Eulogy.
My dad died four days ago. This is where I'm at with it.
May 14th / 4:27 P.M / Los Angeles, California
I am starting this journal twenty-something hours after my dad died. I have no premeditated objective, other than to document what I am feeling when I am feeling it. I realized that writing about these moments six months from now, when the therapy has kicked in and time has done what she does, would be of no use to anyone.
I am sure that come September I will have an overflowing spring of well-baked wisdom bites to pass around and preach about. By then I will have taken an extensive inventory of my fathers life, our fights, my failures and his delightful qualities, and placed them all into neat little tupperwares to sit in the back of my mind. Tupperware was one of his “things,” along with saving every plastic bag he ever encountered, or rationing paper towels by handing you a neatly torn half before dinner, regardless of how many Costco-sized rolls sat untouched in the garage.
A year from now I’ll smile at the fond memories while allowing the sour ones their share of the stage. It’ll all be very mature and evolved and the townspeople will gather beneath my window to shout their praise at my emotional intelligence. But I’m not there yet. I think it is necessary that I catalog my current nature, which swings between Miranda Priestly-esq Ice Queen and crying in public.
So, I am creating an archive of my turmoil. Whether these writings will ever see the light of day is unclear. My instability has never been a secret, but maybe there are some things best kept close to the vest. Either way, I gotta get this shit out.
May 14th / 11:52 PM / Los Angeles, California
The prerequisites for being a female protagonist in most of the films and shows that formed and warped my youthful mind were as follows:
Must have long hair. Preferably straight. Preferably blonde.
Must always walk with thumbs tucked gently into the coin pocket of True Religion low rise bootcut jeans.
Must have an enviable, cartoonishly large bedroom with window seat for dramatic journaling. Insight into the protagonist's family finances will not be provided.
Must have at least one dead parent.
I’m sitting on my sticky countertop nursing the room-temp Modelo that I accidentally left out four hours ago, realizing that most of the girls who danced across my TV set growing up were at least partial orphans. Orphan-ish. Orphan-Lite.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants brought us Bridget, who was a contributing factor in how my parents were able to make me play soccer for so many years. I was all panting and nose-bleeds and tripping over my own feet, but the image of Bridget running down that beach, blonde hair and hot coach trailing behind her, kept me playing that god-awful sport for five long years.
We were then given A Cinderella Story, where Hilary Duff heroically delivered the monologue of the century to a packed locker room of onlookers. “Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought. Useless and disappointing.” Duff’s character, Samantha Montgomery, meets most of the aforementioned requirements. She’s got a wardrobe full of denim that hits just below the belly button, hair so blonde it teeters on being an optical illusion, and a beloved father who meets his tragic end during the first thirty seconds of the film. And actually, upon reflection, her bedroom is also a doozy. They call it an attic, a damp crawl space where her wicked stepmother sent her into exile, but all I see is high ceilings, massive windows and room for both a queen sized bed and a desk. Good for her.
It would be, of course, wildly remiss of me to not mention Elena Gilbert, who loses points for being a brunette (only in the show – canonically she is described as having “hair as light as sunlight” or something insane like that), but gains some favor for having not one but two dead parents. I remember watching The Vampire Diaries in middle school and believing with my whole entire heart that if being orphaned at sixteen was the price I had to pay to receive a tender forehead kiss from Damon Salvatore, I would hug my parents goodbye and hope they understood.
I’m sitting on my sticky countertop nursing my now very warm Modelo, taking detailed mental notes of every film and show I grew up watching, compiling a list of all the protagonists who had dead parents. Seems like a good use of my time.
May 15th / 9:07 A.M / Los Angeles, California
I woke up with a wicked sore throat and I didn’t have a single dream last night. Both of those things are incredibly common occurrences for me – I repeatedly sleep with wet hair and wake to a collection of cold symptoms, and when I am as exhausted as I have been the last few days, rarely do I dream. But I am apparently at that stage of shock or grief where I assign meaning and symbolism to every little fucking thing. Yesterday I saw a lizard crawl across my doormat and my immediate thought was “that’s him. That’s Dad.” Last night I dropped an empty beer bottle on my way to the recycling can. I stood there in my bare feet and I stared at the driveway, now covered in shards of glass, and thought “what does this mean?” It means that I shouldn’t apply hand lotion before doing chores.
Except now, it also means that the ghost of my estranged father is hovering nearby, sabotaging my daily tasks and trying to draw blood.
This morning my throat was scratchy and my sleep, while sound, was without imagery, and my instant conclusion was that more bad news must be on the horizon. Is paranoia a recognized stage of grief? Or do I need to cool it with the horror novels?
May 15th / 3:43 P.M / Los Angeles, California
Just got off the phone with Mom. Due to the sudden and unpredicted nature of my fathers death, an autopsy will be performed this week. I asked if I was allowed to have his teeth. She said she’d ask, but that she is pretty certain that it doesn’t work that way. It should. After twenty years together, I think I am owed a handful (literally) of souvenirs.
