Sabella
At my father’s funeral I got countless hugs. Faceless arms embraced me then disappeared, leaving me propped up in the funeral parlor’s upholstered chair. My arms were awkwardly placed on the wooden arm rests, my head hung over the headrest. My eyes seemed to be holding up the world. The relentless hugs continued, meant to convey empathy or compassion, but I felt none of those. I was disconnected from the world and it seemed I had walked into someone else’s eerie dream.
There was only one hug I remember. From this man who had married the daughter of a friend of my father’s. Someone completely random who I could not know had cared. He grabbed onto me and held me tightly with both arms. He was fighting for me to feel again. He was grasping on to whatever was left of me in this world. He had the intensity that could have brought maybe even my father back. He cried and held me. I could not cry. He let go and stroked my hair. For a second I thought, I am going to need another father. He moved on to hug my sister. I looked at her and wondered if she felt his hug the way I had. I couldn’t really tell. I didn’t ask, although I wanted to, who this man had lost and why he understood how important a good hug was.
So there I was, after the only hug that mattered, slumped again in my chair. Some relatives walked right past me and hugged my sister’s friend, who looked like what I should have. She didn’t bother to correct them; I guess she could tell I’d had enough hugs. My aunt kept offering me cookies. She was worried I wasn’t eating and had gotten too thin. I kept taking the cookies to appease her, but instead would place them in random women’s purses. My sister saw me doing this and we both laughed. I could imagine a distant cousin going through her purse at home, wondering how she got a pink leaf shaped cookie in her purse. It was odd I still remembered how to laugh.
I had a fever since the day I was told my father was missing. All day I’d had the feeling I was going to be sick. I had gotten through the majority of the day with no bad news and I really thought I was in the clear, until the phone rang and I was told he was missing. I was optimistic, perhaps he had gotten lost on his way home from work, or had gotten into an accident or maybe he was having an affair. That would have been the best news. I spent no more than a half hour in limbo. The next time the phone rang, the world was pulled out from under me. I sort of looked around and lost my understanding of dimensions. This world, this reality seemed two dimensional yet there was no more gravity and it seemed I floated in mid air. I didn’t know how to feel. I reacted the way people do on TV or in movies, but I could not cry.
My friend drove me to my parents house. I had packed a bag of clothes, a sea of black. Clothes for the wake, clothes for the funeral, my hairdryer. I got to my house, but instead walked to the place where the neighbor had found my father. Police were there now. I told them he was my father. I told them I wanted to see him, to see his body in the garage where he had climbed atop his car, fashioned a noose out of rope he bought and hung himself. Although I pleaded, they would not let me see him. I thought images of my father’s lifeless face and swaying loafers could torment and haunt me. Then maybe I could cry. “Sometimes,” I said, “you need to see the very worst or you will not believe it.” They didn’t see it that way. I was escorted back to my house and into my family’s grief stricken arms. And there I was, with nothing except a fever. I heard repeatedly, “She is so strong.” I had them fooled. I was not strong. My sister or my mother were stronger than I. They could break down and cry and scream and yell and just fall apart. I could not do anything. I slept when no one else could. Then there was that fever. The doctor said it was situational.
Days blended into themselves. Time passed, as it does, and in my mind all I kept repeating was, “This too shall pass.” But I don’t think that’s really true. To the funeral, I wore this dress I had bought in the summer. I had thought it was so elegant and mature, a black fitted dress to the knee with buttons down the back, something worthy of Audrey Hepburn. This was the last place I thought I would wear it. There were so many people there. I could not make out any of their faces. I guess they had cared about my father in one way or another. What was there to talk about, but what should not have been. Good Christians were concerned about his soul. My mother’s priest said a few words about the Church and how it can consider suicide a form of mental illness. We prayed for my father’s soul. This seemed to appease the Christians. But I knew my father’s soul would be fine. He had been the kindest man I had ever known. He would give of himself until there was nothing left. It occurred to me that had been the problem. He had nothing left for himself.
