A Love Like the Sun

What I&aposd Forgotten

WHAT I’D FORGOTTEN

A span of time.

My father running outside to help my mother carry in grocery bags. My mother shaking her head, telling him to go back inside. He’d just gotten his diagnosis and she was already worried for his safety. Rain beating against the glass window in my bedroom while Issac and I watched Dennis Thompson take the bags from the trunk and place them on the porch anyway. Vanessa Thompson refusing at first, then throwing her head back to laugh, pulling off the hood hiding her recently blown-out hair to go dance with him in the thunderstorm. Them, calling up for me and Issac to come play. Letting us splash in muddy puddles even after the lightning began to break the sky open.

My mother sitting by the window at the shop, smiling to herself whenever it rains now.

Summer coming again. My father saying he felt good enough to go to the drive-in theater and the twinkle of hope in my mother’s eyes. Me, letting Issac eat all the popcorn because I was too busy paying attention to the sounds of my father breathing while we watched the movie. Not taking my eyes off him until my mother reached for his hand, laced their fingers, smiled when he kissed hers. Sinking back in the seat beside Issac and stealing his candy while we struggled to see the screen from behind my parents, who still had inside jokes and still acted out parts of the movie in the most annoying way, and never weren’t touching somehow. Even still.

My father growing weaker during his last days. Some fluid retention, an IV drip to manage his symptoms. Still communicating with us through a foggy brain, but completely bedbound. Barely able to play his guitar. Me coming home from school one day, shocked to hear the sounds of his strings, no matter how badly they were being played. Creeping to my parents’ bedroom, seeing my mother sitting beside my father, trying her best to play his favorite song. They laughed together when she hit the wrong note, and my heart fluttered at that sound.

Later, I’d realize it was the last time I heard my father laugh, but until now I’d forget how happy my mother was to be the one he was laughing with.