He was found sprawled out on the sidewalk, like a squashed ant. Barely clinging to life with the unsteady beat of his damaged heart, and gasping for air with slow, broken breaths that rolled from his shriveled lungs like the smoke that rose from the windows of his office building.
We received a short call from a calm, sweet voiced lady telling us that he had just been checked into the hospital and was in critical condition. My older sisters, my mother, and I packed into our little station wagon and made the silent, twenty minute trip into the city to see him.
My mother and sisters threw themselves to his side and sobbed into his chest and proclaimed their love for him and how they have let go of all of their accusations and anger that they had been clutching close to their chests for months. I made myself comfortable in the corner of the tiny hospital room and listened to their cries of love for a man who couldn’t hear them. Begging for forgiveness in fear that this might be their last chance. In fear that karma would come for them for resenting a dead man.
I understood why they did this. When the people in your life are just barely hanging on to the edge of their existence, your worst fears become eternally loose ends. Things left unsaid and undid, remaining that way forever because you let the opportunity slip from your grasp.
But the opportunity was lost. That’s what they didn’t know. Dad would never have the chance to forgive and forget. He was gone before the beat of his heart flat lined and I knew it.
So there I stood with my back against the blue paint and eyes that refused to shed tears because I remembered his laugh and the sound of his voice. I knew what it felt like to be hugged by him and I could easily describe the way he smelled. Like old book pages and coffee.
“Quinn.” Mom whispered as she approached me. Her mascara left black rivers that meandered down her cheeks. “Come over here.” She picked up my hand from its place on the arm of my chair and tugged at it. I complied and stood up. She led me over to my father’s bedside and I found myself standing over his body, staring at the wall.
I wasn’t a crier. I never had been, but right then, my eyes started to ache and fill up with tears. Between the beeps of the respirator, the heartache consumed me. In that moment I realized my dad was gone and my whole life would change when the beeps that separated those thoughts ceased.
We lived at the hospital for the following week. We’d leave to go shower and get a fresh change of clothes and maybe an hour of sleep, but that was it. My sisters and I stayed home from school and my mom skipped as many meetings as she could, but sometimes she couldn’t get out of them and she’d leave with worry struck across her face and fear that she’d come back to the sheet pulled up over my father’s head and a doctor’s well rehearsed, pitying words that tell her that there was nothing they could do.
Dad was never one to abandon others.
He took his last breath on a Thursday night. We sat around his hospital bed clutching burritos from the Mexican restaurant down the street and the beeping suddenly turned into a ring that signified a flatline, but if you ask me, my dad hadn’t breathed in a long time.
I sat at the top of the stairs listening to their angry whispers in the dark.
“I know you’ve been with that girl.”
“Lisa, what girl?”
“The girl at your office. The one at the desk that you’ve been spending so much time with.”
“She’s a co-worker. I have meetings with her sometimes. That’s it.”
“Meetings? What happens at these meetings?”
“Nothing! We work.” It wasn’t the first time mom accused him of something like this. It was constant, but I knew she was only paranoid. So were my sisters. They constantly reminded him that he was lucky that mom hadn’t thrown his stuff out on the front lawn and that he was a horrible father. I didn’t believe any of the accusations. Dad wasn’t a cheater and he loved us all with everything he had, even if we didn’t love him back.
We drove home that night in silence. Deafening silence. Mom threw a fit in the lobby of the hospital, but it didn’t come from love and loss. It was a cry for attention. She was now the widow left with three girls that everyone would pity and this wasn’t what she bargained for.
The reading of his will was on a Tuesday. My mother, my sisters, and I sat in a line of chairs in the center of the room surrounded by friends and family I barely knew. A tall, skinny man with a gray beard sat behind a desk with a folder in his hands.
“Shall we begin?” He asked. We nodded in unison. “Alright.” He opened up the folder and began reading from a packet. He left the house and car and the majority of everything to my mother. My sisters and I were all too young to be left with anything of any real significance, so I didn’t pay attention to the majority of the reading. “Which one of you girls is Quinn?” I slowly raised my hand. The man pulled a yellow envelope out from one of the folder pockets and slid it to the other side of the desk. “He left this for you.” I nodded and held the envelope close to my chest.
We walked through the door and retreated to our separate rooms. The house was dark and rain streamed down the windows and the night went on silently. I sat on my bed holding the letter. I held the last surprise my dad had for me in my hands. No more presents, and jokes, and ice cream trips, only a letter.
Quinn,
I wanna thank you for never giving up on me. I know your mother and your sisters lost any faith they had in me and you never did. You stuck by me. I would’ve understood if you had taken their side and believed the accusations, but you didn’t. I know it would’ve been easier to take their side, but I also know you never take the easy way out. I love you Quinn, more than anything. Thank you for always sticking by me.
-Love Dad
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