Time in a Bottle

It was the defining moment of my life for a long time. We went home to be with my father when we found out his best friend died and I spent the night before the funeral carousing with my cousin. Copious amounts of pot and alcohol were consumed so when I woke up dying of thirst at my Gram's house in the middle of the night I thought nothing of it and went back to sleep, too groggy to make my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. I awoke again to the sound of my grandmother talking to a man, not my father, not loud enough for me to hear their words, but I felt it with every fiber of my sixteen year old soul. I knew my father's addictions had finally caught up with him, I just didn't know the details.

I can't remember if the cop had any of the coffee I made but I can tell you that he remained at the table with us until he was able to give us word of my father's condition. All we knew was he had been rushed to the hospital with a stab wound, but it wasn't long before Aunt Candy showed up and I watched dumbly as she began calling the family to inform them that my mother stabbed my father. Even if this was the case, we did not have any information yet, Candy thrived on creating chaos in the family and this was her time to shine.

Light years passed before we finally received word that he was dead, self inflicted stab wound to the heart was the official story, some strange accident where a run of the mill threat to harm himself became all too real when mixed with all the alcohol and drugs he had imbibed that night. A clumsy mistake was what my mother claimed, but I never saw the police report (which obviously cleared her) and her version never sat right with me , however, in my heart I know my father did this to himself either way. The moment I heard those words I began to run on autopilot. I went to the garage and played his Phil Collins CD on his stereo, I lost some time before my brother came in and I tried to comfort him. Shortly thereafter I decided to walk to the store to get cigarettes and returned to find my worried family, worried because I had been gone a long time. I have no recollection of this walk besides actually purchasing my cigarettes from a cashier who, in retrospect, seemed to have been uncomfortable. I must have seemed a ghost to her.

I don't know how long we stayed there, could have been days or weeks but it was all a blur. I was numb and in a dream-like state for a long time to come. The carpet was bloodstained where he killed himself right next to the room where I was sleeping. There was a constant barrage of people and food, I didn't eat much but coffee and books had become my best friends. I picked out his coffin, instructed that he should be buried in a sweater and jeans, with a pencil behind his ear and a deck of cards in his pocket. As my mother, my brother, and I stood by the coffin the only people who would talk to us were those we were very close to, everybody else had shunned us. Aunt Candy played her part well and continued to do so, wailing about her brother coming to fix her house, and making a scene worthy of an Oscar.

My cousin, Shawn, was two years older than me and my constant companion before the world moved on; I believe he kept me from physically losing myself in those blurry days. My grandmother was visibly losing her mind, my mother was relieved as much as she grieved and my little brother didn't exist, very few people existed in my world at that time. My older cousin, Missie, took care of my mother, my brother and me, my little cousin Mikey seemed to have been kept clear of our chaos. I thought for a long time that it was good for him not to be involved in the horror of it all, but today I know he wishes he hadn't been kept sheltered from the mess, that he wanted to be there for us.
The day I buried my father was a freezing, gray, rainy October day. He was late to his own funeral in the middle of East Bumfuck, New York, I took the shovel from my Uncle because it was my Dad and I had the right to whatever weird sense of closure and symbolism it provided as I dropped a shovel-full of earth on top of the urn where his ashes resided.

I really don't remember anything after that. We could have driven right back to Massachusetts or could have stayed with someone for a few more weeks, it's lost to me. Like all those big family holidays in the past, the holidays of the future would be just as marked in my life, only they are remembered with a sense utter loneliness and grief, not just for my father but for my family which had been torn apart and scattered.