Plus One

45: What's next?

The crying was over within ten minutes—a short span, perhaps, but that had always been me. While my sister could stretch her always-appropriate emotions over spans of days and weeks and months, letting them dwindle at a perfect pace with each hour, I was either explosive or apathetic. One second I was dry heaving on an empty bed and the next I was staring out the window thinking about what I wanted to eat. 

When I was twelve, a moderately good friend of mine was hospitalized, and eventually killed, by a drunk driving accident. The entire middle school seemed to hold its breath at her passing, consumed by a silent, heavy, constant presence of sorrow and mourning. Nearly every other day I’d find myself delayed after school by a friend who walked by where she used to eat lunch and dropped to their knees, rapt with the whole tragedy of it all: thirteen years old, destroyed by a forty-something year old man chugging beer in a pick-up truck. 

I never even managed a tear. My sadness was evident, along with the listless confusion and absent-mindedness associated with such a shocking loss. I grew convinced that something was wrong with me: a girl had died, and I couldn’t cry. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to sit around holding hands in circles and discuss her memory, nor did I want counseling, or consolation. I wanted the whole ordeal to go away, because beneath social niceties and traditions, death made me uncomfortable. It seemed I was the only one who hadn’t mastered the illusive secret of talking about the deceased with eloquent and beautiful nostalgia. I was awkward and scared. So I rubbed at my eyes to make my skin red and sniffed often until, as if some switch had been flipped, people moved on. 

Strangely enough, it was at least three years later when I looked through an old yearbook and saw her picture that I finally cried. 

After a span of time had passed, I could hear Ellie’s voice drift from the kitchen, followed by a flurry of hums and whispers as the group chose to disregard my blow-up. Perhaps a decade from now I would come to regret my lack of involvement with the planning of my dad’s funeral, but for now it didn’t seem to matter. Whether the ribbons were black or navy blue, whether there were bouquets of lilies or roses or sunflowers or daisies, whether the wake would be indoors or outdoors—such details seemed inconsequential compared to the tragedy we were really facing. 

It was dark outside when I rose from the bed and slipped through the elegant French doors that led into our backyard. It occurred to me then, as I tiptoed through the back gate and fast-walked down the street, that for all of my teenage mistakes and adventures, I’d never once snuck out. Only now, when I no longer had any parent to scold me, could I gather up the courage to slip undetected into the night.

The excursion would’ve been romantic, in a contrived sort of way, had my destination been somewhere more remarkable, like a moonlit mountainside or a rooftop. Instead, I meandered toward the nearest drug store, picked up a six pack of alcoholic lemonade—knowing full well that anything more potent would render me incapable of returning home before dawn—and planted myself on a swing at a children’s playground. 

It was the first time in a long time that I felt at peace. Rocking back and forth on a swing, feeling tendrils of wind tug at my hair and the hem of my coat, letting the faintly cool California winter dissolve on the skin behind my neck. There was the squeak of the old mental chains that held me like a note hummed by someone’s mother, and there were the deep moans of cars bumping down the badly paved street. There was a dog’s bark, a solitary raindrop that got caught on my eyelash, a police siren, a silhouette sprinting through the park. 

Memories of my father came and went, floating in and out of my mind with the familiar rhythm of the rocking swing, and I found myself fixating on a conversation we’d once had near this same swing set.