Chapter 32 Ever After Happily
Ever After Happily
A FAMILY MEMBER CALLED ME AND TOLD ME BILL WAS in the hospital in Texas for “treatment”—but she didn’t elaborate. Huh. The minute he leaves my side, he’s back in the hospital. Not too long ago, he’d been with me, putting on weight, scootering around, and showing signs of improvement.
But he was lying in a hospital bed, telling everyone not to leave me out of it. A week later, my family member called again—Bill had gotten worse.
I got mad. He was rotting in some hospital bed in Texas after being basically kidnapped in his wheelchair. So, I picked up my phone and texted his abductor/wife.
How dare you take my dad from me? And now he’s sicker?
I was so furious. I didn’t want our last conversation to be the fight we’d had over Hagatha—but it didn’t look like I’d ever hear from him again. It was fucking heartbreaking.
Why don’t you just call him? she texted back. As if I hadn’t been calling, texting, letting the phone ring and ring and never getting an answer.
There’s a special place in hell for women like you.
Shame on her for coming between a father and daughter. Shame on her for causing a huge rift while he was dying. Fuck her, honestly. It was like a repeat of Mindy—the beginning of my life and the end of his. Apparently, it was me versus all the women in his life, always. Until the end.
The tension between me and his wife thawed over the next couple of days, because I just needed facts.
I tried to take the emotion out of everything and just get information.
Was Bill alive or dead? Was he in pain? I just wanted to know if my dad was okay.
I was willing to put everything aside—all the drama and anger and hurt—if I could just get information and hug my dad one last time.
She told me they were going home and that people should come visit Bill at some point or another.
Nothing seemed urgent and it didn’t look so bad anymore—I said I’d visit when they invited me.
One thing about Bill: You do not fucking intrude when he’s not feeling good.
He’d tell you to get the fuck out. I knew that if he wanted me there, he’d reach out.
I’m not in communication with Baby Sis, and Bill wouldn’t pick up the phone. So my only connection was Hagatha, and I tried to keep extracting any information I could.
We had just landed in Nashville from another award show in LA when she finally told me to come.
You need to see your dad today, she texted. It was like the world sped up from zero to one hundred. I dropped everything and started calling around to get on a flight. I’d rent a private jet—I didn’t fucking care. I was going to get to Bill.
I was about to lock in a flight when Bill’s wife called again. He was gone. The last words I ever spoke to my father were in anger. I was robbed of a chance to be by his side as he took his last breath. All because of a woman.
* * *
MY POPS WASN’T AN ANGEL, but he was who I chose before I came here—and sometimes I still scratch my head and think maybe another soul ordered him and I somehow accidentally got him instead. I mean—what was I thinking?
My dad didn’t have much to go on as far as models for relationships.
His parents molded him to be the way he was—and he chose not to correct their mistakes in this life.
His father never spoke to Bill again after he left for his other family, and even went as far as to cut my dad out of his will when he passed.
Bill always said I reminded him of his mother.
I’m not sure how—or if that was even a compliment—but it was probably because I didn’t tolerate his shit.
Either way, Bill never broke his generational curses and then left me with his crosses to bear.
My dad didn’t have much, and before he died we went over his will together.
He had decided to divide all his properties between me, Baby Sis, and my brother, Billy.
At first I didn’t want anything from him, but then I figured I could sell the properties and put a fund together for Bailee’s college.
Pass it from one generation to the next.
But in true Bill fashion, he had to give me one last slap in the face to make sure I knew how worthless I was to him.
When they read the will out, he had cut me out just like his father did to him.
To pour salt on the wound, he wrote, “I bequeath nothing to my daughter Alisa because she’s well off and has reminded me numerous times. ”
I wasn’t even mad about being cut out of the will, because I truly wanted nothing from him, but the words he wrote are what stung.
Because none of that was true. If my taking care of him made him feel like I was throwing money in his face, then that was a him problem, not a me problem.
Honestly, I expected nothing less from my dad.
Just another cut on the heart he created.
