Today someone mentioned the loss of their dad from a few years ago, and I heard another person mournfully say “I’m sorry you're also a part of the dead dads club”. I recall the night that I became a member myself. Waking up that day it didn't seem different. Leaving the house was ordinary,it wasn't as if death was loitering by the car looking at his watch complaining about schedules. It was a standard Wednesday. Dad would wake me up and tell me to get in the shower. I'd dry off by standing in front of the wall heater. I'd choke down a bowl of cornflakes with an inhuman amount of sugar on them if I could get away with it if dad wasn't looking. Dad would drop me off at elementary school on his way to work at the job corp where he taught printing. When school let out, he would pick me up from the afterschool program and the questions were always the same. “How was your day today” “What did you learn today” “ anything you want to talk about?” As the car ride commenced I'd get lost in thought and daydream as I was often prone to do. He'd always have a natural curiosity of the inner working of my mind and the creative thought processes I'd undergo. “What were you thinking about just now?” In retrospect I can see how impactful those questions and moments were. During my parents divorce, I felt like a forgotten child. During the abuse at the babysitter's house, I felt like an abandoned child. In those pure moments from the distance from my school to home, each of those questions was a statement. Each of those questions from my father was a message of love to his son. “You matter to me in my world”, “Your voice matters to me.” That example of love and natural curiosity cemented in me because I felt that bond with my dad in sincerity. Those moments taught me about how to love as a grown man. Loving someone is presence, intentionality, choice. It's sharing inner worlds, not out of obligation but out of a pure curiosity to understand the heart of another person.
That night we went out for a quick fast food dinner which wasn't uncommon on nights we were going to the reservation. My dad's curiosity wasn't limited to my mind and the daily activities of an elementary school attendee. He also had developed a spiritual curiosity for Native American culture.While I don't doubt the sincerity of his draw to Native customs and his search for understanding God from other perspectives… part of the draw was absolutely drugs. We attended Powows, prayer circles, and I knew a man by the name of Horace Yellowhammer that said he could make it rain. To his credit, it did every time I asked him so, he did back that claim up. He once made it rain and stopped four times on the same day when I asked him. It's not like HE made it rain but he would pray and it would rain, He would pray and it would stop. Horce had told me to call him “grandfather”.That night, we were headed to the weekly sweatlodge. A sweatlodge was a domed structure of sticks and animal skins with a pit in the center of rocks shoveled in from the fire outside. A man would splash the rocks with water filling the structure with steam and men inside would sweat out impurities. The sweat lodge out at Ft. McDowell Indian reservation was about 20 minutes from the closest payphone, and about 20 feet from the bank of the river on a ridge. Dad had gone in and Horace had started the proceedings. I, as an unsupervised child of seven years, was entertaining myself by taking twigs, igniting the ends and writing my name in the air with the glowing ember. My dad eventually emerged from the lodges and grabbed a square shovel to scoop rocks out of the fire and into the pit in the lodge. He told me to stop playing with the fire as he shoveled 5 scoops of rocks into the pit. At that moment it was just him and I outside the lodge. He dropped the shovel out of his left hand and stood before me as color drained from his face. “Tell Lory i love her” he managed to breathe out in his fleeting breath and he collapsed in the dirt in front of me. I stared at him for a moment not understanding the urgency of the situation, contemplating the notion of this being some form of silly game. It didn't occur to me that my father, my defender, my best friend, was dying in front of me. I called out to him “Dad, get up. Dad, are you ok?” In my mind today, I'm not certain if he actually said he loved me with his last breath and I pieced it together in my young mind, if I needed him to have said what I already knew. I tried to wake him several times begging him to open his eyes. I lifted his eyelids to see if he was faking. I saw that his eyes had rolled all the way into the back of his head and then I knew the danger was real. I called out to the men in the swealodge, yelling “There's something wrong with my dad!!!” The lodge emptied of its occupants as they surrounded my father laying in the dirt. One man, who's name I don't remember and face I can still see in my memory ran out of the hut as fast as he could to his car and sped off.I later learned that he went to the nearest phone which was at a McDonalds and called 911 for emergency response? It was thirty minutes until paramedics got to us. That thirty minutes was the longest thirty minutes of my life as I stood between the fire and the spot where my father fell. In that thirty minutes I was alone in the world.
