Esse Est Percipi.

A year ago today, my father died.

In reality, he was gone a long time ago. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure he was really ever there to begin with. For a majority of my life, he showed symptoms of dementia. It made things difficult. Really difficult. For most of my life we didn't know what it was. A lot of the time, I just thought my dad was a massive asshole.

What teenager doesn't?

After he died, I found journals he'd written to me when I was a kid, which is the only reason I know he showed symptoms that early. I spent a long time trying to puzzle over whether knowing that changed anything. I still don't know. Because not all of it can be attributed to the disease. There were choices he made that impacted other people. There were secrets he kept that we'll probably never know, and the scary thing about that is I was one of those secrets and it wasn't until the end he was able to come clean about it, so what secrets didn't he ever tell?

The problem with grieving for my father is that I saw him as he was, which gets in the way of being the dutiful son. Around his family, around those who loved and respected him, I feel like a fraud because I don't foster the belief that he was some sort of saint.

My father was a deeply flawed individual who never learned from his mistakes and never seemed to make the right decision, regardless of his intentions. I've been told he had good intentions, and maybe he did, but I'm equally aware that there was a good amount of selfishness directing those good intentions, too.

I remember sitting beside his bed day after day and the only thing I could think of to say to him - no, it was more insistent than that. I had to make sure he knew Jinks.

A year later I still can't reconcile how I feel about my father or his death. I still can't wrap my head around it. And just like a year ago, I don't say much about it. But it's there. Something broke in me last October and it hasn't been put right yet. I know that much.

But life doesn't stop. So you pack it up and keep it in its box and you go like nothing touches you.

---

FREEDOM
[Not exactly true, but not entirely a lie.]
I watch your mouth move in silent incantation.

          I want you to know about Sam. I need you to know about Sam. Out of everyone, you would probably understand our relationship. You would probably be able to explain it to me.

          You’d like him.

          He’s just like me. But good at all the things you wanted me to be good at. We’re even the same age, so you could pretend.

          Do you know that this is it, this is your last chance to say all the things you never did? Are your secrets finally coming out? All those things you planned to tell me. One day.

          They left me alone to talk to you, but alone is relative. The room hums and beeps with machines whose functions I can’t even guess. Beyond our curtain of privacy, George watches Antique Roadshow. An orderly puts Ralph back in bed. The son of the man (whose name I don’t know because he wasn’t here last time) next to you talks about his wife and their plans for the weekend.

          I look at your unfocused eyes.

          I watch your lips move.

          I don’t know what to do.

          The words stumble and jerk from my mouth, trying to be normal. Like this is any other conversation we might have. Except you don’t talk back. Except I don’t know if you’re listening. I feel raw and exposed inside our curtain of privacy.

          I talk about school and my friends.

          I talk about the things I’ve read.

          I talk about Sam.

          I’m supposed to tell you it’s okay. I’m supposed to tell you I’ll be fine. I’m supposed to tell you that you can go. That’s the phrase they keep using. Like you’re just going on a trip somewhere.

          It’s not true. There are truths you haven’t told and things I haven’t learned. There are questions.

          You always hated my questions.

          Why do you always have to ask why, you’d say after the tenth or twentieth round. Why can’t you just accept things the way they are?

          Because I want to know why, I’d say.

          You could be speaking a language we’ve all forgotten. You could be reciting the secrets of the universe. You could be describing the face of every angel and we’d never know.

                   The last time we talked about faith I was nineteen and it was raining so thick the wipers couldn’t keep up. You kept picking at every thing I did, but you couldn’t drive in the dark by then and it was my car. For God’s sake, put that out, you said about my cigarette. God can fuck himself, I said back.

          Do you still believe in those things?

          I’m not sure I do, but sitting here, I need to.

          Two days before I landed, you still squeezed the nurse’s hand when she asked. I’m afraid to touch your hand because it might break. Every vein shows through the translucent skin and swollen knuckles spasming against your chest. I place my hand beside yours and for once yours look smaller. Cold. Dry. No matter how many times I ask, it never moves.

