August 2010 - "The War is Over"

See You in Casablanca

The wrinkles around his half open eyes slanted upward in a genuine smile as he said the words, “good-bye sweetheart” and I leaned over the back of the couch, gave him a kiss on the cheek and said bye. Even though the words were good-bye sweetheart, they rang in my heart as if he said “I love you” for the first time in years. That was the last time I saw my father alive. Two weeks later my mother would find him cold in their bed. Two weeks later my brother would be calling 911 as my mother screamed for him to wake up. Two weeks later Monica and I would be sitting in rocking chairs on the back porch of my parents’ house chain smoking cigarettes and making another photo slideshow for a funeral, deciding which Beatles’ song was more heartfelt. It felt like another project that I compulsively had to make perfect, even if it meant staying up till sunrise again. The pictures, the order they went in, the music and the order the songs went in, and the opening and closing, it all had to be perfect because it was the last thing I could give to my dad, just as two weeks earlier when it was Jen’s slideshow we were working on, except then we were in a basement as opposed to a porch, but I was just as meticulous with each photo and its placement and how long it stayed on the screen and when and where each song started and stopped. I had something to focus on other then the pain, maybe that’s why I spent such an enormous amount of time on them. Focus on the screen and I won’t hear my heart scream. Focus on anything but my emotions. It wasn’t real anyway right? It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. FUCK!!! I was looking at my father’s body in a coffin. He was skinny again from the cancer but hadn’t even been in chemotherapy long enough to lose his hair so he actually looked younger then when he was alive and healthy. His mustache was grey but it sat on his face just like it had been all my life. Was this really happening? I still couldn’t tell. I could hear the music from the slideshow. I could hear the whispers “that’s the daughter” meaning me, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. I could hear my mom’s voice talking endlessly but not forming complete sentences or complete anything, at least to me. I saw lips move and arms reach around me but didn’t feel the embrace. I heard my four and a half year old niece ask her mother and father, my brother, “when is Grandpa gonna wake up?” That’s when I snatched her from her cunt of a mother and went outside and sat on the front porch of the funeral home. She, my niece Alyssa, was real. Alyssa was real and I held onto her so tightly as if she were my security blanket and I was the sad four year old needing attention. The attention she gave me was perfect for the time because it was simple. Everything else in my life at that time was the opposite; it was complicated, depressing, stressful, nothing made sense, the bomb had gone off, the walls had already crumbled, and I was trapped under a pile of debris. It was easier to take a walk with my niece, my girlfriend Monica, and my three best friends Joe, Victor, and Jimmy. I couldn’t go back inside. In there was my dad, my past, my regrets, my anger, my sadness, and all the things that forever will be left unsaid. Like, “I love you sweetheart” instead of “good-bye.” I love you too Dad, I had plenty of reasons not to but something inside me still did. I’m sorry you never knew that.