25
I only saw my father cry one time my whole life.
It was the night his father died.
He came home from the bar in work clothes, soaked from the rain outside. He stood by the front door, ghost-like, with heavy shoulders. My mother was in the kitchen putting some pans away and drying off her hands. I had been sent to bed some half hour prior, but I often would sneak out of my room and stay hidden in the stairwell keeping lookout, patiently waiting for him to come home. I would make sure he was okay before finally calling it a night. So, from the stairwell I sat and watched my father let his old brown work bag fall to the floor in a depressed heap, standing still as a statue and wet.
My mother didn’t say a word. From what I remember, she made no sound at all. Across the kitchen, back against the sink, she watched in careful settling pain, and I tell you, she knew. The air in our house grew thick. I couldn’t fathom why, but in that one image, I could see that my mother knew calamity had struck, and to think, still, she managed to stand there for a couple of minutes just watching my father as it all played out before her eyes. She gave him space. His chest rose and fell through ragged breath while he tried to gather the force necessary to speak. Finally, he wiped some water off his face and began to silently weep. And still, my mother didn’t move.
Alone and soaked and broken, my father wept. He wept a slow silent crescendo that began to shake the very boards beneath his feet. In the middle of the evening kitchen like a child overwhelmed, he sucked in these huge gasps of air as he hyperventilated in a scratchy, smoked out tune. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. Some may think that after a lifetime of not crying, a man would somehow forget the mechanics, but that isn’t true. The heart remembers how. The body remembers everything. And my father remembered how to cry just as heartbreakingly as the rest of us, if not more so. For minutes he went. His grizzled shaking hands of enormous strength gripped the kitchen counter as he suffered and shed tears into the wood. With his back rising and falling, I watched him battle to rein it all in. He tried taking quick breaths and holding them, but it was useless, and it drove him further down. Even in this dark crashing of loss, I’m sure he couldn’t believe he was crying. All the while my mother stood arms crossed and tearful by the sink. I nearly ran down there to do something, but I was a rock, a silent immovable stone; heart racing and stomach turning with fear. I followed my mother’s lead, but to this day I don’t know how she knew to just stand there and wait. She just watched from a distance and let the levee break.
My father fell to his knees and crumbled. Quiet, head poked through the stairway railings, I began to worry he would never stop. That he was a broken clock and would be hitting midnight forever. The bell had rung and now he was helpless, weeping like a child. Like me. And I couldn’t help it, all at once the memories of my childhood began to flood. My father, a hypocrite? I felt my love for him wash away, exposing a dark resentment and confusion.
What was I seeing?
Was this the same person that ruled over me in silent, brutal dominion?
Was this the same man who hit me with a belt?
What about all those times he shouted at my tears, growling at my sadness?
All my life he’d banished any weakness within me, unsatisfied until it retreated completely. All my tantrums and my turns at the wheel were silenced and scorned. Yet, here was this sculpture of my youth, broken and sobbing. What an unconscionable mess. Who was this man? Tears ricocheting against the floor, convulsing in despair, capable of such depth of feeling. I didn’t know, but the longer he shook, the less resentment my little chest could cling to, and it left as quickly as it came. I felt my own warm tears run down my face. It was the closest I ever felt to him, and I was a million miles away.
I couldn’t tell you how long this went on for. It could have been an eternity. Eventually though, he caught his breath. Hair frayed, stomach soaked, coat half haphazardly strewn and hanging off his right shoulder, cigarettes falling out of the front pocket. He wobbled a bit as he stood to his feet. Ashamed and destroyed, he croaked through a ravaged, misused throat, “Dad’s gone.”
That was all. That was all he could say. Those two quiet words dropped out of him and were deafening. They filled up the house, every inch of inhabitable space.
“Dad’s gone.” He said it again. What did that mean? My grandfather had died?
“Dad’s gone.” Yes, that must be it. My grandfather was gone, gone for good. It was the first experience I ever had with death, and all I knew was that I didn’t understand it.
I felt like a stranger as I watched from above. I watched as my mother went to my father at last. She put her hand carefully and steady on his back. She moved it up and down. Up and down his spine her hand traveled to ease his despair as he tried to remain calm, reckoning with his display of humanity. I felt worse by the second. He kept softly hitting his palm against his forehead, over and over. Was he trying to forget? Did hate himself?
I think it was the first moment I ever really saw my father, not some granite figure. He was no island anymore, he was no rock, and neither was I. It was then and there that I knew the truth. We were all broken and crying. It was the same for me and for every last fragile one of us.
Soon, my mother had her arms around him, and he kept saying it
“Dad’s gone. Dad’s gone. Dad’s gone—”
He grew quieter but he repeated it over and over and over as she held him tight and cried with him, nearly soundless. And from the stairwell in my Spider-Man pajamas, I watched. I watched until their tears stopped falling. I couldn’t wander down and join them. I couldn’t hold my father’s hand. I couldn’t weep into his jeans. He wouldn’t accept my acts of love. I couldn’t pet his wet hair down and tell him all the heroic thoughts I had about him. He would not listen. Instead, I slowly and quietly walked up the carpeted steps to my room and closed the door on it all.
In the pitch black, I moved to my bed and fell flat. I wept for everything. I wept for my dad and for dads dying. I wept enough for every kid that ever found something to cry for. All the lonesome souls like me. For all of the young boys who knew no love from their father, and would not miss a grandpa in death. For all the dreams, flying themselves away into the dusk each evening. All the dead fireflies. All the misunderstanding and confusion, swallowed love and feeling. I wept for everything, and I wept for my father.
In that bed, I would not sleep. I replayed the scene from the kitchen again and again. I stared up at the ceiling, eyes bloodshot and pained, and I asked God all the young questions that enter the mind of a child. I asked on behalf of us all. What did it mean? Where would we go, and when would we get there? Would we ever leave? And even then, I knew I would always remain. I would be endless in Johnston, in that room.
I close my eyes and I still see my mother’s arms around my father.
In the sky that night, I saw Jesus. And though He was an infinite and all knowing God, I knew I would never have the answers He had. I saw the stars and the moon and felt universal in anguish. I had no ability to sort it out, but it was there, in the blues, and I knew.
And I know it now, ever still.
I think about my grandfather dying. I think of the tragedy of fathers and sons.
As for tonight, I’m in my backyard looking up at that same infinite canvas. Those same bright stars like faraway angels; that same moon. I’m having a smoke thinking what a shame it all was and was not. I think about my father coming home from a long day’s work, wet with rain.
Dad, I have a vision where you return. You’re trudging through my backyard, and you fall knees first on the grass, weeping and broken once more. And I think no, I wouldn’t. I would not and could not embrace you. Not then and not now. You were oceanic in distance, apart. You were a great white burning star. And I chased you and lost you and fell. And wherever you are, I hope you’re crumbling, knees bent forever. I hope you’re looking for Ma and for me. I hope you’re hungover and desperate and crushed. I hope you see the face of God and have doubts, guilts, questions and anguish. You fool. You bastard of a man. You sufferer. In the great black void of the night, I’ll hear you cry and say nothing in return. From the wooden floors, you’ll crawl and you’ll plead. You’ll hit your forehead with your palm. You’ll lie flat and defeated and wrong.
And through the fields of Johnston, I’ll hear whispers: Your Father! Your Father! He’s gone! And I’ll go out to the yard. I’ll drop my knees to the grass. I’ll look up at the stars and weep freely at last.
I will then have it out with my God.