The Police arrived and took statements, made reports, and then there was the question: what do we do with this child? They asked me “do you have any other family here?” I looked to Horace and said “that's my grandfather.” The wash of severity of misunderstanding spread over Horace's face instantly as he explained to him it was a nickname and that he has no actual blood or custodial bond to me. The cop turned his attention to me and asked “Where is your mom, do you know her phone number or address?” I didn't. She had already left with my siblings having moved to Santa Fe. “You want to ride in a real police car down to the station with me?” Of course I did. We were three minutes down the highway when the Officer received a call on his original Motorola cell phone. I remember his face aglow with the lights from the dash of his cruiser, the color went pale as his disposition stiffened. He didn't look at me as he spoke in a clear, almost clinical tone, “Jay, I am sorry to inform you that your father is dead… he didn't survive.” For a full minute the gravity of the loss washed over me. I cried as the grief and sorrow flooded through me and I felt it every part of my heart. After a full minute, I forced myself to stop crying as my thoughts turned to my family. My Granny and aunt would be crushed, my mother would need me to be strong. In my child mind, I looked at the pain that everyone around me was going to experience and decided that my grief was secondary. If I decided to mourn, I would mourn after I was sure that those that mattered to me wouldn't be inconvenienced. I compartmentalized and buried the internal devastation that had come to me. I swallowed it down. We pulled into the police hub that seemed nothing more than a double wide trailer in the middle of the dark. The police officer tried to delicately probe to find identifying information to track down a family member to release custody to. “Where is your mom right now?” “She moved to New Mexico a few months ago with my brother and sister.” “Do you have an address?” “no.”
Eventually he was able to ascertain a scrap of a lead and pulled at it until he had a phone number. He spoke to my mom and broke the news that dad was gone and put me on the phone so my mother could hear my voice and be certain that I was ok. “When are you coming to get me?” I asked. “I can't get out there for a few days, I'll be there as soon as I can- Grandma is going to meet you at the hospital, she's going to look after you until I can get there.” When we arrived at the hospital, I begged the nurses and administrators to see my dad. I needed to see his body so I could confirm that he was gone. The staff was wiser than my seven year old scramble for rationality and control. They insisted that I didn't want to see him after they had done all measures to save his life. It wasn't until I was an adult working in a hospital that I fully understood how big that act of grace was on my behalf. I sat in the waiting room awaiting a familiar face. The first was Barbara, my Dads girlfriend. She showed up and she hugged me tight in a way that only love can do. They had let her back into the room to see what I shouldn't see. Barbara did a small act of heroism when she had the opportunity, She stole my dads wallet. She took it, opened it up and grabbed all the money out of it and forced it into my hand. “Take this, this belongs to you. Don't let your uncle or anyone take it from you, it's yours.” Barbara understood the dynamics of my dads family that he was trying to rise above. She heard his history and was aware of the material hunger that plagued some of the members.
She returned his wallet to his effects, and the only people that knew the noble act were her and I. Grandma arrived with a compassionate strength about her, standing in the fluorescent lights like a pillar of stability. Grandma in that moment wasn't bent to the weight of the tragedy-she radiated consistency as if to say “Life didn’t just end, you still have family. I am here. I am here right now. I am here for you.” In the moment my grandma stood there like an ambassador of God Himself glowing in the darkness.
