Shine A Light On Me

The day after was cloudy and rainy. Everyone seemed tired, scattered into different parts of the house. We all seemed to be sleepwalking through our moments together. My niece and nephew had bounced back relatively fast, that’s how kids are. That morning I found myself staring out the window in the kitchen at the backyard, watching the rain falling all over the plants. My eyes drifted to the cement of the patio he’d made long before I’d been born. 

Standing there excruciatingly tired and sad, my mind instantly fired off the thought, “I haven’t talked to my dad in a while, I should call him.” It took a moment before I realized the thought. My brain, in all of its so-called sophistication, could not remember that the person I missed and needed to talk to was gone, permanently. How embarrassing. 

I remembered when our dog Puddles died, how multiple times a day I would forget and smile as I went to let her in from the backyard. Having to sever the bond of what you still can’t quite fathom to be gone is cruel labor. Your habits, your thoughts betraying you each day until you can reluctantly rewire them. My dad was nowhere to be found but I still needed to talk to him, to get his advice, wisdom, encouragement. I stood there feeling an overwhelming ache building inside my chest, “Where are you? Where did you go? I just want to talk to you?”

Not more than a few minutes later, the phone rang. I walked over to the caller I.D. where the incoming call said, Mike Cordova and our home phone number. Never in all my life had I seen this happen, us, getting our own call. It had not been more than five minutes since I had desperately called out to him in my mind. Nervously, my stomach spun like a wheel as each ring continued. 

I was frozen, my eyes glued onto the phone. Everything in me wanted to answer it, but I was afraid. As much as I desperately wanted to hear him, I didn’t think I could bear the disappointment of a normal, rational answer. So I continued to stand there, in a panic, watching what literally appeared to be my dad calling. Slowly, I put my hand out and went to pick it up, but then it stopped. 

Baffled, I immediately ran to the only other phone in the house. My mom was in the back room on her cell phone, talking to a friend. The second and only other house phone was lying undisturbed nearby on the couch. In mid-chat, my mom looked at me confused as to why I was standing there, staring at her with whatever bizarre expression I was probably wearing. My mind contorted, what in the hell just happened? I didn’t understand. All these years later, I wish I had picked up the phone. 

•

A few days later Jon and I drove back to Oklahoma. I paid a tribute to my dad with a Tom Petty playlist that lasted all the way out of Houston. I wanted to flee back home, where I could finally see my cat and have the opportunity to decompress. It was nice to be alone and not talk about anything. Of course, it was short-lived. Eventually, I returned to Austin for a last minute gathering. 

Pressure to do something in my dad’s memory grew, especially for my mom. There was no funeral, he had explicitly stated he didn’t want one. My mom hesitated and considered doing a small memorial somewhere nearby, inviting a few friends and his co-workers, but nothing ever came of it. At my sister’s house in Austin, my mom’s family came to show their support. I drove down with Jon from Oklahoma on the day everyone came to visit. 

I was tired, wearing a pair of itchy hose and a dress, trying to look nice. I’d never considered what I would wear or shop for after one of my parents died. I had picked a navy blue dress with flowers. Surrounded by people, I pretended to be fine for a few hours talking and laughing until I physically couldn’t anymore from the complete exhaustion of the entire day. In some ways, I was relieved to talk about anything else other than my dad with people. 

Afterward, part of me always wondered, did anyone think it was weird? Did I not look sad enough? Did I seem too happy or callous? Should I have been crying the whole time? I had plenty of time to break down over the course of six months. It’s a weird feeling to wonder how upset you think you should appear to others. We stayed in Austin for a bit but soon of course went back to Houston. Jon returned home to Oklahoma without me. 

•

One day my mom and I stopped off at our favorite King Food to have lunch. The woman working there, who’d known us forever, asked about Mike. After telling her that he was gone she seemed shocked. She felt so bad that she actually sat down and chatted with us for a while. Then she even brought us free Vietnamese iced coffees, which tasted like the best-iced coffee I’d ever had. 

On another day, my mom, her friend Pam and my sister all went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant that my parents would frequent. The people working there knew my parents well and what had been going on. Upon hearing the news of my dad’s passing, the waiter was visibly sad and gave condolences to my mom. He gave us free margaritas. I almost cried at the gesture. It meant so much to see these people in our lives, affected, hurt at the news that my dad was gone. Their kindness was a comfort.

•

Oddly, the first couple of months after my dad died, it seemed as though I had been set free of all fears. Death didn’t scare me, nothing did. I almost felt invincible. I even felt a weird, inherent beauty in the brief existence of life. But then soon after that fleeting freedom came more anger, followed by even more anxiety. I tried to take advantage of my parents’ elliptical out in the garage. Watching someone die of cancer was an impressively frightening motivator to have better health. To put it another way, it scared the shit out of me. 

The problem with cancer is that there is no one to punch. I mean, some people you might want to, but they are not the actual cancer. It was as if we had been held hostage by a monster who tortured us and yet couldn’t be held accountable. It was nowhere to be found. I however, still wanted to kill. I wanted someone to pay. There was no human form I could attack. So instead I poured myself into those workouts, taking all the aggression out in sweat as if it would bring my dad back. It seemed like I might burst into flames from the emotions I was having underneath my skin but I never told anyone. 

•

I remained in Houston for a few months helping out my mom. She was taking care of endless paperwork while I made three meals a day for us, ran errands and did all the little things. My sister would come for a week from Austin with her youngest, who was only four while her older son was busy with school. We had begun cleaning the house and preparing for an inevitable move. My mom simply couldn’t remain in the house, alone, unable to drive, depending on others all the time with my sister three hours away. She was going to have to live with my sister. We were aiming to move her out sometime around the fall, but a lot had to be done to meet that mark. If you read any books about grieving, they usually don’t encourage making any giant decisions right away. This situation wasn’t great.

One night my mom suddenly began bagging up my dad’s clothes. It hadn’t even been a month yet. I didn’t understand. Walking past their room and seeing his shirts all over the bed, I couldn’t deal with it. I thought she was making a mistake. My sister began collecting items to get rid of as well. As she took the shower chair from the bathtub, I realized then that I didn’t want to see anymore.

I went into the garage to be upset and later found that my mom had gotten upset at the sight of the shower chair as well. My sister, feeling terrible and probably frustrated, hadn’t considered that it would be a trigger. That stupid fucking chair. It stood for everything terrible, wrong and hopeless. I had shopped for it months earlier. My dad used it twice because he was too frail to even get his feet over the sides of the bathtub. We were in a house loaded with traps. Anything could set you off and you never knew until it was too late. It was a bit like living in a minefield. 

Twenty years of birthday, Valentine and anniversary cards went into the trash. My mom and sister paused every so often to ask me if I wanted them. Messages from myself to my parents were sitting in my hands again. All written from a version of me, from another dimension, a happier one. 

There were dozens of my dad’s prescription bottles, of various sizes. More like half-empty promises. Cleaning out my dad’s kitchen cabinet space were his old bills and candy stash. In my hands, I held the king-size Payday candy bar, with barely a bite missing from the last week he had been conscious. I could still see his face, sad as he gave up trying to eat. Seeing the bar now felt like being hit with a bat. Tears streamed down my face as I angrily threw it into the trash.

One uneventful night, my sister and I were taking the trash out to the curb. While standing in the driveway chatting, there were an unusual amount of stars. As we stood admiring them, a shimmery streak ran across the sky, down toward our street. A huge meteor. We both gasped and pointed at it, excited that someone else had been there to share its beauty. It was the last sweet moment in our driveway.