May 15th / 4:01 P.M / Los Angeles, California
I want to document the circumstances surrounding my dads death, but I wasn’t there, and getting reliable information from my family is like a game of passive agressive telephone, so instead I’ll tally up how I found out.
Two days ago I was walking from dinner to a surprise birthday party for a friend of a friend. We had been at the apartment earlier in the evening, I was tasked with cutting strawberries for the punch while Alex, my beloved companion, was taping a clump of sparkly pink streamers to the wall. We then left to kill time while the birthday girl was being entertained and distracted. Alex and I spent the next hour sitting outside of a posh wine bar, eating butter beans soaked in garlic-infused olive oil and enthusiastically discussing vintage workwear, aliens, who would be most likely to fall victim to a cult, our fear and frustrations regarding the current political climate, and trying to figure out what “skin contact” means and why, if written on a bottle of orange wine, said bottle immediately doubles in price. It was a really fun evening. Eventually we got the call that the party was in full swing and that we needed to hurry up if we wanted to partake in the SURPRISE! We were walking to the gathering, slightly tipsy and giggling about boys, when my mom called me. I answered and kept walking, immediately launching into a recap of my day and what I was wearing and where I was going next. She listened and laughed and asked a few questions, and when I started to say that I had to go, she said “I have to tell you something, and I don’t… I know that this is a really shitty time and weird way to do it, but you need to hear it from me.” Pregnant pause, heavy breathing. “David died this morning.”
He’d been in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Allergic reaction to some medication. He had a lot of swelling and a brutal skin rash that forced him and his nurses to apply vaseline to most of his body every few hours. But his blood tests were finally coming back normal, and since his symptoms were shrinking by the day, the doctors said he was good and ready to go home.
He was found on the bathroom floor the following morning.
No circus or fanfare. The exact cause of death has yet to be determined, but I imagine it was as simple as a clench or a spasm or a fall. A wildly mundane way to go. Plain, saltless. With nobody to blame, no drunk driver or serial killer or unqualified doctor, I find that I’ve got a lot of anger and sadness on my hands and no idea where to put it. I bite my nails a lot. But bleeding cuticles are better than hurling accusations at nothing and no one.
I went to the party. I got off the phone with my mom and I considered my options, concluding that my dark and sterile AirBnB was not where I wanted to be, and I went to the party. My dad was dead and I crouched in the kitchen and shouted HAPPY BIRTHDAY when the door opened. My dad was dead and I had a glass of punch and half a cigarette and talked to a few beautiful girls about their summer plans and one-night stands. My dad was dead and I ducked into the bathroom, not to cry but to re-apply my lipstick. My phone lit up with an invitation to another gathering, and I went to that one too. There I ate a questionable vegan blueberry cheesecake and fistfuls of fancy goat cheese and took photos when my friend Coco spilled red wine all over her silk white gown.
I don’t think I was necessarily on autopilot, and I don’t think my behavior is evidence of some pending sociopathy diagnosis. Standing there on the curb with my mom on the other end of the line, I just decided that I couldn’t do this yet. I needed to prolong the “before” a little longer, before the ground shifted and I was plunged into a world of funeral planning and mournful Facebook paragraphs.
I got home late, watched half an SVU episode on mute and fell asleep on the couch in my party dress.
May 16th / 12:15 A.M / Los Angeles, California
I’m waiting for my tea to steep and if I keep staring at it, me and the mug might both explode.
May 16th / 12:40 A.M / Los Angeles, California
Just burnt the shit out of my tongue. Feels personal.
It’s weird being in this apartment alone. I can’t decide if I need to get some air and human contact, or if I need to exile myself in my ant-infested rented one-bedroom and watch Psych and stare into space. I went to the grocery store today and felt like I was undergoing some cruel and unusual hazing ritual, having to chit-chat with my Uber drivers and compare prices of organic v.s inorganic canned black beans. But then I got home and sat alone on my couch with my beans and my headache and I can’t say that felt great either.
I need instructions, clear and concise and numbered, that tell me what to do with my time right now. But everyone keeps telling me that there is no timeline, no right or wrong way to grieve. And this episode is one of my favorites. It’s the one where Shawn and Gus get tangled up in a treasure hunt for lost Spanish gold with Shawn’s kinda hot but wildly full-of-shit uncle.
May 16th / 10:50 AM / Los Angeles, California
I knew that logging on to Facebook was a mistake. As I was typing in my password every cell in my body was telling me to jump ship and not do this right now. It was exactly what I thought it would be. Many people calling him a hero. “An effortless model of limitless compassion” are the actual words someone used. Another said that “his gentle grace and warmth was a delight.”
