A patient of my father writes 'Any man who knows enough about figure drawing, germanium vs. silicon transistors, photography, "taking the air," farm-life, nightlife, Mexico, Lucky Strikes, cellphones, and making me feel half normal deserves to live forever.' I wake up in the middle of the night from a dream in which I am not asking my father not to die, but am asking him for a warning, something slower that will seep in over time. I feel guilty for this dream, where I want his death to develop like tea, a timed occurence, one with warning but still blackness at the end; death has become inevitable and instead of attempting to step up, to stand against it, I try to postpone it, to let love live a little longer.
Somewhere in my mind is a dance. Or rather, a song, 'Stay, just a little bit longer.' And for some reason, in these lyrics, I see my very best friend, I see car rides struck with the tears of the skies, rains to which we belted old melodies; I see a wedding where we danced in circles with a dark-haired, older man. I see walks down Riverside drive, measurements of the new distances between us. No longer do I feel afraid of age, of developing, losing, changing over time. I am, however, terrified of sudden loss-of the wrenching numbness, the outgrowth into pain, the raging anger of my very own storms. I am most afraid of the weeping at the end--the portly nature of a pain that will not subside, so raw that it invades the nights, so real that it shatters smiles into frowns.
This is often how too it is with men, though there is no comparison to what I feel for my father. I am not writing here of the present, but in a note to a friend I emphasized the eventuality of hurt from separation, as she has recently split with her lover. Pain may be postponed, but it will show its face, whether by peaking from underneath hot covers at night, or by just full force, a skeleton from an unlocked closet, or a living being frustrated by the mundane passing of time. I am good at ignoring such pain--or rather, letting it in little by little, droplets that can not make me drown.
With my father, however, it is a wash, a shower, a bath of pain. Some days, it is deeper, I cannot move beyond 86th street and the roads it has built in my mind. I feel ill recalling the emptying of his office, or I enter his closet realizing how sentless it has become, or I empty my bags to find what I saved (a piece of a shirt, a small photograph) to be lost.
Although for the first time, I do not hold onto things so fully. Meaning, I have given up believing in such magical ways. Whether I hoard his argyle or not, he is gone. Whether I surround myself with questions of creation, he is gone
Deserving is certainly not enough to entertain reality; to assuage the airlessness that ate him up. Dancing is certainly not enough to alleviate inside aches, but still memories act like melted snow on my my lips, spun sugar that counteracts this sour--not the shuddering sour of citrus delight-but that which rests within the bittering part of the tongue.
I am thankful for the dreams where I hear his voice, even in the hours we so less treasure. I am thankful for the moments when I wake up warm from a love, just a little bit longer, all mine.
