Losing You Twice

Content Warning: Mentions of addiction, abuse, and death

The sound of steel toed boots stomping through the house alerted me of my father’s presence. With bated breath, I listened closely for the harsh toss of keys or the loud thump of tools against hardwood.

Agitated demands rang out soon enough with my name following closely behind.

I stared at the wall of my bedroom where the bird decals I had put up days prior looked ready to take flight. It was funny how it mirrored what I wished for now.

I begrudgingly stepped out of my room, hoping my face didn’t show my annoyance too much. We all had our parts to play and I could only hope the storm my father carried wasn’t looming overhead.

“Help me take my boots off.”

I had grown accustomed to these type of greetings. These evening rituals were my father’s way of commanding our home, of our once quiet sanctuary, now rattled by the uncertainty of his arrival.

I moved to unlace his heavy boots without question, eager to help relieve the strain of another long day. His face was worn and deep lines of exhaustion marred his face. His eyes pierced right through me, red and glossy. If I looked hard enough, I would also see the hollowness that echoed deeply within. I secretly hoped my presence would replace the permanent scowl for just a moment, and his eyes might instead fill with a glint of light. Any indication that the father I knew he could be was still there and hadn’t disappeared entirely.

“Get me a beer from the fridge.”

I quietly sighed, my resentment quickly reaching the surface. It was a Friday night, but really the day of the week never mattered. His liquid vice wrapped him up in softly cushioned promises, whispering reassurances in his ear that it would soon grant reprieve for the night.

As I walked towards the fridge, my feet felt like lead as the dark cloud that plagued us floated above me, its electric current prickling my skin. I imagined myself mustering the courage to pour out each bottle over the sink and watch the bubbly liquid descend down the drain into a dark abyss.

My thoughts were soon disrupted by my father’s irritation as he grew impatient.

Dinner was warming up on the stove and my mother was a flurry of motion assembling a plate to serve him. She was competing against an imaginary clock that ticked to the rhythm of our racing heartbeats.

I often wondered when the unease penetrated our bones so deeply. When did it take root and dismantle our nervous system enough to follow this routine that we knew never had a happy ending anyway?

I got my answer each time the bottles began to pile up and the vibrations of the speaker in the living room shook my bedroom walls. The shouts began soon after, anger boiling over and spilling into the night. Now unleashed and relentless despite our best efforts to deter its effects.

My father’s cruel words sliced through me, leaving behind scars that only I could see. Maybe they just needed a place to stay. Despite my own affliction, if it meant a chance of better days, I would hold them in my palms. Let them sit there like heavy weights - just for now.

He couldn’t mean everything he said. They couldn’t hold the weight of truth, could they? They felt heavy with ire but my heart ached with the possibility of sincerity while my own indignation grew.

Eventually I made my way back to my room, tearful and whispering retaliations into my pillow. Once again I found myself staring at the decals before me and wondered what it would be like to fly far, far away from here.

The sound of the monitor beeping furiously beside me shook me out of my memories. My head swirled, I was no longer the little girl, naively attempting to change the world around her.

The sterile smell of the hospital room was a poignant reminder of the harsh reality I found myself in. The sound of the swooshing machinery forcing air into my father’s lungs continued its steady pace.

Now a woman, I sat at my father’s bedside, squeezing his unmoving hand. I traced the old scars, the permanent callouses - inside feeling like the same little girl but who wanted nothing more now than to feel even just a faint twitch of a finger. A tightness in his grasp. Anything at all.

I had sat there, wondering how we ended up here. Each memory plaguing me with shame. Maybe if I hadn’t been so quick to fuel and appease the disease that had ran its devastating course, I wouldn’t be staring into my father’s unblinking eyes. Maybe his voice wouldn’t be a memory I now desperately wished to hear one last time.

My eyes shifted towards the beeping monitor as I watched his numbers fluctuate, tears burning hot against my cheeks.

“I don’t know how to fix this, Dad.” I cried, hoping every whisper of love, every promise of forgiveness, would carry hime through this.

My mother stared at my father silently beside me. Her eyes dull and anguished, her thoughts perhaps contemplating the same. Her warm hand on my back was a stark contrast to the frigid ache that consumed me.

When the doctor arrived, she attempted to explain the inevitable but it all jumbled up in my head. Each word was a piece to a puzzle I was having a hard time putting together.

“Please, just - Is there anything left to do?” I was grasping onto hope tightly. Reality was imminent but not reaching me in the way that I needed.

The doctor’s response had been clear then, but the look in her eyes would had been enough.

I was unprepared for the guilt that followed. It echoed across the oceans to the ears of the laughing serpents. They rejoiced at their victory, having dismantled the essence of my father piece by piece. The grief for the absence of time, of one day mending wounds that never fully scabbed over, was as prominent as the fiery anger that frayed the edges of my being for so long.

Defeat replaced anger. The impenetrable walls I fought to build crumbled to the ground in a cloud of dust. Our remanent strife evaporated like the misty waters beneath my feet.

With trembling hands, I kissed my father’s cold hand, and prepared for the shattering silence.