I'm 17 and I'm lying on the least comfortable couch in our house. It's firm and scratchy and not as long as I am tall, but it is the couch at the foot of the bed my dad is dying in.
I haven't slept. I'm up on my phone, my brightness down, trying not to wake my mom. Her alarm goes off intermittently throughout the night so she can check on my dad's oxygen levels. I don't think she sleeps more than half an hour at a time. My sister is in her bedroom above us. Hours before we had a conversation deciding if we wanted to be in the house when he died. She planned to leave for our aunt's house in the morning.
My phone. I'm reading a story online that someone wrote. I don't remember the details or where I could find it today. It's a horror story set in a hospital. I'm new to the horror genre. I always thought I couldn't handle it but as I sat there working my way through the story, I found that I couldn't pay attention. The beasts they were chased by seemed like nothing. I thought that nothing could be worse than the moment I was living in.
I'm 21 and I'm making sense of things. I write this lying in my bed up too late at night. It's my senior year and I'm studying for my comprehensive exam.
I'm on Book One, Section 48 of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. It talks about modern sensitivity and how we oppose violence because we haven't had to witness it. We haven't had to commit it. I'm supposed to relate this concept to David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune. I think of the box Paul Atreides he sticks his hand in. I think that the Bene Gesserit do this to strip him of his modern distance from terror. I think of this moment in my life, which is always that night on the couch.
I'm 17 and it's Father's Day. I know my dad is dying within the next few days. I've stayed up late making a banner that says Happy Father's Day and I string it across the stairs. My dad hasn't been able to move in some time. In recent days, he has trouble staying conscious. Within the past couple weeks, he's been showered with so many gifts. We mostly commission art for him – a song from a freelance musician he loves, a family portrait drawn in The Simpsons style.
In the morning I ask my mom to bring him into the hallway to see the banner. It’s not going to happen. I take the banner down and reposition it in his bedroom over the couch at the foot of his bed. We show it to him and he tries to type a response with his eyes. It’s unintelligible. I often wonder if that was because of his physical inability to get out a sentence or because of how much morphine he was on. I don’t remember him getting out another clear communication in any form since the night before Father’s Day.
I lie on the couch at the foot of his bed. The Simpsons Movie is on. I watch it with him until I fall asleep.
I constantly question my memories of him. With only one half of a memory it’s impossible to cross reference. They say your memory is actually a memory of the last time you remembered the memory. There are moments of that week I think about too often. There are moments of that week that I haven’t been able to remember for years. Much of what I write here is with uncertainty in accuracy, but I remember the large brush strokes and the emotion behind them and what event would precede those emotions.
I’m 19 and I’m working night shift. I wanted a job where I wouldn’t have to speak to anyone and I could get lost in my earbuds. I spent the nights listening and relistening to podcasts (The Magnus Archives, Life In the World to Come, My Brother My Brother and Me,) and old radio shows (Nightfall) and concept albums (Watertown, American Idiot, Hawaii: Part II) and once even an ADR of an episode of Daredevil. I carry a pencil on me and tear off pieces of cardboard from the boxes to scribble down revelations and timestamps and ideas for my Masks campaign. They still live on my nightstand.
I haven’t read Nietzche’s The Gay Science Book One, Section 49 yet and it’s been at least an hour. I’ve cried and stopped and cried and stopped several times. I’ve lost how this is connected to Dune, especially the 1984 David Lynch version. I haven’t lost it but I don’t want to draw the line for you reading this. I trust your ability to find your own throughlines and meaning and hopefully ones that I hadn’t considered. I dictated this until I couldn’t, well, no longer wanted that format, so I’ll need to go back and edit the first bit and I will find something all anew.
I’m 17 and my dad died just after 6am. I was whisked off to my aunt’s house with my sister. I wanted to see them carry out his body but everyone insisted I didn’t. My aunt gets us food and I think about how we were eating the same thing when we were told his diagnosis. We’re just killing time until my 9am psychiatry appointment that had coincidentally already been scheduled. My psychiatrist cries during my session.
I wake up in my mom’s bed. It’s beside my dad’s in what used to be our living room before it was converted to their bedroom when he could no longer go upstairs. The Game Show Channel is on. We subscribed to the channel (and many others) for my dad to watch all day. My uncle is in the room commenting on how dumb the show is. My house is full of people. Someone ordered us dinner from a local restaurant and mentioned that my dad had died that morning, and they sent us our meals sized up to catering tins. And then some. Our house is full of food because everyone we know wants to give us something. And our house is full of people because there’s too much food and not enough freezer space.
People are happy and laughing. They’re sad but they’re also laughing. My sister’s friend stops by with a bouquet of roses for her and my entire family talks about it for the next year. She insists that that’s just what people do when your dad dies but the whole family wants them to date. They don’t.
It is June 2020 and we can’t have a funeral. I haven’t seen this many people in one place in months and it scares me and I hate it but everyone needs somewhere to go. We are in the backyard and only have close family and my dad’s best friend. The kids don’t know what to do. It’s weird. Eventually we chase each other around and throw ice cubes at one another. The youngest doesn’t notice when my aunt and grandmother walk outside crying and everyone goes silent. He continues throwing ice at people until someone points out to him what’s going on.
A bit later we’re playing Drawful on my Switch. We’re laughing and people are leaving. Eventually my cousins are sent home. I switch from Drawful to Night in the Woods. I play for long enough to reach the bridge and sit down to watch the autumn leaves fall and let the music play. I put the remote down and stare at the screen until I fall asleep. A couple hours later my mom comes in and tells me I have to turn it off because she’s sick of hearing the song loop.
I’m 21 and I have to stop writing because I have play rehearsal in 7 hours. I need to sleep. I’m going to blow my nose and put something on to fall asleep to now.
this is really beautiful
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