After [my father's death] I never cried again with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain.

-From the novel "Father Loss", by Neil Chethik.

There were no angels singing or silver rays of light extending from flawless cloudbanks. No church bells rang out, no news coverage to mark the day. It was a lifeless, gray afternoon and all I felt was empty while autumn clung to its final days of incidence and the morning frosts were instigating their inevitable stranglehold on everything around me, putting an end to my childhood and marking an end of innocence. The following pages are my attempt to rescue the lost pieces of a dead father's memory and more importantly come to terms with my loss. A glimpse or memoir of sorts, to try and understand what happened to me on that chilling November afternoon...

The last weeks leading up to my father's illness were as foreboding as any single incident in my life. It was as if I were aboard a fugitive ship, headed out to sea, with no safe place to harbor. It was inconceivable and even more incomprehensible that my father was no longer the man I knew as a young boy; strong, vibrant and full of life. Instead, he lay still and lifeless, with tubes and needles jutting out of every open pore of his now bloated body and I looked on in despair while his life slipped away at each strike of the clock, each passing moment marking his inevitable end.

It was only a few weeks ago that my dad was teaching me how to drive. It was one of those pivotal moments in a young man's life where he feels an affinity with his father and I was no different. I had recently passed my driving test and I wanted to learn how to drive the family car like every anxious teenager. The challenge was that we owned a stick shift and I was more than a little out of my element. I had the confidence and technical know how, but I lacked the coordination required to use both my feet and keep the car on the road. As a result, my first test drive with my dad resulted in me driving the small blue hatchback into a cornfield. After the initial shock of being surrounded by corn we both laughed uncontrollably, to the point where our insides hurt. My dad didn't take my bumbling too seriously until moments later when I nearly ran down the local mailman. It was then he decided to hire a professional driver to teach me how to work a stick shift and keep our relationship intact and more to the point, keep both of us alive and well.

One thing my dad and I did have in common and it's what bonded us together as father and son was baseball. You see my dad was a baseball man, pure and simple and so was I. There are fathers who are football dads, basketball dads, soccer dads, well you get the idea. My dad loved the Yankees! I remember him spinning stories of him and his buddies driving from New Hampshire to the Bronx in an old beat-up, rusted out 49' Chevy, all of them packed in like sardines to catch a weekend double header. They especially loved it when the Yankees were at Fenway Park to play the Redsox, because it was such a short drive from their hometown to Boston and the "Yanks" hated the Redsox and vice-a-versa. "It was a rivalry as old as the sport itself, two traditions like cherry coke and a beautiful brunette", he would say. I felt as if I could hear the roar of the crowd and smell the newly cutgrass the way he described it to my two brothers and me was like a Dickens's novel. Those were magical times, as Scott, Robert and myself sat at my father's feet, hanging on his every word, watching the glow in his eyes, while he told us about such greats like Mickey Mantle, Roger Marris and Honus Wagner. You see my dad's nickname was 'Mickey', after the great Mickey Mantle. "Mantle exemplified what was great about America and the sport of baseball", he said. All I knew that my dad was a giant and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. Now it seemed as if I'd never get the chance.

I stood over this once indestructible giant and watched the numbers of his life support fall as my own heart began to sink as if it were a heavy stone, plummeting to the bottom of some un-chartered, unknown abyss. I wanted everything to be all right, for him to get up out of bed and resume his life with us. I wanted that giant of a man back. I found myself steadily and methodically grounding my thoughts toward him like some super-hero out of a Marvel's comic in the hopes of some sort of resurrection by the sheer will of my own powers, but nothing happened. I tried prayer, but didn't know what to say to a God I didn't know or even pretended to understand or for that matter truly believed in. I was confused and scared. "Please let him live", was all that kept running through me as if I were someone else. The only thing that seemed to be healthy were the permanent blinking of those dreadful lights on the faces of those awful machines that monitored his steady decline. They flashed uninterrupted and tireless like streetlights in an empty city, each spelling out a horrible chorus of BEEPS and PINGS. It was as if an orchestra of flutist's had gathered in this lonesome room and were unable to move beyond a few simple notes and it was driving me mad! All I wanted was for everything to stop, to rewind itself somehow, and to start anew. But, even I knew that this was impossible, life just didn't work this way and I knew it.

