The Death of Us

Recently my father died. He seemed to know it was coming. He sent my siblings, who he'd recently gained custody of, back to their bitch mother, and made at least one late night phone call indicating knowledge of his own death.

The day my mother found out and told us of his death we already knew something was wrong. It was a Tuesday, more specifically March 31, and had been a strange day. I was oddly emotional and so were many of my friends. I had spent my time caring for their petty needs throughout the entire day. When I got home from school I saw that my mother had been crying; this was no surprise, she cries often and easily. But that day she seemed different, it was obvious that something was wrong. She sat on the couch with her head semi-cradled to the side and her checks were blotchy pink from the warmth of her tears. I turned away from her; I don't like seeing her that way. I walked into the kitchen a poured a drink, wanting to ask permission to go to a choir concert but not wanting to interrupt her.

Recently she had a hysterectomy preformed because of a tumor on her uterus that caused her sever back pain and was potentially cancerous. The operation went smoothly. She was fine for a few weeks but then the pain came back and the doctor asked her to come back in for more work, saying they might have missed something and they needed to do further blood work to make sure it wasn't cancer that was spreading. That day she had an appointment and I wondered if her current state had anything to do with it. I remember thinking wow, my mother has cancer. What are we going to do? I need to call my dad and tell him and figure out want she needs...

Before I let those thoughts wonder too far, I walked closer to the living room where she sat and stated, "Nora has a choir concert today at seven. I told her I would go to it. Is that okay?" She looked up and said she could not talk right then, that the words she needed to say did not make sense and she was trying to find someway to organize them. I asked what was wrong but she wouldn't tell me until my brothers got home. She said it would be easier to only say it once. I looked over at my stepfather who was uncharacteristically sitting in the front room in the desk chair fiddling with his hands. He did not look up.

That day I had ripped my pants slightly and this seemed a good time to start mending them, so I went upstairs to get a sewing kit. I wasn't long into the process when my younger brother arrived home. He immediately noticed my mother's distress and came toward her. Before ho spoke she asked me to call my older brother and see if he was able to get off work. It rang six times and went unanswered. I called back. Eventually he did answer and said no, he probably could not, no one would cover his shift and he couldn't leave the store without a manager to run it.

She decided to tell us then. She asked me to come into the living room and she started to speak but all that came were tears. They rolled down her pink cheeks, smearing her eyeliner and constricting her throat. When she was finally able to speak she uttered a whisper that I did not want to hear. She repeated herself; my needle stopped moving. I looked at the carpet, observing the rectangles bleeding into each other and shifting from brown to green. My jeans now had wet spots on them, initially evenly spaced but soon indiscernible. I looked up to see my brother crumpled into a ball at the end of the couch. He shook with the sobs that made me tears flow even faster. Ma went to him and pulled him to her rocking him, cradling his head, apologizing, and trying to give him comfort. My stepfather came to my side and wrapped his arms around me. He told me it was alright to cry. I realized I was stabbing the needle into my leg and squeezing the jeans in my other hand. I made no response but my tears slowed. He moved away, back to the couch. I looked at them all, crying and looking at me, then looked back at my hands which had begun sewing again. I watched the needle swiftly move through the tough fabric and thought of my siblings that would never know their father. I thought of the life he had lead and the one he had begun. I thought of my wedding, I thought I'd had before but never knew fully how it would turn out with two dads walking me down the aisle; that was now solved. I thought of my other brother who still didn't know. Of all the phone calls I'd will to end and now longed for. And of how I too had just died.

My brother laid there for some time, involuntarily quaking with emotion. He had always wanted my father's attention. He longed to be shown love from him and to make my father proud. These wishes were rarely reality. Seeing him made my eyes hot. I followed the drops as they rolled off my nose and onto my steadily moving hand. He was really dead. So I would not be calling him to inform him of my mother's cancer after all. I supposed there was some good in that. It would have sucked if she would have added an "oh by the way, I also have cancer" in there.

Preparing for one parent's possible death only to be told of another's actual death is an unjust cruelty.

As I walked back up to school that evening, music blaring from my head phones, I saw a neighbor who asked how I was. After telling him not so good and explaining that I had just found out about my father's death he asked how old my father had been. 41. His unexpected response I will never forget, "Oh wow, that's really young. I'm 41. That would be like me dying at this age. That would be terrible. And you have a lot of siblings don't you? They're pretty little right?" I just agreed saying yes it would suck to die that young and yes my siblings were quite little. Then I turned the music up and walked away.

My boyfriend waiting outside the school talking to some guy. As I approached he gave me a look that I interpreted as why do you have those on and what's in your bag? Asshole. I'll listen to music when I please and if I choose to wear my huge headphones into a choir performance I will. Instead I said hey, who's that? and we walked in, bought tickets and took seats toward the back.

During the program I wanted to feel. I wanted to be overcome with a sadness that would lock my knees and send me agonizingly to the ground, but I wasn't. It was a sort of numbness. Tears still flowed freely when they wished to but I didn't feel. My mind went to many different places; my family's future, my memories, realizations- the funniest of which was that the following day was April first- I know my father would have appreciated the humor in that, and finally to blankness. I wasn't and am still not sure what one should think or feel in these situations but I know that everyone seemed to think I was doing it wrong- well I learned from the best.

My father and I are alike in many ways. We both love writing, eating pink salad, chili, and watermelon, watching movies, reading books, playing Pac Man, running track, playing tennis, and listening to awesome bands. We have a similar humor, facial structure, hair color, temper, emotional weirdness, need to protect, love of my siblings, musical preference, food preference, and sleep pattern. I have sometimes said, "well if you meet my father you will understand," that statement is now adjusted to, "if you had met, or were able to meet my father you would understand." He is a part of me and I a part of him. Anyone that has known both of us can find the answers to my behavior, personality, and outlook in him and I can explain him to them.