Watching people deify the dead just because they’re dead makes me wince and bristle. I want to spend the rest of my life in the comment section of these posts, writing in all caps about how YOU PEOPLE CLEARLY DIDN’T KNOW HIM. But that isn’t fair, they did know him. He had many sides, as do I. I wouldn’t want my legacy to be whittled down to the worst things I had ever done. Still, reading the eulogies from people who knew him for five minutes fifty years ago is making my skin crawl.
Maybe I’m just seeking out shit to be angry about so that I don’t have to think about our last conversation. How we fought.
May 17th / 8:22 A.M / Los Angeles, California
I drank an entire bottle of wine last night and my body is responding accordingly. But it was fun. I had fun and for that, I am willing to have the spins for a while. And the sweats. And a collection of other symptoms ranging from minor headache to “did that smell actually just come out of me? Do I need an ambulance? Or an exorcism?” Cheers.
May 18th / 3:43 A.M / Los Angeles, California
“‘The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.’ Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell. Nel didn’t understand it then, but now in the bathroom, trying to feel, she thought, ‘If I could be sure that I could stay here in this small white room with the dirty tile and water gurgling in the pipes and my head on the cool rim of this bathtub and never have to go out the door, I would be happy. If I could be certain that I never had to get up and flush the toilet, go in the kitchen, watch my children grow up and die, see my food chewed on my plate… Sula was wrong. Hell ain’t things lasting forever. Hell is change.’ Not only did men leave and children grow up and die, but even the misery didn’t last. One day she wouldn’t even have that. This very grief that had twisted her into a curve on the floor and flayed her would be gone. She would lose that too.”
Thanks for that one, Toni.
May 18th / 8:11 A.M / Los Angeles, California
When a parent dies, there is so much fucking gunk to sort through. Literally, you should see the shit he hoarded in our garage. Do we really need two broken snare drums? One I get but a pair feels like overkill.
I anticipate that I will spend the next few years sorting his trinkets and my memories into KEEP and TOSS piles.
Historically, I am guilty of clinging tight to my anger and resentments for far too long. I know that the grudge is past its sell-by-date, that it would be in everyone's best interest for me to get over this already. Still, I convince myself that if everyone else has already moved on, if the person who did the wrongdoing clearly is no longer concerned, me staying angry is the only evidence that there was ever a crime committed. I am the person who takes three years to grieve the ending of a year-long friendship. I think it’s because I fear that if I really move past this, it disappears. The entire relationship, all the joy and the inside jokes and the kept secrets, will be wiped from the records of existence. So, as an act of delusional protest, I spend the next one hundred years rehashing arguments with my shower wall, fixating on all the sour ways I was wronged by this person who for all I know could be living out of state or on the moon.
But distance doesn’t soften me. If anything, I calcify.
My dad is dead and I can feel myself hardening, shrink-wrapping the painful memories and preserving them, lest I forget how much damage was done. How much hurt I endured. I don’t think I am wrong to do so. As I said, I have no interest in sainting anyone just because they’re not around anymore. There was not a lot of room for me to express my anger while he was alive. It was always the “wrong time.” I was always doing it in the “wrong way.” There was always a reason why accountability on his part for his behavior was out of the question.
But now he’s dead, and I don’t actually want to spend the rest of my life gnawing on the fucked up pieces of my childhood. Those splinters will just burrow into my gums and I’ll drip blood and harsh words all over anyone who tries to love me now.
I want to tend to the sore and aching places that my dad drilled in me. Give them the airtime they were denied. I also want to honor the good.
Yesterday, I was walking home and I stepped over a scattering of trail mix on the sidewalk. Trail mix, like paper towels and broken iPhone chargers, was one of his favorite delicacies. He was always saving the M&Ms for last, waiting until they were a gooey, melted glob of colorful shell fragments and sticky insides that clumped and coated the bottom of the sandwich baggy. He’d then, with great concentration and ceremony, gather the mess on his fingers and lick it off, chewing occasionally when he caught some crunch from a lingering almond. He did this in the passenger seat during drives to the airport, at his desk during important business meetings, at my high school graduation, always with much dedication and little regard for his white shirt or surroundings.
His hands were always damp and slightly sticky, and it made me laugh, thinking about it on my way home.
That’s all I have the words for right now. Thank you for listening. Talk soon.
Dronme
You have such a profound way of highlighting raw human emotions. Sometimes in our most vulnerable moments we don’t react as expected, but that’s okay. Thank you for sharing and I wish you comfort during this time.
My dad died just over a year ago and it still grates on me hearing people put the dead on a pedestal. Most of the time my dad was kind, fair, honest and wise and witty and full of great film recommendations and, occasionally, surprisingly tender affirmations that he loved me. He was also selfish, stubborn, thoughtless and sometimes cruel. He was a whole person, as am I. We argued a lot. He disappointed and enraged me and was all too often unwilling to apologise. I loved him fiercely and I refuse to feel guilty about our arguments because they were honest and because there's no point. Thank you for sharing, writing helps me too. Sending you love.