There was still some innocence left in me.
Well, maybe naïveté.
There is a saying I heard once,
“You’re not yet a man until your father is gone.”
I had a crutch, a safety. My dad wouldn’t let me fail in life.
Even in the situations that I was the one more familiar with, I just knew that my father had some insight that was missing.
I was lucky enough to believe this.
Logically, you think, “my parents were here when I got here, they must have figured this ‘life’ thing out already.”
In my case, this was actually true…
The experiences, the choices, the sacrifices, all perfectly executed chess moves and they’d all worked out.
The funny thing is, I didn’t even respect my parents properly until I stopped putting them on a pedestal. It is easy for these superheroes to save me, they can fly …and they’re invincible. It’s a different story when they run onto the battlefield to rescue me while being just as vulnerable, as mortal as I am.
It takes so much more to make the tough decisions and to sacrifice when you don’t have the luxury of invincibility. They did it as regular people. Like me.
Unfathomable.
They did it scared and unknowing.
They were right, or wrong, or somewhere in between with the decisions they made, but it didn’t matter, they made it work.
They sacrificed their comforts, and realities.
For the extras in their story. For me.
An extra.
Just as they are extras in my story.
(Albeit best supporting cast that the movie can’t survive without.)
Even knowing that my dad was a regular man, I just knew there was some supernatural stuff happening with him.
Against my understanding of the world.
The material world.
He’d proved it on several occasions.
AND……
God was on our side.
So things would always work out.
And then November 4th.
My dad died.
It is the craziest sentence I have ever contemplated writing.
I know that it happens for every single person that is born into this material world. I know he had a long successful life.
He was sick, from two types of cancer, and was suffering horribly.
And still, it is an unacceptable concept for me to grasp.
I fully understand how people play the lottery every day and expect.
I fully understand audacity of daredevils.
I fully understand the unrealistic, impossible prayers of the faithful even when faced with inevitability.
The believers.
I thought he’d get better.
I don’t know. I thought he would beat cancer like he did Covid19.
I thought he’d beat old age.
I guess, at least until I was properly situated to accept the terms and conditions of this world.
He didn’t.
He died on November 4th.
While my mom and I chanted the most powerful prayer we could to make sure he was safe…
Halfway (… maybe more than half if I am being honest) thinking that this prayer would miraculously do our bidding.
Even if our bidding was shortsighted and quite specific to our mental and emotional agendas.
The world was all of a sudden emptied.
It is a tough thing to explain.
It doesn’t make sense unless you go through it I guess.
I immediately realized the world was a dangerous place with no safety net.
I just wanted to sleep. A lot. Until it was over.
Pain and numbness are an odd couple that somehow found, and befriended me.
I was shell shocked. In a full stupor.
And just like that,
November 5th.
I remember walking out of the hospital room the previous day.
The doctors and nurses were all extremely nice, but they had to also be detached for their own sake. They would have to walk into another room and “call it” at some specific time.
That, somehow I understood.
But how was the 5th happening?
The rest of the world was detached…
NYC announced a new incoming mayor.
People started on their Wednesday commute.
Outside the same sounds and smells…
Everything was going on… like normal.
The 5th.
Incidentally, feeling like you’ve been punched in your heart is a crazy feeling.
And still,
The 5th.
Everything goes on.
It has to.
I was immediately aware of all the 5ths of others that I had marginalized.
Offered condolences and went on to live my life, because I had to.
Passed on a street corner, offering a quick “sorry I don’t have any money on me.” Heading to wherever I needed to be.
Reading about their tragedies and tossing out their stories because I can’t carry their heavens with me throughout the day.
I now have my 5th.
I have to figure this out.
Through pain…
Discouraged and depressed.
So I started.
I picked a font.
I wanted something nice and beautiful.
Well lit.
Not as Naive as I was on the 4th,
This is not a permanent place. It is insane to set up for a permanent stay here.
I decided to make my 5th beautiful and formidable. Knowing that it will come around again and again. Every month, the 4th comes. And then , the 5th.
Life moves on.
And you gotta get up.
And you have to handle life.
One of the extremely tough things
my dad did.
