What would you write if you weren’t afraid?
I would write about the day Reg broke the news to me. How they had all piled into the car for the morning hospital visit. I stayed back home. I always stayed back home and I don’t know why. Maybe I do and I am too much of a coward to admit it. I was afraid of what I would find—my father on a hospital bed, frail and unconscious. My father with tubes traveling through his body. My father fading away before my eyes. How I would be too scared to look, too stunned to stretch out my hand to touch him. How I might crack like glass, shards of grief clattering at my feet, and they would have to drag me out of the room. I did not want to be taken out of the room. Like what happened with Obed. How my friends grabbed me by the arm and drew me away from his bed like a child. They saw me coming apart and they wanted to spare him the miserable sight. Because seeing me this way would break his heart. But I want to stay in the room, I want to fall apart by his side. I want my head on my father’s chest, the sound of my cries drumming in his ears. My plea and fear as palpable as his pain.
And the truth is, I also want to be taken away. I’m a nuisance in that room. I shouldn’t be allowed in spaces of pain, spaces where the body shrinks and the eyes are distant and dazed with despair. A room where the voices of the people I love are snuffed out like a small flame. A room lined with beds on wheels and the drip drip drip of IV fluids. A room of waiting and long sighs, of final and struggling breaths, of bodies numb and pumped with pills, of stitches healing or coming undone. New wounds and old wounds. The unspeakable terror of a bed that was occupied the night before, and now, suddenly, empty. Where did they go? Where did you take them? Bring them back back back. Back to us back to life back to the here and now. Of course, I should be taken away from those rooms. I should be dragged out against my will and never let back in. I can’t stand upright in a place like that. I can’t look at him and hold myself together. I can’t still myself when everything in me is on fire. I can’t be gentle and patient with my mourning, waiting for the final blow until it gushes out of me. I know when the end is near. I can tell when it is coming to tear right through us, and before everyone else, I begin my song of grief.
That day, I remember reaching for my journal in the empty house and writing, “Something feels wrong.” It was still dark outside. Our aunties had come to live with us, to take care of their brother, and I should have known. What had they taken with them to the hospital? Food, clothes, a towel to wipe him down, breath prayers, their heavy, troubled hearts. What did they come back home with? Food, clothes, a towel to wipe him down, sounds of wailing, their shattered, shattered hearts. I remember seeing the yellow of the headlights pour through the room. I was wide awake. Something feels wrong. I remember thinking oh, they’re back so soon, but they just left the house. Maybe they’d left something behind. They were coming back for something, I was sure. They’ll get it and they’ll be on their way again to see dad. So I got out of the bed, walked quickly to unlock the door, and they were all coming out of the car. No, they did not have to. I could bring whatever they needed. I could take it from the house and give it back to them and they could be on their way. I wanted them to be on their way. I wanted to turn them back by their shoulders and fasten them to their seats and wave goodbye.
Too late. They were all out of the car and walking back to the house, and Reg, the first to reach the door, stepped inside, held me by the wrists, and said, “Daddy’s gone” and I think I sunk to the floor. Sinking is the right word, I am sure. I did not fall. I did not slowly get on my knees and reach the floor. I felt myself plunging, going somewhere far and deep. I could hear the wailing of my aunties, my mother’s sobbing floating above my head. I could hear the dark thing that was unfurling all around me, and I was going under going under. Deep waters. If I wasn’t afraid, I would write about how something clamped shut inside me that day. How, after I screamed, the voice that took over, the girl that was pulled from underwater, is one I do not know, do not recognize. If I wasn’t afraid, I would admit that all my life I am burying my father and burying the daughter he had.
Note: A friend gifted me a copy of Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy and I’ve spent the past few weeks slowly reading through essays on craft and creativity by several writers. “What would you write if you weren’t afraid?” is a prompt that has stayed with me. As I’ve revisited this moment of loss, or rather, the receiving of the news of loss, something new I am thinking about is the car ride back home. I had never thought about it until I began writing this. What usually comes to mind when I look back on that day is the quietness that blanketed the house, the journal entry and my restlessness, and the car’s bright headlights that announced their return from the hospital. I do not write about it here, but I am thinking so much about the drive, and especially of my brother, who sat behind the wheel, carrying this news, and driving at dawn. Did his eyes sting? Did he grip the wheel to steady himself? Were my mom and aunties crying in the backseat or talking about my father? Did he know he was the one going to break the news to me and was he preparing to choose the right words, to hold me, to walk into that house knowing nothing would ever be the same again?
