That summer began with saying goodbye to my father every day.
Every day I parked in the lot, got out of my car, walked across the warm outside, up the stairs to visit.
He might have known me, I wasn't sure. I was sweetheart or dear, and not many others were, so I think he knew. He couldn't work the TV any longer, the man who once knew science and electronics and taking things apart. He showed me the cherries from my mother that she'd left him in a plastic cup, or the rose blossom from their garden she'd brought in a parfait glass and had left beside his bed. He'd tell me his dreams, or his truths. I'm not sure. He had gone in as himself and ended up missing.
He wanted only hot chocolate, couldn't think of the names of his medicines. He became obsessed with illnesses he didn't have, pieces of his day he couldn't control. Such a small man then, holding his unsteady self up to the sink, wetting his face as he had for so many thousands of days, shaving the pattern over his stubbled skin his mind could not forget. Remember when I would shave with you with my little plastic razor? no. At the lake in the mornings? You'd give me a dollop of shaving cream? no. I don't remember. Remember me? Are you there in the mirror? Are you there?
In the middle of summer I found my father. I walked into his room and his eyes awoke and he smiled and knew me and asked what had been going on in the world and how my children were and he knew their names. We laughed and I didn't dare ask too many questions for fear it was all a ruse. He ate the watermelon I'd brought. He drank chocolate milkshakes. He loved me.
Then he was gone again. Sure the man across the way was being sent to the roof to the shredder he said. He's crazy, he said. He can't use his legs so they're sending him upstairs. No, I know! I KNOW! Please, dear. I know. Planning on meeting his friends outside, two floors down, trying to climb out the window to meet them.
I hated those days. I searched madly for my dad. He appeared and then left before I could grab on. I see you! You there?
Watermelon. It tastes wonderful. Juice dribbling down his chin.
Watermelon. It tastes like shit! I threw up three times. Do you see the ceiling? I'm so tired of looking at those lines that cross. That man who was here, they took him to the gas chambers.
This was the best I knew him, my most important memories of him made in sickness. These were the times where he held me and stared into my eyes and sighed great breaths of pride and love.
And on that last night, the inability to breathe, the gurgle in his voice, making sounds like a deep sea diver, the smile on his face, the happiness that we were all with him as if he'd invited us, the slow reluctant closing of his eyes.
