Burying daddy/2013

I felt the scar on daddy’s head from the autopsy. Everyone had said, “You should never touch the frozen skin of a loved one.” But this was my last chance to feel daddy. He wasn’t there anymore, but it was still his face, his artistic hands, his mouth, his sleeping eyes, his full head of grey hair. It didn’t make sense why I should want to have this souvenir as a macabre reminder that would always remain with me. Still I wanted something of my very own.

He lay in the casket dreaming with labored breaths, I reluctantly walked towards the body that was daddy’s knowing he would never return to us. The man resting in the walls of the tomb, “Was my daddy”

How do I bury daddy, when I have always known him, from my very first breath? He was there as I took each first step and then collapse to the ground. He held his arms out to me, and wrapped me close when I would take these first steps. How do I let go? This was the same man who put training wheels on my first bicycle. He was the one who taught me to ride my bike without them.

What do I do to make sense of this senseless tragedy? That robbed him from me.

How do I grieve? There are not enough tears to express the beginning of my anguish. If I could bleed tears, it would be a start, to speak the language of my grief. My bones are collapsing inside, my nerves are raw, my head cannot wrap around this awe that has split me with colossal loss. To scream at the trees, to rip up the flowers, to stomp on the earth, to tear it out by its roots, to drown in its waters, and choose to never come up again until I wake up, until I die, until I tear down the mountains, until the sun doesn’t rise until I have squeezed the last tear through.

I still remember the scar, to be haunted, to be reassured he was really gone, to make his death tangible. His hair disguised the horror that his brain had been cut out. I never want to stop mourning. His hand didn’t look right. It looked as if it were already decomposing. Anyway, that’s what my sister had said. We held each other, as no one else could understand the abyss we all descended into together, each one of his children, momma and Cathy. There were memories only we shared and knew of. The secret of his father’s heart, he would unlock only for us. I called him every day, sometimes, as many as 5 times a day, to enjoy his voice, to find out what he was up to, to hear his laughter, to embrace the humor I loved. He was silly, yet intense. Whenever he would begin to get angry he would simply say, “I’m going to hang up now, good-bye.”

He would get depressed. Some of his work was very melancholy. He had lived in very deep places. When my parents divorced, I know he didn’t want the divorce. But my daddy thought the rules didn’t apply to him. Very often he was self-employed, during his first marriage. He didn’t like to work from 9 to 5. Daddy had so many ideas, it was hard to pin him down to just one, as he would float away on his creative balloon. His energy was immaculate. Though I was younger, it was hard keeping up with his exuberance. He seemed like a much younger man, than his 69 years.

I walked to his casket not really being there. It was a deep shock, I shut down, still my heart continued to beat. His eyes and lips hid invisible stitches.

I still tell myself, it wasn’t him. It looked like him, but it couldn’t have really been him. He was too energetic, too filled with life, to have died the way that he did. A routine test killed him. He always told me he didn’t want to die like Bobby Darin. If he had not gone in for that test, he would still be alive.

I called him the night before he went into a coma. With confidence he said, “I will see you this weekend, I have a test tomorrow."

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I am making a ham sam-which.” (He was silly, as he was creative.)

There were mistakes in our relationship. Mistakes and regrets on both sides I am sure. I regretted, not leaving Emma alone when he came to town to my brother’s house. Maybe, it was jealousy, more than leaving a teenager alone. Even though she is bipolar, she could have stayed alone for a few hours. Why didn’t I make a greater effort to go to my brother’s house? Was it because he never bothered to stop by my apartment for more than a few minutes on his way home?

Still, I think of his body underneath the freshly dug earth. He isn’t home anymore, but the body that was home to his soul lays deserted without family or friends.

While I lay on my sofa, with eyes that refuse to close, I think of the cold outside. I assure myself, that at the very end, he made his peace with God. Or rather, God mercifully extended his loving grace to him, while he still lay in a coma.

While I stood over him in the hospital bed, kissing his forehead, his cheek was moist from recent tears. Daddy had read the bible from cover to cover during his divorce from momma.

He put the bible down, and dated younger women in the 80’s. I waited like a child for him even though I was a woman already in my early 20’s.

We seemed to re-connect when he fell off a scaffold a few years ago, breaking all of his ribs, his shoulder, and arm. It took him many months to recuperate. I found him again.

In 2009, we both joined Red Bubble. He joined in April, and I joined in July. In fact, he was the one who told me I should join. We shared a bond that he simply did not have with any of his other children. He would often call to let me know he was uploading a photograph of a painting he had recently finished. Whenever he would write something, he was so excited at the words he had just penned.

“I’m a writer”, he would say, “A writer and a poet.” He would almost brag.

“Yes, daddy, you are a writer.” I would smile.

He seemed to have wanted my input as a peer on Red Bubble. Whenever I would ask him to create a banner for me, he would.

My father was an artist, even if never receives the acclaim he deserves. To create, to dream, to envision, was the passion that had given his life meaning for many years.

His big brown eyes would twinkle with creativity He was an imp with a mischievous smile. He had a grand smile. His face, even though cherubic and round, was handsome and boyish. He had a goatee on his chin like a beatnik. I will never forget the black beret he would wear, and his black graying mustache.

He would not be there at family functions to photograph the events, to photograph the people there. How he loved, a celebration. An extrovert, he lit up a party with his presence.

What are the words? What are the prayers? I am running, my flesh on fire, burning without dying. The steps are heavy, the path soaked with the tears of those that have gone ahead. This is a journey I have never taken. I fear, or rather I know I will never find my way back to the day before he left. The wound may close one day. One day I will stop running with my heart ablaze. I will be the survivor as the obituary reads, survived by.

The days since his death, continue the same as before, except I cry everyday sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, bloodletting the grief, trying to make a pact with this madness, this banging of my head as an autistic child, picking at reality as a scab.

I bury my father a little bit every day. I have said good-bye many times since that day. I stupidly believed touching his cold flesh would give me a sense of peace, a sense of acceptance. But it has not.

It only makes me remember the thick stitches sewn together to hide the wound of the autopsy.

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(Left to right Misi, momma, Mia, Boi, daddy, Moe, Jimmy and me.)

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“To comfort all those who mourn

To console those who mourn in Zion;

To give them beauty for ashes,

The oil of joy for mourning

The garment of praise for the spirit of

heaviness.”

(Isaiah 61:2-3)