Daddy

There’s nothing more painful than hearing your father cry.

Because for your whole life, he was the one who held it together—he carried you, he fixed you, he took care of anything that needed taking care of—he bandaged the skinned knees, paid the late bills, the library book fines, drove you to your last minute appointments when your car wouldn’t start

And you’ve always taken for granted his perpetual strength, you never asked where it came from, or doubted its existence—because when you need him, he’s there, always. He would be there, no matter what.

He became the lacings that tightened your life and wrapped around you like twine that would never break or give.  He was always the most solid thing in your life, the person on whom you could lean without any fear of falling when everyone else had left.  The person who would never falter or break… Always there, a constant, a rock, steady, permanent.

But when he breaks, what do you do? When it’s midnight on Mother’s Day and he calls crying so hard he can’t get the words out properly, you can’t turn to the one person who always makes everything right because he’s the one who needs to be righted. Now it’s him. Now he’s the one who needs you. And there’s nothing you can say or do or give him that will make anything better.

So you hold the phone to your ears and cry with him. And the tears stream down your face, not for the mother that he has just lost, but for the father that you never wanted to see like this, unraveled and crumbling.

And you’re being selfish, because everyone else keeps hugging you, offering prayers and apologies because they think you’re sad you’ve lost your Grandmother.

But you’re crying because you can’t handle seeing your father this way.

You can’t handle the realization that, for your whole life, “adulthood” meant being under control, meant rationality, meant not ever being hurt like how he is hurting, but now you know that it never ends, and it reminds you that one day, like your dad who lost his mother, you’ll lose your father one day, and your mother, and everyone you’ve ever loved, you’ll watch them all fade away. You’re crying because you  think that the “overreacting” stops when you’re young, and that one day, you’ll just be mature, wise, and all of everything that makes life what it is—love and death and pain—all of that will just wash over you when it happens. Feeling is for the children. But now, more than ever, your father is a child, he won’t leave his bed, he won’t stop crying, and he won’t eat or sleep or talk. He’s broken in a way that you would give everything you’ve ever had away just to make it stop. But you can’t.

So you just watch.  And wait.

And you keep going, and hope he comes too. And you put one foot in front of the other, and move away from all of this.