On Things That Are Dying

She told me once.

I hear her cry sometimes at night; I know what she’s thinking about. About her life, about her dead father. She cries for what she lost. She is afraid to stop crying; she is afraid of forgetting, of what she has already forgotten, of what she can’t forget.

She feels guilty. She remembers two days before he died. Twelve, it was nearly her birthday. She sat on her bed, looked out the window and wondered what it would be like to have her father die. She wondered if people would pity her, would be kind, would expect her to cry. She wasn’t sure that she could. She was wrapped up in stupid, childish thoughts.

I think that this why she makes herself remember.

She remembers someone with a camera. As she sat next to her father and waited for him to die, as she begged her brother to make it okay for him to let go, someone had a camera.

She thought that she would like to have her father’s medallion. The one he wore around his neck to protect him. She feels guilty for thinking this before he died. She was afraid that her brother would want it. She wanted him to have the little paper prayers that he had kept on a string. She wanted to wear the necklace all the time. The paper would not do. She needed to know this before he was gone. That it was hers. Her father wasn’t dead and she was already sorting his belongings.

She hadn’t sorted well enough because too much was given away. There are no ties, or shoes, or shirts, or furniture. The bed that he died on is gone. The bed she would go to in the middle of the night when she was scared or lonely.

The pictures are put away. Even the picture that someone had tried to take of his spirit leaving his body.

She remembers him being sick. She can’t remember him ever being well. She can’t remember him not looking sad in his eyes, deep in them. She can’t remember not thinking that he was going to die and leave her.

She remembers trying to cry at the funeral. She remembers trying never to cry in front of her mother.

She remembers 2:08, not the 2:10 that the coroner wrote down.

She remembers her mother sending her out of the room so she could dress his body more appropriately for transportation, but not before she saw the diaper. She remembers him as strong and weak. She cries when she thinks about what he had wanted life to be, when she remembers what it really was.

She remembers being angry that he was going to die on her birthday. She is angry that he didn’t last until then. She wishes that she could have had that last day.

She wishes she knew someone who she could talk to about him, who he was, what he wanted; she wishes she knew someone like that, someone who wouldn’t cry. Someone who would tell her it’s okay, who would tiptoe around her instead.

But there is no one like that.