I walked over to the casket and placed two things in his suit pocket. One was a picture of me at five years old. I looked just like him. I was daddy’s little girl back then. The other was a letter I had written, telling my father that I would forgive him. I couldn’t be angry at him, I couldn’t hold him back. He wanted to be gone and I could understand it. The last thing I remember thinking was: What makes people cry is what someone’s suicide says about them. That they were not there for that person, that they did not love them enough, that they could do nothing to stop them. Then the image of the dysfunctional family: a severed limb. When someone asks how your father died, what can you say?
There are things that happen to you, that cannot be erased. Images are burned into the inside of your eyes forever. So when you close your eyes it is etched there, it is all you see. But the funny thing is, you can see yourself in that image, as if you were looking at a picture. My image is of the cemetery. My father’s casket being lowered into the ground. I threw in a rose and a handful of dirt. From now on, this is my father. There will always be six feet of dirt between us. I will never hear his laugh or how he clapped his hands when he was really excited. I will never hear him make up another funny name for people he didn’t know. He will never watch me get my first job, my first paycheck. He will never see me get my heart broken for the first time. He will never walk me down the aisle or see his grandchild’s face. He will never lose more of his hair or get older, or have to watch his face wither away. He will never have to worry about paying another bill or finding a new job or taking care of his wife in old age. He will never have to worry about losing someone he loved. I get it, daddy, life is unpredictable and frightening. You can never control it. And most days it seems there will never be anything to look forward to.
What is it now, eight weeks later? I am alive. I function. I eat and sleep. I shower, I go to class. I am awake. I think of him. I think of him. I think of him. I make myself sick thinking of him. I want an answer. I want to know why or what he was thinking. I imagine how scared he was. He must have been sweating. How long had he planned it? Did he know when he dropped me off at school, it would be the last time he would see me? Why couldn’t he wait just to say goodbye to me? One last time. He always said he would not do what his father had done. It seems he had forgotten that. Nothing seems to make sense to me. I read the same page in a book countless times. I have the same conversations. There is nothing else to think of. I counted once the amount of times I think of him in an hour. It averaged about once a minute. There is nothing more to do. I look for ways to distract myself. I try friends, but they cannot seem to handle what I have to say about my father. I try liquor, but it only makes me think of him more. I try sex, but my boyfriend is tired and always falling asleep on me. I know, I tend to do things in excess.
I started seeing a therapist, his name is Frank. He is a graduate student. He is a nice man, older and just sits and listens to everything I say. I always look forward to seeing him. I can talk to him about anything except sex because he reminds me of Mr. Rogers. I am never wrong in Frank’s office. I tell him about my father, my fear that I will end up like him one day. I cannot show emotion, I say, I never feel anything. I see Frank once a week, at least for the next six months, he says. I keep thinking still, I will need a new father.
After therapy I go home, it’s only about a two block walk. I walk upstairs to my bedroom and sink into bed. My boyfriend will not be home for five hours. I make myself dizzy thinking about my father. I fall asleep and I dream that it was all a hoax. My father is alive; his suicide a childhood nightmare. But I keep looking at his neck, still red and bruised from the rope. I feel an overwhelming sense of dread and responsibility. I cannot watch him all the time. He will try again and I will lose him. I am helpless. This overwhelming angst is what finally awakens me. I remember that as a little girl I was always plagued by dreams of my father’s death. I would toss and turn and wake up crying, sure he was dead. But I could always run into my parent’s room and see him peacefully sleeping on his flat pillow. It was the most relief I have ever felt. But now, this was not a dream and no matter what I did, I could not run into my parent’s room to find my father. This feeling of endless weight on my chest will never subside. I cannot run anywhere to find my father, except the Weehawken Cemetery nearly an hour away.
