My dad was solid space. He was a beer belly and thick tanned arms. He was a large bald head that demanded attention. When he hugged me, I became a C, scooping myself to allow his stiff torso into my space.
I yelled at his space.
Loathed it. His space was a sure thing.
When I was little I fell asleep to the sound of his space falling up and down in broken rhythm as air struggled to pass his nose. How strange it was that last day to see the chest I’d so memorized pulse mechanically up and down. A robotic machine opened and closed his lungs.
A puppet master putting on a show.
As I begged for the stiff dance to continue, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that the body laying there was no longer my dad. He was already dead.
I don't understand how bodies become just bodies. How his space became only space. How things so animated all get moved to metal shelves in the end. I pictured my dad burned alive. But he wasn’t alive, just burned. His tattoos, his peppered beard, the face that matches my own, all offered to flame, turned to dust to be put on the mantle.
I hope you find peace in Portugal. Or Greece or Colorado or Slovenia or Puerto Rico or on the top of Mt Kilimanjaro.
I hope the quiet isn’t too quiet at home.
I hope you remember to eat. Eat like you told me to. Two years ago when I almost died from not. Like you told me to again after dad died. When you said that fruit wasn’t enough for the day. I hope you aren't eating only fruit for the day.
I hope you remember all the people that love you who are not me. Because my love isn’t love enough.
I hope you know that I can read everything on your face. Read your sighs. And that's why I can't come by. Because your sighs remind me of my own.
Because sometimes I feel like I lost two parents that day.
Dad used to say we had our own language. I don't think we do anymore.
We saw an awful movie at our favorite theater.
I picked scabs and tried to let the two hours pass with ease.
The car rolled silently home and the first smells of summer curdled on our noses.
We retreated into opposite corners of the house though we both wore his jackets and thought of him.