          I get the irony, but I need to know you know I’m here.

          Beyond the curtain, a priest asks the orderly if someone’s in with you. The orderly tells him he thinks it’s a nurse. I know I should tell him it’s okay to come in, but I’ve run out of words.

          I hold your hand.

          I will you to squeeze it.

          I watch your lips move.

          It could be complete gibberish. You’ve been off the feeding tube for four days. You haven’t spoken for six. God knows where you are because you’re not behind your eyes and no one knows why you’re still alive.

          I can’t remember the last conversation we had.

          The priest talks to George about the show. They talk about sports and how the Steelers are doing this season. The priest asks how long ‘the nurse’ has been with Father Anthony. George doesn’t know.

          I still can’t speak.

          I’m desperate for someone to break our silence.

          I’m terrified someone will.

          Your body jerks. Your mouth moves.

          It could just be muscle spasms. The neural paths in your brain finally broken down after twenty years’ decay.

          I wish you could’ve met Sam.

          I stand over you so I can look into your eyes. My eyes. My nose. Even the hands pinned to your chest are mine.

          This is what I’ll look like.

          Evelyn is beyond the curtain, talking to the priest.

We won’t be alone much longer.

You move your lips. I search your eyes.

I don’t know why I never told you about Sam. I didn’t tell anyone for a long time. Maybe because all I know is secrets and holding them tight. Maybe because it always took too much explaining, like I knew it would. Maybe because they all want to put us in a box, and I knew that would happen, too.

We are what we are. That’s what Sam says, and that sums it ups. Tied but not bound.

What would you say?

What would you say…

You should love your friends, you’d tell me. There are many types of love.

I wish you would speak. More than anything. I just want you to speak.

In three weeks when it’s all sinking in and I’m lying on his floor, Sam will ask: What do you want to talk to him about?

I don’t know. I don’t know, I’ll say. Anything. Everything. Stupid shit that doesn’t mean anything. I just want one more conversation.

I put my hand on your forehead. It’s hot against my palm. You close your eyes and your mouth stops moving. There’s just the heave of your chest and the twitch of Parkinson’s in your arms. The machine keeping oxygen in your lungs.

Do you have a boyfriend? you asked, last time I was here. I didn’t tell you I’d already answered it the day before.

No, I don’t have a boyfriend. The question made me feel tired. Like the effort of strapping myself to a person, a place was a physical undertaking beyond my means. Like the effort of explaining that to you again was even worse.

A girlfriend then?

No. No girlfriend, either.

What about that Charlie fellow?

He was my roommate.

He’s a good friend?

Yes.

That’s important. As long as you have good friends, you’ll be all right.

Evelyn peeks around the curtain and smiles. Her cheerfulness is a force I feel guilty for clinging to. ‘Father Tim is here,’ she says. ‘Is that all right?’

I nod, but my mouth is empty. You keep stealing my words with your silent incantation.

That was the day you forgot my name. The look on your face as you looked at me like I was anyone and no one. That’s the look I can’t forget.

I cleaned you up and left you in the living room of your sister’s house and dodged past relatives I barely knew and questions in a language I no longer grasped. Cousins chasing after me in childish fascination to giggle at my strangeness.

I inhaled an entire cigarette in one breath.

I called Sam.

He told me stories until I laughed. Until they called me back to the frontlines because in that house full of good intentions no one ever did a damn thing.

You kept apologising and the look on your face was even worse than the one that didn’t remember. I smiled and said okay. I told you it was okay to forget me.

Fr. Tim clutches a smile that says he doesn’t know what to make of the tattooed and pierced man with purple nails to match the purple hair having a private audience at Fr. Anthony‘s deathbed.

The last time I visited, my hair was blue and you told the nurse we were going to dye yours, too.

None of them know what to make of me.

‘Tim, this is Zee,’ she tells him. ‘Tim visits all the TORs.’

I just nod and take his hand. I don’t know where to look.

‘That’s an unusual name,’ he says. ‘Are you named after that actor? What was his first name…?’