* * *
WHEN MY MOM DIED IN 2022, I felt an instant warmth that she sent me.
She just wanted to send me all the love she could—more love than she could even show me while she was alive.
She’d come to me in glowing, colorful lights.
I’d wake up in the middle of the night not long after she died with my TV all lit up like the aurora borealis.
She’d show herself through songs. I felt her with me all the time.
Every time I speak to a psychic, she barrels her way to the front to let me know she’s thriving and apologetic and learned her lesson in this life.
I think she wanted to thank me for taking care of her in the ways she couldn’t take care of me. And I think she wanted to show me she’d made it to the other side—that she was okay, so I could let her go.
In those first years after she passed, I felt her all the time. It’s died down now, but she still shows up from time to time, and I feel that same glowing warmth run through me.
But everything went cold when Bill died. It was almost like no feeling, and it freaked me the fuck out. I’ve always been so in tune with my spiritual side, and I’ve always been able to tap into the people I love. But the nothingness was so brutal. Where the fuck is he? Where did he go?
Back before Bill passed, I hit up a psychic back in Vegas. I sat across from her and asked what she sensed.
“Do you see any death around me?” I asked.
“Actually, I do,” she said. “Your dad is going to be in the in-between and walk the Earth until you forgive him. He’s not going to be able to go to the light until you forgive him.”
It was way before Bill’s last punch landed—so all her talk about forgiveness didn’t make much sense to me. What the hell is she talking about? I forgave my dad for who he was and for the life I had. Whatever. I’ll talk to him in a couple of days.
But when he passed, that cold didn’t leave me.
You remember that Bill went full Bible-thumper, and he was a devout Christian until the day he died.
But he was also the world’s biggest fucking hypocrite, and I don’t know that he made it up to Heaven.
Maybe he was still in the in-between, walking the Earth like that psychic predicted. Purgatory, if you will.
I also didn’t want his spirit around me.
I was so mad. So hurt. I cried for weeks.
There was a moment when I sat down on my bed and just sobbed, drenching the blankets with tears.
But after I allowed myself to grieve, I banished Bill from me—I walked through my house and cast out his energy.
He wasn’t welcome. I don’t want to see you.
Don’t you dare come visit me. No visions, no dreams. Stay the fuck away from me.
But Bill started showing up all over the place. First, he showed my friends Amy and Sloan visions of himself on vacation, healthy and relaxing. If he couldn’t get to me, I guess my people are as good an option as any.
But then he found me. Of course he did. Banished or not, Bill started showing himself to me as butterflies.
One day, a butterfly came and landed on my knee. Then another came the next day. Every day they were prettier and prettier, and I couldn’t ignore them. One landed smack on top of J’s nipple while we were out swimming. That’s just like Bill’s sense of humor.
Two beautiful does won’t stop hanging around my home, and I’ve taken them in.
My girl Tasha moved to Nashville, so now I get to see her all the time, and she caught eyes with one of those deer and looked like she’d seen a ghost. You can’t tell me that all of this doesn’t have something to do with Bill.
I think he’s trying to make it up to me. I think he regrets what he did—or at least feels guilty, and he keeps showing up so he can make good. But I mean . . . if he really wanted to make it up to me, he should show himself as a crow. Just sayin’.
I haven’t forgiven him, but I’ve found peace.
I’m not mad at him anymore, but I don’t like him right now either.
It’s obvious to me now that I’d put Bill on a pedestal.
He could do no wrong in my eyes, even though he did me wrong over and over until his last breath.
But I never realized until he died what a weak man he was.
It took him dying to shatter the image of him I’d created my whole life and to really see him for what he was: everything I hate in a man.
Maybe seeing someone as they really are is a part of grief. I see that no dad should ever make a daughter feel the way my dad did his whole life.
I can’t help thinking about my own daughter.
I didn’t give birth to Bailee or grow her in my body, but that child is mine.
I’m her mama, and I love her with everything in me.
And Bailee has been my way to find redemption and to break generational trauma.
Bill was who he was, but his disgusting version of parenting stops with me.