When we returned to Grandma's Tempe townhome it felt both empty and familiar and I fell asleep immediately in her guest room. The next day grandma took me to Target and let me buy a Batmobile / Batwing toy with the money that I had from Dad's wallet. I was sitting at the townhouse marveling at how the wings snapped into the side of the car to make the Batwing when Mom and my brother walked through the door. Upon hearing that my father had passed my brother had insisted that he accompany my mom immediately and refused to accept no for an answer. Mom came through the door and scooped me up holding me as I refused to cry. I refused to show her my suffering, I needed to be strong to not burden her with my suffering. I took all that pain and internalized it. In my young mind I thought I could choose not to feel pain.
I thought that I was mentally stronger than the weight of loss and grief. Pain exists for a purpose. Pain exists to remind us that there is something operating outside of God's intended order and creation. You can ignore the pain, truth, reality- but it doesn't disappear until you confront it.
The wake was a few days after my sister and stepdad arrived. I remember pulling into the parking lot of the funeral home as the sun was setting. Barbera's familiar grey Nissan was parked in a space. A group of Dads students from the JobCorps were smoking cigarettes just outside the entrance in a circle as we approached. One of his students asked my mom what would happen to my Dads Honda Shadow Motorcycle as she was interested in buying and just needed to know the price. My uncle had managed to position himself as the man in charge of handling my dads affairs. As we entered the room. It was lit low like a movie theater with dim light off the sconces along the walls. At the front of the room was a long open casket with top down lighting where my fathers body was laid. People shuffled in and out of the room taking their seats and comforting each other in the time of loss. Mom asked me if I'd like to go up and say goodbye to dad. I approached the casket and peered over the edge. The shell of my father laid there in his best suit, cold and pale. The way his hair was pristinely combed seemed unnatural to me since in life, the wind would always keep a few wispy strands out of order. Mom said her goodbyes and asked me if I needed a moment. Feeling a sense of urgency before I had to take my seat, I leaned in whispering, “Dad, wake up, Wake up and show everyone this is a prank. You're a really good actor. Show them they're wrong.” I reached in and tapped his cheek, feeling his cold dead face in my hand. He didn't stir. He didn't move. His chest didn't rise and fall with breath. He was gone and there was no elaborate scheme that I had concocted in my mind as a possibility to make sense of the loss. At that moment I would have given anything for my Dad to wake up. No sooner had mom guided me to my seat did I hear hysterical wailing coming from the back of the room. I peered down the aisle from the front row to see Lory inconsolable. She screamed as she wept. Her mother stood by her clutching her body that seemed incapable of retaining strength. She took the impact exceptionally hard. I later learned her last words to dad were “you're an adulterer, I hate you and I wish you were dead.” Lory levied the accusation because he'd started dating Barbara after separating from my mom, but before the divorce was fully processed. She had said it because she was angry. Like most fourteen year old girls are to their fathers she threw careless words out, not meaning them nor understanding the full weight of their intentions. The unresolved guilt absorbed her. It wasn't until I learned that context years later did I fully comprehend my fathers epitaph. He knew he was going to die at that moment, and he gave the message he hoped would save his daughter. He knew. His last thoughts were trying to undo the pain of her own mind. As he died, he tried to protect her.
My Uncle petitioned the court to be executor of my fathers estate. We had lived in a rented condemned house that a friend of his owned that didn't have a doorknob, there wasn't much of an estate to settle. The judge had ruled that Lory and I were to go through the house and select whatever property that we chose to keep. All other assets were to be liquidated and the funds dispersed between my sister and I. We walked through the house, each getting coached by our respective mothers trying to coach us on what items to acquire. Lory's mom would tell her to get the more expensive items like furniture, Tv, and things that had any resale value. The only things I wanted were the things that tied me to him. The radio he would put blues music on and try to teach himself harmonica. The cheap telescope that we set up on the lawn at my uncle's house and looked out into the vastness of space and craters of the moon. I didn't want to profit off of death, I wanted the pieces of my father to stay with me. I wanted the shards of my life to remain intact.
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