‘The author.’ I lose some of the syllables, but at least I make a sound.

He looks confused, but the smile stays. He reminds me of a bulldog.

‘He wrote westerns.’

‘That’s right. So are you a fan of westerns, then?’ Like he’s the first person to ever ask it.

‘No.’ I hate that question. I’ve never told you that. ‘I just watched them with him.’ I give you a half-nod.

‘It’s really good to meet you, Zee. Obviously, not under the circumstances, but I’m sure Fr. Anthony appreciates you being here.’ He still hasn’t let go of my hand. ‘Have you known him long?’

You lie between us.

Your mouth moving.

Your arms twitching.

‘Yeah. Awhile.’

‘Oh?’ The smile warms, like this will explain everything. How many kids did you mentor in my lifetime? How many in your career? ‘You’re from the parish?’

‘No.’

The handshake is no longer a handshake, but a tether holding me still. ‘My mistake. How do you know Fr. Anthony?’

I’ve been your secret for so long I don’t know how to answer. This should be your job. Your confession. Not mine.

Evelyn nods. ‘Go on.’

‘He’s my dad.’

‘Ah.’

We hang there while he tries to decide what to do with that. I wonder how many times I’m going to have to do this.

‘It’s good you’re here. Shall we pray?’

He anoints your forehead and we all join hands. A priest on either side of me. I can’t get over the way your hands feel. Tissue paper. Plastic. Something not human.

They close their eyes and bow their heads.

God of power and mercy, you have made death itself the gateway to eternal life.

          I watch your mouth move in silent incantation.

Look with love on our dying brother, and make him one with your Son

          If I could decipher what it means, I would have all the answers.

in his suffering and death, that, sealed with the blood of Christ,

But even after a lifetime of reading other people’s lips, I can’t read yours when it really counts.

he may come before you free from sin.

I murmur my way through the Sign of the Cross without hearing the words. Two decades out of the church and I can still recite every prayer in my sleep. 

Amen.

          Fr. Tim shakes my hand again. He leans over and clasps your hand with more bravery than I’ve managed. ‘I’ve got to go now, Tony. I’m off to see Richard. Do you want me to deliver a message for you?’ He looks at me with that standard-issue smile. ‘Your dad and Richard are old friends from the TOR. I always stop and ask if he wants me to give Richard a message.’

          I nod. I’ve heard this story. Last time I was here, you told me every day I was in town. It ended every phone call.

          You kept saying you were going to visit me when you got out.

          We’ll see, I’d say, knowing you never would but lacking the ability to actually say no. Not when you called it a prison. Not when the nurses were guards divided into Good Guys and Bad Guys.

          ‘He always gives me the same message, don’t you, Tony?’ He pats your shoulder and your gown slips down over painfully articulated clavicle. ‘Freedom, that’s the message, isn’t it? ‘Tell Richard ‘freedom’! Is that what you want me to tell him, Tony?’

          I never was sure how much of that was a joke and how much you really believed. It’s always been like that. We just have a name for it now.

He pats your shoulder again.

          Your mouth makes it shapes.

          She walks him out and I’m left standing over you again. I pull up your gown and straighten your blanket until it’s a perfect line across your chest.

          I try to find you in your eyes.

          I think about the last time you visited. Your eyes were going then, and your balance. I held your hand every time we crossed the street.

          I can do it myself, you said as we made our way down Oglethorpe. You used to say that all the time. Just a little thing. I’d try to help, but you’d just stamp your foot and cross your arms. I can do it myself, you’d say. I feel like that sometimes.

          I know, and I feel sorry that you can’t. Help me cross the street.

          I think about your night terrors and wonder if that’s what traps you now.

          The idea terrifies me.

          I smooth the last of your hair into some sort of order. It never really stays, though. I got that from you, too.

          I’d pray if it didn’t feel like a lie.

          ‘I’m okay, old man,’ barely louder than the mysteries on your tongue, but my skin wills it into yours. ‘Just go.’