I wonder now if my father understands who I am. I always felt we could only have a superficial relationship. We were as different as two similar people can be. We grew up in different worlds. We had seen different things. We spoke different languages. I could not get across the subtle undertones of language in Spanish. I could not explain to him why I named my cat Vonnegut, or how I read 1984 as a love story. He would not have understood why poetry made me cry or why I paid sixty dollars for a Nine Inch Nails ticket. But now, I wonder if he does. If he sees me, for all the things I am or intend to be. He must see everything I have done, to be proud of or ashamed, things I wish no one had seen or things everyone should have. He must laugh when I sing karaoke, or when I reach for the first piece of bread. He must turn away when I’m in the shower or having sex. I do not know how it all works. If he is watching me at all, or if he has long been gone. I keep hoping to feel his presence. I keep waiting for a sign. It hasn’t happened yet.
I have not lost my desire for sex. Actually, the more sex I have, the more I want. It seems to be the only time I can think of something else. It is a bodily function like using the bathroom or scratching an itch, I guess. It is the most connected two people can be, at least for a short while. I am desperate to feel connected to anyone. I think sex is as close to love as I can come. I wonder why sex is so much easier than love. I can let you inside my body, I can put myself in the most compromising positions, but I will never give my heart. I do not believe in love anymore. In my short time, I have noticed that everyone you love leaves, everything that makes you feel good goes away. I will not let myself love.
Chris walks in the room.
“Long day at work?” I look at him and smile. I am wearing a red negligee.
Chris barely notices. “Yeah, actually. I am beat now. There was an accident on the parkway, too.”
Chris reaches for the bag of Wendy’s he’d bought on his way home. He eats a cheeseburger fries and coke. He tries to make idle chatter in between bites of food. I try to play footsy with him and drape myself across his lap suggestively. He sort of waves me off to the side and reaches for another french fry. Soon after he has devoured his meal, he falls asleep on the bed. And I am left, feeling less desirable than a value meal.
I am alone again, just as I was all day. There is nothing left for me to feel, but the overwhelming pain in my chest. I cannot breathe. I lay in bed, watching the walls. It seems the walls are breathing, inhaling peace easier than I. The room has plans of suffocating me. Window panes whisper I am not enough. The bed scorns me, wanting Chris for itself. Chris peacefully sleeps, neglecting to tell me, “Trees will miss you if you go.” There is nothing left for me in this room. I go downstairs to the living room and curl up in a little ball on the couch. I cannot let myself cry.
I am stuck here, having to muddle through this on my own. There is no choice but to lose sleep. There is no other way through this, except to feel. Eventually I have to cry. But if I start, it will never stop. I will cry forever because things will never be the same.
I am afraid of becoming my father. One day, if I lose myself, I will forget everything that mattered to me. I will forget my sister, my mother, my beautiful nieces. I will forget about sex, chocolate, the smell of the beach, buying new shoes. I will forget that happiness exists. For someone like my father, like me, there is only this moment; there is only today. What we want now. There is no such thing as tomorrow. To us the future and past are the same, images that can be just as easily considered dreams rather than memories. I can imagine what will happen tomorrow just as easily as I recall what happened yesterday. They are ghosts. It is as if nothing ever happened that is not happening now. I am a goldfish forced to relive my father’s death every few seconds. I live in small doses; I only do what I have to, to get by. This will all catch up with me. Not tonight, tomorrow maybe, next year, ten years from now. I cannot change who I was made to be. I cannot change the will of my father, his father, his father before him. I have no brothers. I come as close to my father as was meant. This is fate and I cannot mess with it.
I start to wonder how it will end for me. I could not use a rope or a knife or a gun. I could not jump off anything or wreck my car. I could not turn on the gas or slit my wrists. I figure I will take sleeping pills when I am ready. I can sleep forever. I won’t have to feel anything. I understand I have made this choice for my future. I choose when I go. I will always be the same age. Today is not the day though. There are still things for me to do.
