I was downloading Rise Against to replenish my files after the most recent reformat, and decided to listen to Swing Life Away. The very first time I heard the song, I thought of my dad. I suppose it's only fitting that that was the song playing when my aunt called to say he'd died.
The week that he died, I had been thinking about what his funeral would be like. It'd been years since I last saw him or spoke to him, but just felt that it'd be soon. I imagined what it'd be like to see family members I didn't know or hadn't seen in a decade. I wondered in particular about my cousin Andrew...about what kind of guy he was growing up to be. The things that I imagined were far from the reality that I found myself in the next week.
There's so much about this that I repress. Mostly, the guilt. I was 19 years old the last time I saw him. He was happy to see me when my cousin dropped me at his house (by force, because I wasn't exactly willing). We had a good day. It was interesting to see the similarities between us, even after virtually no contact for most of my life. When I left that day, we exchanged addresses. I told myself that I'd write to him once, and if he wrote back, we'd go from there. But if he didn't, I was done. I never heard from him.
The August before he died, I was in Kansas. He was working just a couple blocks over, but I wouldn't go see him. Everyone knew I was in town, and if he'd wanted to see me, he could have come over any time. My grandma said that one day I'd regret refusing to see him. I can't say that it's a regret, but the guilt stings. I know I wasn't responsible for the lack of relationship between he and I when I was a child, but I can't help but think I should have behaved better as an adult. It took a couple months of therapy to stop blaming myself. I had what my therapist termed 'complicated grief,' which basically meant there were aspects to the mourning process that I was unable to work through in the typical ways.
I always saw my father's death as the death of a familiar stranger. It's difficult to reconcile feelings when you don't know what your feelings are... I think part of me will always feel the guilt. And as a wave of guilt washes over, so does a wave of anger. The anger has only increased since becoming a mother. I don't understand his indifference.
And then there's the book. I've tried to work on it. I never had the heart to tell anyone in the family that the book is something I hate. Responsibility is the only thing that's kept me from burning it. I got a rough draft of the book for my 16th birthday, accompanied by a letter. The letter explained that the book was his life's work, and his reason for being such a terrible father. I've never read it. However, the letter came in handy when it was time to write something for the funeral...since I knew so little.
And the funeral was surreal. There were so many people...and they all told me stuff about my father. They told me about how he loved me and worried about me...all things I had no first-hand knowledge of.
I was in shock the whole time I was in Kansas for the funeral, but remember one thing very clearly: the smell of death. It never leaves. Once you know it, it stays with you forever. My cousin, the same who called to tell me about my father, lost her husband (my actual cousin) a couple months later. She told me that the smell came in the days before he died. It's an overpowering sickening sweetness. It clings to everything. Just thinking of it now brings it back, mingled with cigarette smoke and wood burning and the damp cold of November in Kansas.
Something else that I've told very few people is that... I saw what was left behind. No one told me much at the time, and I know they were just trying to protect me from further breakdown, so I've never been mad about being kept in the dark. I just wish I'd never seen what was in the cellar. My father had a heart attack on his way to get a cup of coffee. He never knew - the autopsy said it would have been instant. On his way down, he hit his head. There was blood. It was also a few days to a week before anyone found him, and it'd been warm. Intellectually, I knew that there had to be some degree of decomposition. I never allowed myself to really consider what that meant. Even in the house with its smell of death. I'm thankful I was spared the sight of that on the kitchen floor. The trash bags full of bloody rags and paint scrapers edged with coagulated blood in the cellar were more than I could take. I didn't realize what I was looking at at first... it wasn't until I'd emptied half of the bags out on the floor that I realized. Someday I hope to forget all that.
Despite everything, the worst of it is that I have no stories to tell. As the one person who should, I feel at a loss. Family members have passed things on since his death - mementos, photos, etc. - but I have few memories of my own.
My mom told me that he used to sit on the back porch of our little farmhouse and play this song... seems a good place to end this:
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