View to the other side

I wanted to see you. Your other children said no, no. Scott said how awful to have to see you as a body - but he was thinking of his friend, Dee, who succumbed in a house fire and was burned beyond recognition. It was terrible to see him, he said in a slow voice that relived the horror. 

You hit your head when you fell, after you died. It left a gash that bled. The stain was still red when I scrubbed the carpet days later, crying. Better not to see him, Karen said. Your last memories with him are good, be glad you were spared the injured head, the frail body. 

I didn’t care - I wanted to see the wound your fall left. The EMT swore you didn’t feel it. Mom ran into the room immediately and heard your last, rattling exhale. Your eyes, she said. They were so strange. You were gone. Everyone agreed, it was only your body that the technicians of death spirited away. It was for the best, they said.

But I longed to see you. I wanted to sit in the mortuary stillness and hold your once-capable  hand, so surprisingly small, the same size as my own petite hand. I wanted to kiss your cold cheek, and study your features in rare repose. I wanted to see you drained of the awful anxiety that dogged you in your last months. I wanted to sit near, just looking. I wanted to say, in that silent room, so many things. How I loved you. How the bad years stopped mattering. How thankful I was that we swam through the bitter waters and reached the sweet. Your disease changed you, yes. But I know it was love that changed you first. After that last bout of anger between us, years ago, I stopped coming home so often. I didn’t know what else to do. But not long after on one of my now-sporadic visits, you came to me and told me about the bank teller you befriended. Just the cutest, friendliest little thing, you said. I’m sure her affection was genuine - she only knew you as a pleasant, smiling old man; she’d be surprised to know you were once so angry so often I thought of you as a raging bull, and feared you. There was a time, when I was younger, I would have resented this easy relationship you had with other young women, while things with us were so historically strained. 

But I knew, as I listened to you tell me about the goodbye note she wrote you before leaving her job and moving away, that she was really an extension of me, a daughter figure without the baggage, without the faint echoes of anger ringing in your ears. I knew even before you finished telling the story of this friendship and said So you see, your old dad is not so bad. Anymore, you added,  so softly that I almost didn’t hear. I knew you were telling me you loved me, that you were sorry, in the best way you knew how. 

How I wish I could have laid my hand on yours and whispered It’s ok daddy. How I wished I could have thanked you for the values you gave me, apologized for not always living up to them, promised I’d do better.

But mostly I just wanted to gaze at you, something I couldn’t do while you lived - what’s wrong, you would have asked. I could never have said I just wanted to look at your face because it is beloved to me. 

I still have the mirror, which reflects a face that reflects you - the way my eyes smile, my small teeth,  the pointed  chin, the high intelligent forehead.

I was not afraid to see what was left of you. I was not afraid. What a miracle that is, me who was always so afraid of her own shadow I slept with the lights on for years 

When we walked into the funeral home to the room where the service was to be, I beheld your ashes - all that was left of you- and I wept. I would not see you again.  It was well and truly the end. I cried out, and Karen was there and we clutched hands and cried in each other’s arms. You were always so proud of our close relationship, knowing how we’d need each other in ways we didn’t yet understand. Now we do.

 Maybe Karen was right - she often is. Maybe it was for the best that I did not see you. Now, you will always be alive in my memory, ready with a smile,  gently teasing.  One of the last things you said to me shining like the center gem of a crown: “What a jewel of a daughter you are.”

But I wanted you to know - I wanted to see you. I was not afraid. How could I be, you are my daddy. Always and forever.