present/absent.

Some things never change, even when they're completely different.

Monday was the first time in seventeen years I'd been in a car with my parents, and it was exactly what it had always been: my father's car-sickness-inducing brake-jerk-speed-up-brake-swerve and relentless determination to fill the car with what he meant to sound like Carefully Thought-Out And Meaningful Queries; my mother, impervious behind sunglasses, soft leather purse in her lap, lips narrowed and pursed, responding when spoken to, often missing the mark of my father's pointless questions so profoundly that I suspect, for the first time, that she's got to be doing it on purpose just to needle him, to coolly kick the shit out of his pretensions toward control. It works - it always has - and I'm amused. I wonder whether my mother is more subversive than I ever realized.

I, true to five- and ten- and seventeen-year-old me, huddled in the backseat as far as possible from the barrage of attention my father hurled into the rearview mirror, where did you get that shirt do you get nervous when other people drive you places have you seen that one show when's the last time you ate baklava do you know what that tree is called have you ever been out west what's your favorite milkshake what kind of shoes are you wearing. Paragraphs about my father are never neat or easy; they never will be, and I write them as infrequently as I can. I try to mentally reframe his interrogation as the panicked natterings of the parent of a dead child, try to remove them from the context of children crammed into a backseat on the way to church, crammed into a delusion of lightness, of unity of spirit inside a car, responsible for continuing the game upon exit. It was never enough to play the game for other people; we had to play it for each other, to each other. The game is soul-sucking and I suck at it while it sucks at me, and he is scrambling at old habits to ease his own tension, and I try to let it be something different this time.

Besides, this time, I'm alone in the backseat: to my right is my youngest niece's carseat, and my brother died four days ago. I've said those words only once - my brother died - to my boss, the day after, as she gasped in horror, grabbed my shoulders and said oh my god, lisa, what are you doing here, you're in shock, LISA. I didn't think I was in shock, at least not while I could let work overwhelm me, while I could occasionally stand still and take stock, and think no, I'm good, I'm okay. Until I'd close the car door behind me and find myself unable to move; until I realized I wasn't eating; until I got lost twice driving home from Tampa - a stretch of interstate I've traveled hundreds of times - and once driving in my own neighborhood. Until I tried to work, and found myself with three half-begun projects and no idea what I was doing, what day it was, what time it was. No matter what has happened to me - leaving my parents' house, confronting them and my brother.. later, the rape, the stalking, leaving Florida, coming back, mental illness onset, seeking help - no matter what, I've always been able to hold it together; always been able to function, to work, to focus; I've always been present. I'm considering that my brain may have actually reached critical mass; I officially don't think I can handle any more. I'm considering whether God lets shit happen to a point where it stops being shit happened and just becomes here I am. 

______ 

When I got to his house that Saturday - two days after - I still thought I'm good; I'm okay, not in shock. I walked inside his house and began quaking; went straight to the kitchen and started moving things around, as is my training: to make sense of the space. Put away the panini grill; the stand mixer; the food processor (his wife won't use those for awhile); wipe the counter, wash the dishes, put that away, where does this go, rifle through a basket of how many baggies containing a single graham cracker with a baby-sized bite? who saves these things? how old are these graham crackers? stack those boxes of ziploc bags with the plastic wrap, these cans can stack with those cans, why does he have a whole bag of turmeric? it doesn't even fit with anything; where the hell am I supposed to put this stupid turmeric that's probably God knows how old anyway and will never be used here???? until I realized, desperately, that I was just moving things around for no reason, that I've wiped the same counter three times, that this pitcher will still not fit on that shelf. My mother is in the kitchen with me while I wipe surfaces and discard graham crackers, talking about things that I can't listen to; I nod and uh-huh and scrub harder. I take out the trash, then come inside to find that she's brought one of his shirts out of the laundry room into the kitchen; she's hunched over, her face buried in the shirt, and I remember the first two thoughts I had when I hung up the phone in the middle of the night I found out:

now, I have to stay. 
now, I am alone with them. 

Later, as people start to arrive, I overhear her crying with them, louder and louder. Why isn't she. How can she. Laughing. Why isn't she. And I hear sometimes people use humor. People grieve differently. People are different. The oldest niece turns up the TV too loud, and I let her.

______

There was so much about his presence that I couldn't tolerate. I'm walking around his house, and his shoes are sitting there by the door, ugly beat-up brown loafers (he wasn't wearing shoes when he left), and his cell phone is ringing somewhere in the house (the original Star Trek communicator sound), and he is hanging on that wall with my sister-in-law (how can she stand to let his hand rest on her shoulder) and I am sweeping the floor on which he collapsed (my niece, bringing her mother water because she was sweating during chest compressions) - there was so much tied up in his presence, and as hard as I had to work to repress his presence when it was present with me (his absence doesn't feel that strange), there is more tied up in his absence than anyone will ever understand. I dread being in a room with his casket; I dread having to stand in grief with them; I dread that I can't let myself join in their grief, that I simply do not have the capacity for grace that this situation requires of me, and I dread how apparent that will be at his funeral. I dread being the only one left with them, the only one left with his and my necessary shared record of memory; I dread what it means to them, that I am the only one left. I dread the wilderness of grieving someone whose presence I could not tolerate; I dread how it will become A Topic, and always an off-the-mark one, now that he is gone; I dread coming to contemplate how we loved each other, how that love was possible only by distance, how his grief and regret will intertwine with my own.

I'm writing this at 4 am, the night before/early morning of his funeral; I figure we're probably all awake right now. That'll have to do.

______

My middle niece wanders into the kitchen. The eight-year-old is his intellectual buddy; the three-year-old is the adoring daddy's girl. This one - the four-year-old - is not easy to read, under normal circumstances - a fundamentally gentle soul, insightful, who loves to please, who tends to hold onto her perceived failures, whose difficulties controlling her anger are already apparent. It occurs to me, as she makes furtive eye contact with me and lingers a little to see if I'll draw her in, that she is the petite blonde version of her father.

I start to fiddle with her ponytail, then realize it's a matted mess. Whatcha need, pooper? She clutches her hands at her middle, gathers the sentence in her head before saying um, I need you to come help me watch TV. I follow her to the couch, where my brother's TV/computer setup was blaring Frosty The Snowman (he never cared that all those wires were exposed). Frosty starts to melt; children start to cry; she and I both reach for the remote; our hands bump. We glance at each other, startled, and crack up a little. She pulls a graham cracker from her pocket and breaks me off a piece.