Father and Son

My son, my dear boy… I miss you so much. When your sister left for Heaven, we cried together and held each other so tight and cried out how unfair it was, tears running in streaks from our eyes.

You flat lined three times. In the hospital I could tell, you weren’t coming back. I asked, what have you done to yourself, boy? And there wasn’t any answer.

You said you saw your sister up there. Told me you ran and played in lush green fields and that your grandfather was there.

The sickness had gone too far. And brain function… Well, I knew you were never fully going to return. The last time was just before Christmas of 2017. You remember? The doctor said your kidney, liver and other functions were beginning to show failure.

It was then that I knew…I guess I just didn’t want to believe it. Kind of like you.

That Christmas — a month later…that was to be our last day together. If I had known that, when we hugged before you left, I wouldn’t have let you go.

You tried. You did try to tell me. But there was a denial in me that made getting your grandma’s phone call the following Valentine’s Day such a shock.

People do that, deny what they see and hear. It’s because we don’t want to let go. We don’t know how to.

I loved you, son. I loved you so much that seeing you in trouble almost from the beginning cut me deeply. I’m sorry I never helped, never knew what to do, how to be a father and a dad at the same time. Because of things that hurt me long before you came along, I could only pick one. So I went for being a dad.

But I fucked up so bad, I lost your mom and that hurt you even more than you already were, since nobody else ever understood you, not doctors, and never your mother. She didn’t try to. Her only goal was control.

Now, eight Christmases are to be passed, and I tell people “it gets easier” and just now realized that I’ve lied to them. I wonder, will they forgive me? Do good intentions or the lie I believed for myself count for anything?

Because right now the wounds are as open and fresh as they always were, as they always ARE. On Christmas, Valentine’s Day and the Fourth of July when your sister went away, those days are dark for me. They stab me and haunt me no end. And I lie to people about that.

Well, all these years since I saw you, I gotta ask, didn’t you know that I was the one who was supposed to go away? Parents are supposed to go first, and you both got it backwards.

I’m sorry. Both of you, I’m so very sorry. You should be here. Not me. Or here with me. Not gone.

And Junior, fathers and sons are infamous for being on different levels, failing to compromise and even to communicate, but I always loved you and I always will.

I just wish I had picked up the phone that day.

And I wish you were here.