THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: DAD

And then I’m home, and it’s like a place I’ve dreamt about, but never been to. In my mind, it’s like I know what’s around every corner. What people are going to say. But it’s not like that too, because things have changed. It’s been 21-years (and let’s not talk about the last 8, OK?) and the town has shrunk, collapsed, fallen away so that all the angles and shortcuts and pointless things are not only visible, they are jarring. Everywhere.

Dad died last Friday like someone cut his strings. He lived alone in the house on Foxhurst since mom went in 2002. And I spent the first day home digging in boxes in his…in the house. Air Force and then Boeing and then Apex. Project folders like sedimentary layers, with the occasional citations and even a medal or two, somewhere, I think. 

The man was his job. It’s what Ken from the Owl said to me, when I first saw him when I got back. I remember being proud of my dad back when he wore a uniform. Back before I never saw him at all, or he never saw me, I guess. After I was 10, he was just a guy who’d show up for breakfast sometimes. After I was 23 and I told him about Jeremy, he was just a photo and a voice on the phone, sometimes. Anyway, he was proud I went into applied physics. Even if he was disappointed in everything else.  

The last time he made the trip to see me was when I got my doctorate. The last time I saw him was mom’s funeral. The last time we spoke was four Christmases ago. 

Nothing much was said. I don’t think he wished me ill. I just think he couldn’t conceive of a world like mine. And let’s be honest, I’d had ten years to get used to not having a father. So the call wasn’t really that big a thing. It was something expected. A chore. Like taxes. 

So, dead dad. Boxes. Papers. Money and bank accounts and lawyers' packets. Dad was always a planner. He was always ready. This time was no different. And truth be told, this — even this — is a needed distraction. It was a card I could play to skip the op, and you better believe I did. So sorry, father is dead, can’t. 

I didn’t expect it, but for once, they bought it. 

So now Emil and Evelyn are off in the dark on their own, probably. And you know what? I’m happy. I’m happy to be here. I’m rooting for them, but fuck it; better them than me. And you think, what could be that bad? War? Murder? Death? And I just have to be quiet, then, because you can’t work it out in your head. I couldn't describe it. You can’t imagine it. You can’t work your brain to wring-out the thoughts needed to encompass the threat. No one sane can do that. 

For 8 years, I’ve been hunting it. No matter what it is, no matter what it looks like, it’s always the same thing. We find it, we pack it up, and throw it in the back of Blackhawks. With each box, I can feel things fall away inside. At first a hole. Then a gap. And now a crevasse through my life, where the light can't go, anymore. The thing we pretend to stop, it’s coming for me, and there’s nothing I can do to escape it, because it’s inside me.
 

It’s inside everyone, and isn’t that the shittiest thing? That thought there just kills everything, for me. To know we’re just sentient shit, self-forming to pick the locks and let the real things out. Everything that’s ever been, every human breath — an imitation of the true meaning of the universe. 

It's raining now, and it's dark, and tomorrow we'll bury him and then I'll have to go back to doing the things that are taking me to pieces.

I rip open the manilla envelope from the lawyer. Sit in dad’s chair in his “office” — an Office Depot desk shoved in the corner of a laundry nook — and pull the papers out. There’s a pile of what look like files inside. But the first thing that stands out is the letter. 

My dad’s cramped, mechanical handwriting. Eight words. 

I recommended you for the program. I’m sorry. 

I sit in the squeaking chair, shaking and crying for a long time.