still catch a bee like the hero of my youth, holding it in a loose fist until he got it out of the house and let it go, neither harmed from the experience. When I came home those days and met my parents at the airport, he'd still offer to take my bags but he no longer gave as much resistance when I refused. We'd hug, and I'd pull away and see tears in his eyes.
I lay in bed a few more minutes that morning, April 3rd, and wondered if everything I'd seen and heard in the last 24 hours was real. I rolled over on my side, waiting for the sounds of morning, my dad stirring in the kitchen: a chair backing up on the tile floor, a spoon clanging glass, the beep-beep-beep of the alarm as my dad went to check on the yard. But I heard none of these.
I lay still, not wanting to move, not wanting to risk setting anything in motion, until the thought of doing nothing seemed akin to not being able to do anything -- the thought of lying cold in the ground -- and that held its own particular terror.
Eventually I got up and made my way across the hallway into my parents' room. Around the corner, my mom lay in bed, half-propped against the headboard, her eyes half-open. She stared ahead without focus. Everything about her seemed to be pulled downward: all the features of her face, her clothes, her frame itself. Her arms appeared to drag on her shoulders. It was as if her skeleton had just given way.
I sat down beside her, asked how she was doing in a forced monotone, then lost it, sobbing uncontrollably. She touched my back and said, This is the way things will be. The sheets on my dad's side of the bed were smooth, his pillow undented. He'd left two mornings before and not returned.
