Dear Dad;
I really, really fucking miss you. I am so mad at you for leaving I can barely control it anymore. Did you really expect me to be able to hold this family up? I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? You don’t talk to me for years then you come back to me and tell me you always loved me then you travel up to see me and die! Really, what the fuck was your soul thinking? Did you really think mom and I were going to leave the hospital and be OK? Did you really think she and I would survive your ignorant death? You know that it is seven years later and it is still the same for her and I as that night you died. You die everyday for us, over and over again. Do you have any idea what I went through? Do you have any idea what she went through?
Let me tell you, you absolute asshole.
After years of longing for our damn relationship to return to normal, after years of self hatred at the thought I had done something so wrong as to lose your love, after years of lingering around your bedroom door waiting for forgiveness you come back to me. You decide to forgive me (much to my shock) for being a crappy teenager. You travel your ass up here with my mother in tow, not once but twice, back to Oregon where we should have stayed. You forgive me, acknowledge me, hug me, cry, tell me you are proud of me, tell me you love me. Then you fucking die. You have some stupid heart attack that kills you while your on the fucking road.
So here it is you jerk. This is just me remember, mom has some words for you too.
My fucking day at work, I begged and begged my boss to get off early so I could spend as much time with you and mom as possible but there was so much to be done that I had to stay all through my shift. By the time I get home, so excited to plan our night together before you get back to California, I give mom’s cell a ring to check status on our plans. Let me tell you now how you destroyed every moment of my life, for the rest of my life.
Panic on the other end of the damn phone. I had no idea. Mom was on her way to the hospital with you. You were already dead. I didn’t know you were dead dad. I got in my Honda in a fury and started to drive in your general direction. You should have died in Portland, not so stupid town 30 miles away. You could have done the damn antique shopping in Portland. I had no idea where I was going, stopping at a Les Schwab in screaming tears to ask where the fucking hospital was in a town I had been to only once before and only in passing.
Oh, let me tell you about the traffic, see you decided to die right before rush hour. I was trying to get to you, putting cigarettes out on the floor of the Honda in panic screaming, no God, you won’t take him, he will be fine, it was just a heart attack, he is alive and we can get his heart fixed, no God, you would not take him from us, no God you just would not do it, never take my daddy, not now, not now when I just got him back.
You see dad? I thought you were still alive and it was too close of a call. Even though my panic was so bad I think I knew you were gone. But I did not know. After an hour in panic in traffic some miracle guides me to the hospital in a town I didn’t know, off of roads I had never travels to rush, crying into the hospital asking for you.
Listen up dad, it gets better.
The nurse did not tell me you were dead. She put her skinny arms around my shoulder and lead me to you.
See dad, she didn’t tell me. I ran to you on that hospital bed, telling you I was there and it would be ok from now on. You just had a heart attack and now we could get your heart fixed and you would be ok and we would be a family again and I loved you, God how much I loved you.
See. You were dead and she didn’t tell me. I really didn’t know until I had stopped talking to you and looked at my mother. You left us there. Alone. You left us for dead. It gets better still dad, see the Grim Reaper may not have taken our bodies but when you died he took our souls.
I screamed my way out of the hospital and put three beautiful dents in my baby Honda. They called the police on me dad. The stupid nurse, shit she probably called, “some crazy girl in the parking lot kicking a white Honda and screaming”. Lucky for the cops they didn’t even touch me. I was ready for the gas chamber.
After that the nothingness set it, not the good kind of no-thing-ness but the empty silence of absence.
I got in a fight with the clerk at the hotel you and mom had been staying at. That son of a mother fucking, ignorant, bastard. When my mom had stated (still in shock mind you) that you had just past away he did not care and demanded that she pay extra to have her room unlocked because she failed to check in. “Sorry, I thought, her husband was busy dying and she had just lost her entire world” but of course, pay the extra damn fee.
I threatened to kill him. If I had had a gun dad, I would have. He told me it wasn’t his fault you had died and I agreed but when I screamed that he could me more compassionate to a widow he just stared ignorantly with a supreme smirk on his face. He didn’t understand. I wish he was in the grasp of death, even now.
Dad. You left us for dead. Now it is Christmas time and you are not here. Oh, you ruined Thanksgiving too. You just had to die Thanksgiving Eve so we eat pizza on Thanksgiving and cry.
I have made every attempt to end my life. Life has little value. Even my beautiful husband, special son and enduring mother cannot convince me to stay. I am coming for you. It was all I ever, really wanted. Just want my God damn daddy.
-Cass