ONE YEAR LATER…

(Photo by Mom)

I didn’t expect it to arrive so soon, but the day had finally come. April 12, 2023, marked the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. And I approached the day with solace and reflection. I did my best to dwell on the positive and negative aspects of my father’s life in equal measure. I tried to be fair, nuanced, and I think I was successful because I felt incredibly depressed. Despite our estrangement in the last ten years of his life, cured only by a death-bed embrace, I was sad that he was gone and that he left in such a sorry state.

I messaged my mother to see how she was doing. She asked if I knew what day it was. I told her I did, and that Mandi and I had opened a good bottle of wine in commiseration. She said I should have opened a Bota Box instead.

And when I toasted my father’s memory with our first glass, Mandi grudgingly obliged. I put on one of his favorite songs “In the Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics, and she said we might as well listen to the 8-minute live version of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” while we were at it – another one of my dad’s favorites he played ad nauseum. They never got along. She told me his final revenge for “stealing” me away was to die the day before her birthday, and so she indulged me, but only just so.

Meanwhile, I was doing my best to wallow in my grief, but my son, Alex, became inconsolable. He began shrieking like a wild animal. He covered his ears and jerked around as though he was being tortured, and no amount of my brushing his hair back or rubbing his chest made any difference. We had to change him into a new diaper, and there was no way to communicate that it wouldn’t hurt this time – last time he had a horrible diaper rash, and I imagine the wiping had been painful enough to traumatize him – so all I could do was try my best and hold him down.

He’s far too strong now for me to hold an arm and a leg in each hand. I either have to pin him down at the arms with my knees, all the while holding myself up to avoid crushing him, or resign myself to grabbing an arm with my left hand and then grabbing the other arm and the leg with my right. In the latter case, Mandi has to grab the stray leg as it kicks at her face while wiping his ass with her free hand. Otherwise, shit will get everywhere, smeared all over the three of us and on the surrounding carpet. Then afterwards he cries for another 20 minutes. I have to bribe him with candy or juice or something like that to derail him from the emotional track he is careening down.

But when I returned with a fresh glass of juice, he was sobbing over an episode of “Bluey”. One of the cartoon dogs, Bingo, was having a dream where she was floating in space with her stuffed animal, which had come to life. But now, she had to say goodbye. And then the stuffed animal placed her back into the center of the Earth which had been cracked like an egg. Like I said, a dream…

And walking out of his bedroom, I thought, holy hell, what life is this? Most of it seems like a bad joke, where you either love too much or too little to be happy, and your feelings are entirely your own no matter how you hide them or dress them up.

I miss my father… in spite of everything.

And I weep for my son.

For neither can be consoled, neither can be reasoned with, and neither will understand or, perhaps, even notice that I was always here, and that I love them dearly, and will continue to love them until my dying day.