The Day After

The halls of my junior high were louder the day after my father died, full of audible whispers comprising a cacophony of sympathy I was not ready to accept, not ready to hear echoing off lockers I once looked forward to opening daily.

Strangers looked at me with tears in their eyes. Teachers spoke gently, pulled me aside before and after classes to offer condolences. “Was there anything they could do?” they asked a little too loudly.

I despised their gentleness. I abhorred being special in the way I now was. Every teenager wants to be recognized, to be noticed, to be praised for exceptional test scores, for record-breaking attendance, for unparalleled athletic ability. No one wants to be the girl without a father.

No one wanted to be me, but they all felt sorry for me, and I felt sorry for me, too. “Why did she make me go to school today?” I wondered silently as the flood of unwelcome well-wishing rushed onward. The notes, the cliché and abundant pats on the back, the “While you’re grieving” cards. All of it a cruel, unfunny, pathetically maddening joke.

I wore my grief like a badge I had not earned. I smiled wryly as classmates who once ignored me now looked on, interested. My best friends had little to say. Their mothers had advised them to be calm, to be quiet. I wanted to scream, to slur profanities like sloppy joes across the cafeteria, to kick and fight, and flee every wayward glance that sought to canvass my grief. Grief I had not yet been given ample time to process and actually feel.

I was twelve, almost thirteen. No one had taught me how to lose my father.

I would have sooner kicked someone in the shins than cried. I wouldn’t realize I was allowed to feel anything but sorrow until college. Someone kind, a Professional, would tell me anger is normal, to be expected. One of many phases I would be forced to traverse on a rocky road to healing.

That Monday I mostly felt nothing. I walked around a mere shell of myself, stoic and uncompromising in shoes wherein I had so recently stood outspoken and confident. I wasn’t accustomed to everyone staring. There were questions. Too many questions to which I had no answers. Not then, not yet. He was dead. Yes, he died. Drowned. I don’t know. No, no funeral yet. Maybe. Mike. His name was Mike. Michael Francis Ladish. He was my father, the deceased. What does it matter if he’s being cremated? I DON’T KNOW.

Years later I would fabricate a conversation in my head between my mother and myself.

“Mom, you know you shouldn’t have sent us back to school the day after he died.”

“I know, dear. I thought it would help.”

“You only thought it would help you.”

“I know, dear.”