It was then a silence I had never experienced even to this day, a tortured stillness that blanketed every inch of my surroundings. It was like coming upon a car crash late at night and knowing that someone has died, though I still managed to hope for the best. I waited for a curtain to lift, for some miracle to materialize before me, but it never came. It was only the nurses and doctors who moved with a sense of purpose, hurriedly shuffling from one unknown destination to the next, their movements taking on an indefinable finality. Me, I just stood there, on the brink of an unknown realm; my legs frozen, cemented to the floor like Corinthian pillars. I stared, as each piece of equipment was shut down one by one, like the lights at a ballpark; their unrelenting work was now over. I breathed in slowly, while my mind drifted toward an unknown doorway.

A dark hole had appeared and opened itself to me. I felt as if I were being consumed by an inescapable void, a prison cell with no way out. How could this be happening, I thought? He was so young, only forty-two. It made no sense. What would we do? What if...?

I've had two losses in my life that have affected me entirely; the first came almost as a relief. As far back as I can remember my parents had never gotten along. They fought like crazy, over the simplest of things. You name it they would fight over it. From what color the living room curtains should be to what kind of dog had the best likelihood of not maiming one of the neighborhood children. It was frequent, incessant and above all, loud and crippling to me. So when my dad came home one spring day after work, like he had done a thousand times before and just laid out the terms as if I were one of his business associates it seemed a little odd to me. "The court is allowing you and your older brother to choose who you want to live with", he said. For me it wasn't a question of whom. I had already made up my mind before the first words were ever spoken, "Of course I want to live with you", I said. Still, it was weird to have to choose one parent over the other. It wasn't like choosing which position in kickball you wanted to play for recess, though somehow it was easier. There were no arguments or debates, no dossiers to sign. It was that simple and then it was over and done with.

And the second loss, well it was staring me right between the eyes and it was beginning to push me toward something I wasn't ready for and I knew it. I could feel it in my very existence. It twisted inside of me and drained my spirit. It's difficult to pin down as I look back on it, but I was in a physical pain, my guts burned like fire.

Particularly now, as I gaped in disbelief at my father, whose body was unmoving and restful as a moth suspended in amber. It was all too unreal. I doubted everything around me as if caught up in some horrible nightmare, a fever dream of unspeakable proportions. "How could this be happening", I whispered. Panic and doubt built up inside of me as I madly switched every machine and monitor back on, thinking someone had made an error, a mistake of some kind. I became Mr. Hyde, animal and manic. I was consumed, or more to the point, I was possessed by a power bigger than myself. "He still had life left in him, so many more plans still unfinished, it wasn't fair", was the persistent thought that swirled in my brain like a twister. "Why, why, why?"

It was then I noticed the tube that pressed and inserted inside his mouth had somehow worked itself loose and began to fall out. A trickle of dark brown fluid ran down his ballooned, jaundiced cheeks in a steady flow, pooling on the crisp blue sheets inches from where I stood. The puddle of brown muck engrossed me as it soaked into the fabric. It looked like a stream after a rainstorm, muddy, unfit, and poisoned. I wasn't frightened, more curious and fascinated by the ooze and where it came from. All of a sudden my legs gave way and I collapsed onto the bed, on top of my dead father and burst into a violent flow of tears. My sobs saturated the room and everything in it. Grief echoed down the corridors of the hospital, working their way out of the small crevices and cracks of the concrete walls, and into the morose afternoon air like the distance cries of lost ancestors who had come back from the dead chanting their ancient song, singing...

It was then a gentle hand materialized, from out of no where and pressed on my shoulder, as if from heaven above and then came that voice, that soft voice, so soothing and calm, speaking to me and only me: "it's all right, let him go." I turned and looked deeply into a pair of tender, gentle eyes, the skin on her face was as if sunlight had kissed her, she was all in white and it was then that a thunderous rumble grew inside of me, from the depths of my being and erupted into an explosion, a vicious scream so terrifying it shook the very souls of those around me. A hush covered the room; time seemed to come to a stand still, while I was transported to another corner of the universe in between time and space. A wormhole had opened itself once again and flung me back into that black, vacant void, tumbling down some bottomless rabbit hole. I became detached from myself, splintered into a million pieces as the universe swallowed me whole...

