My Father Died.

Khalid and I were in Mexico, and I woke up to fifty-gazillion missed calls. All from my mom. All right after each other. Of course I called immediately, and of course I get shoved to voicemail. I couldn't reach anyone, and what went through my head first was that my grandmother had died; she is 91, and they've been saying she has a week to go for about 6 years. But it was my dad.

53. Heart attack. I think he drank himself to death, and from some of the things I've found, like emails and weird notes around the house, it sounds like at least he expected it.

My parents were in the process of a divorce, and dad was still living in the house as my mother chose to move in with her mother who suffers from Alzheimer's. After he died, my dad wasn't found for two or so days, and I think the thing that gets me the most is that he was here, alone. Did he collapse in excruciating pain? Did he lay there attempting to crawl to the phone, struggling to breathe?

Of what are we scared when it comes to death? The majority of people I have asked concur that dying alone is the most horrifying. Nobody to hold your hand, to let you know that it's okay to go, to give you a peaceful smile or to simply be present.

I have only cried once, simply because there's been so much to do. Every once in awhile I'll find myself going down the roller coaster hill as it just hits me out of nowhere, but the mere possibility of not being able to recover after a crying spell is too much to bear, and I push it down, push it down, until I remember what it is I was doing before being a pussy got in the way.

This last week has been spent going through his things. Now, going through your father's things during a time while he was going through a divorce is not easy. I have the exciting task of trying to get to things before my mother sees them, such as condoms and pictures of other women. I find it's easier to ignore the emotion of it all because I'm having to shield my mother, and that really takes up the majority of my energy. The one thing that keeps popping up in everything I find is me. My pictures are everywhere, he has saved cards I made him in pre-school and has kept them in his desk at work for 30 years. I found a CD of the first opera I was in, and I even noticed that his "Favorite singer?" is "Micah," as it's one of his security questions for his bank account.

The one thing nobody would dare argue about my father- he loved me more than himself, thought I was the most perfect being on this earth and would have stabbed anyone in the face that thought otherwise.

Well, dad, god damn it, I love you too.

Micah