all i want you to do is just hold me
It's 2 am, I am laying in bed a little high, half-dreaming, unable to sleep, when my phone vibrates.
It is a text message from my father that says only "Ted is gone I was holding his hand I love you"
Ted and his wife are my parents' best friends. He and Caren are my other set of parents, present at every soccer game, recital, graduation, concert that my brother and I have ever done. They're there every Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, New Year's. They are my friends. My father never sends text messages. He had been sick for so long, in so much pain. I have never not known him. The last time I saw him in the hospital, he was off morphine, hallucinating, had a tracheotomy, could barely speak. He was so thin. All he wanted was to go home. When I was little I would sit on his work bench and play with nuts and washers while he and my father drank beer and watched football. He was sharp, always cracking jokes, telling me to keep my chin up, calling my boyfriends punks and saying I didn't need them. He was strong and smart and he loved us so much. They were always there! So much so that I can't remember where and when they were, exactly, because they were just always there.
I have never not known him but now I don't and I am here in this wretched place, crying alone in my bed in the middle of the night, and I am not there and can't be until I write these 15-page papers, take these tests, finish my last day at work. Today I tried not to look like I was crying every time it started, called my mom during lunch and sank to the floor of the bathroom and cried and laughed about everything this man has done for me. "He's family," my mom says, and tells me about his last moments, when finally the pain left him, when finally, for once, he was allowed to stop fighting.
All I can say is yeah. There is a picture of he and Caren in my mom's old house sporting matching swoopy 70s haircuts, their mouths open in laughter: it's taped on my wall next to pictures of my family, my house. I hate that I'm here and not there. He would hug me like a grizzly bear and shove crumpled ten-dollar bills into my adolescent hands. His house on Mayflower where I was always fed and fawned over, toughened up and reassured. Death has not touched me in so long, but it always feels the same. I hate that he can't feel me loving him anymore.
It is a text message from my father that says only "Ted is gone I was holding his hand I love you"
Ted and his wife are my parents' best friends. He and Caren are my other set of parents, present at every soccer game, recital, graduation, concert that my brother and I have ever done. They're there every Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, New Year's. They are my friends. My father never sends text messages. He had been sick for so long, in so much pain. I have never not known him. The last time I saw him in the hospital, he was off morphine, hallucinating, had a tracheotomy, could barely speak. He was so thin. All he wanted was to go home. When I was little I would sit on his work bench and play with nuts and washers while he and my father drank beer and watched football. He was sharp, always cracking jokes, telling me to keep my chin up, calling my boyfriends punks and saying I didn't need them. He was strong and smart and he loved us so much. They were always there! So much so that I can't remember where and when they were, exactly, because they were just always there.
I have never not known him but now I don't and I am here in this wretched place, crying alone in my bed in the middle of the night, and I am not there and can't be until I write these 15-page papers, take these tests, finish my last day at work. Today I tried not to look like I was crying every time it started, called my mom during lunch and sank to the floor of the bathroom and cried and laughed about everything this man has done for me. "He's family," my mom says, and tells me about his last moments, when finally the pain left him, when finally, for once, he was allowed to stop fighting.
All I can say is yeah. There is a picture of he and Caren in my mom's old house sporting matching swoopy 70s haircuts, their mouths open in laughter: it's taped on my wall next to pictures of my family, my house. I hate that I'm here and not there. He would hug me like a grizzly bear and shove crumpled ten-dollar bills into my adolescent hands. His house on Mayflower where I was always fed and fawned over, toughened up and reassured. Death has not touched me in so long, but it always feels the same. I hate that he can't feel me loving him anymore.