The next thing I recalled was waking, as if from a magician's spell. I sat in strange and unfamiliar surroundings. The room swarmed with faces I should have recognized, but didn't. Their features seemed flat; the whites of their eyes were red, vacant as a barren wilderness. We all stared at one another from across this enormous cold table; unable to speak or move, we all seemed petrified like the pieces of some freakish chess game. Then, like a burst of energy released, almost as if on cue, we all broke down and cried, each in our own way, a symphony of sorrow, everyone except my uncle, my father's brother.

Dwight just sat there as if watching grass grow on a Sunday afternoon and the only thought running through me was how silly he looked to me. A short, stout man in his thirties, a heap of wadded up emotions, alone, anchored in some bottomless pit, without so much as a whimper. Why wasn't he able to let go for a brief moment, to be human just this once, to show a minute sign of vulnerability? I didn't know and I'm sure he didn't either.

In all the years I had known him he had always done his best to remain cool, detached, and in control. It is only as an adult that I realize how lonely he must have really been. All those years of trying to be in charge of his feelings and the price, the price it must have cost him and those he didn't know how to open up to and love. I peered through him that day in November, past the icy confines of his exterior and my heart began to bleed with sadness for him and over-flow with a different type of grief and pain. He seemed so lost, the last of a fading bloodline, the last king if you will, a dying kingdom with no subjects to rule. It must have been frightening for him to look at the eyes of death and know he hadn't mended the wounds with his only brother. I wanted to slap him and scream, "Wake the fuck up, before it's too late", but I didn't. I didn't do a lot of things I wished I had of done that day.

I didn't recall my eldest brother at all that day. Scott disappeared from my sight, even at six foot two and features of chiseled granite; he became invisible against this backdrop of pain and solitude that filled this sterile room. I wondered where he was now or how he was feeling? Was he scared, angry? I honestly didn't know and still don't to this very day. It's something our world never mentioned to us growing up, that it's all right to cry, to show 'weakness', to tell the ones you love that you're hurting or that you love them as many times as you can each and every day, because tomorrow may never come. For me, I wish I had seen Scott or my younger brother Robert that day, to let them know they weren't alone, that they could let out the unbearable grief I'm sure they both still hold inside, that they could let the dam burst and not have to worry about the pieces getting lost, because we would find them together and put them back as best we could, somehow, some way, "all would be fine again" I told myself, unconvincingly.

Days later we buried my father. Funeral services are strange beasts; they're more like quiet weddings than anything else. It's peculiar what my perceptions were at seventeen. Everyone was dressed so smartly in tailored suits and striking dresses. Flowers adorned nearly every inch of the church; it was all very beautiful, but sad and I was in the middle of the whole thing, a lost actor playing out some part. The joy, laughter and celebration were replaced by grief, anguish and sorrow. It makes you wonder what your funeral would be like when you're gone. Not long after my father's body had been put to rest I went with friends to the theater to see a film, which to this day still has a profound emotional effect on me. The opening sequence of the 'Big Chill' brings me back to that day in the cemetery, where everything seemed as if I were trapped in some foggy memory of another's life, trying to break free and out run my own destiny. It's hard sometimes to think about the things that could have been different if only we were born some one else.

So, here I am, hunched over my typewriter, plucking away at the keyboard almost twenty years to the day, nervous, exhausted, and confused and I'm still trying to find the words to express what happened on that late autumn day. How it came and went so quickly, and how it still haunts me in a lot of ways. There still isn't a day I don't think of him or miss his presence, that thunderous laugh, those gentle eyes, or his gifts of generosity. The kindness he gave out in an endless and unconditional stream or the dedication he gave to those around him, even those he barely knew. He was a jolly soul, not like Saint Nicholas, but not that far off either. He just seemed happy for the most part. He was comfortable with where he was in his life and most certainly he loved his family.

As for me, everything is different now, somehow stranger and acutely more meaningful. Things I had ignored before now hold my attention. The simplest of things like rain falling on pavement and the wondrous gifts of love and generosity from those around me is astoundingly beautiful. There are very few things in my past I still struggle with, but one is to be able to let go of the loneliness, which I still shoulder from time to time. For the most part I seem to be coming toward shore again and it's comforting to know I can find a place to anchor for the first time in a very long while. It feels good to be able to rest there and enjoy the stillness and to think about him laughing as he watches all of this from afar in that place we all go once this life has seemingly gotten too small to support us. I know he was the only dad I will ever have and I "pray" in my own subtle way that he's resting in a place of peace and serenity. And, maybe some time very soon I'll be able to understand it all...then again, maybe this is how it was always meant to be?