Forget or Forgive

She looked down at her father, almost lifeless, in the hospital bed. The steady beeping of the monitor seemed to sync with the rhythm of her own heartbeat. The sound was both grounding and unbearable. His face, once so sharply defined, had softened and hollowed with illness until it was nearly unrecognizable. The skin clung to his bones like damp paper. What she did recognize was his nose, the one she shared, covered by a breathing tube. His ice blue eyes were closed, likely never to open again.

Her family had told her she would regret not coming.“You’ll want to say goodbye, Mary. One day, you’ll wish you had" her mother said. But her mother hadn’t said the same to Erin. Erin had cut ties with their father years ago, and no one expected her to come back for this.

Mary had wanted to remember something good. Any small memory to make the visit bearable. A tender moment, maybe a joke. All she could remember was the smell of his cologne that used to fill the rare, silent, car rides home from school. But there was nothing more she could think of. She only feel the sharp ache of anger in her ribs.

Her mother’s voice echoed in her head, that tired refrain: “Your childhood wasn’t that bad, Mary. You are so dramatic. Some kids don’t even have shoes.” And guilt, as it always did, flooded her chest. Of course, she knew there were children who had it worse, of course. Children around the world without homes or parents at all. But she also knew what the therapist had told her years ago, after her first panic attack at age twenty-six: What happened to you was not okay. And not forgiving doesn’t make you cruel, it makes you honest.

She remembered the look on her therapist’s face when she told her about her childhood. The kind of look that wasn’t pity, but horror disguised as empathy. The woman had gone silent for a long time before saying, “Mary, I can’t imagine what that must have been like. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

The words had felt alien. "Sorry", wasn’t what she expected. She’d imagined judgment or curiosity...something that explained her, why she was the way she was, not mourned for her. And, "sorry" didn’t fix anything. It hadn't in the past, with her father, her mother, the men before...."sorry" didn't mean much coming from them. But still, coming from an outsider something small inside her had shifted after she said "sorry".

Her therapist told her she needed to stop excusing people who hurt her. To stop lightening every blow with a joke. “When someone shows you who they are,” she’d said, “you don’t have to keep them in your life.”

At first, that had felt easy. Empowering, even. But after a week of clarity, the truth had turned heavy. If she really cut out everyone who had taken more than they gave, who manipulated her kindness because they knew they could, there would be no one left. The thought of that kind of solitude terrified her. Maybe, she reasoned, it was better to live with some bad people than to live with no one at all.

Her father was the first person she learned to rationalize. He had been a man of extremes. Incredible unpredictable and always cold. The house, her mother and her sister, seemed to bend around his moods. Every slammed door, every heavy sigh, could be a warning. When she was little, she used to count the seconds between his footsteps and her bedroom door, trying to guess if this was the night he’d come to yell, or worse, to discipline her in the way he called “teaching respect.”

His hands had never been gentle. They never met hers, as they walked across the street or to embrace her face. His hands were always used as a sort of discipline. She couldn’t even remember him ever hugging her. As she'd seen so many of her friends dads do before.

Yet to everyone else, he was magnetic. Friends, coworkers, neighbors adored him. “Such a character,” they’d say, “so charming, so funny.” He was the life of every barbecue, the best storyteller at the office Christmas party. “You must be so lucky to have a dad like that.”

The whiplash nearly broke her. As a girl, she thought maybe it was her fault. Maybe she was too emotional, or too clumsy - too much. If she had been quieter, better, maybe he would have smiled at her the way he smiled at strangers.

She remembered the story her cousin told once, about how her father had taken her to a baseball game while on a business trip in Chicago. How he’d bought her popcorn and a soda and let her pick a souvenir hat. Mary had smiled and said “that’s nice,” but inside she felt something burning and black. He’d never done that for her. She has never even been to a baseball game with her dad. Her cousin thought she knew him. But, no one ever really did.

At home, her mother had been the keeper of silence. Whenever she or Erin tried to speak about the things that happened, even gently, her mother would wave her hand and say “That didn’t happen,” or “You’re remembering wrong.” When they pressed harder, she would sigh and say, “You girls always dramatize everything.”

It was a strange thing to be told that your pain was a performance. Over time, it made her doubt her memories, then her emotions, then her sanity. So she just stopped sharing.

Now, years later, standing in the cold hum of the hospital, she felt nothing but distance.

Suddenly brought back to reality - the heart monitor began to beep erratically. The nurse rushed in, her sneakers squeaking against the tile. “It’s okay,” the woman said, though it clearly wasn’t. She called for another nurse. The room filled with hurried motion. Mary stepped back, her pulse thundering in her ears.

She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She’d imagined this moment for years. How it might feel to lose him. But now that it was here, there was no triumph in it, just sadness.

His chest lifted once. The monitor shrieked and then steadied into a flat, continuous tone. The sound pierced her, high and hollow.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The nurses moved quietly, efficiently. One reached over and turned off the machine. The room fell into silence, a silence so deep she could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing above her.

His face was still - peaceful in a way she’d never seen. All the anger, the sharpness, the power, it was gone. Just a body now. A man she had feared for so long, reduced to stillness.

Her mother stood in the doorway, pale and trembling. “He’s gone,” she said softly.

Mary nodded. Her throat felt raw. She walked to the bedside and laid her hand on his arm. It was still warm. She waited for a feeling to come...grief, relief, anything...but none did.

"I hope I forget you" she said.

"But I won’t forgive.”