Silent And Still At The Center

“They are passing, posthaste, the gliding years…The years are passing my dear, and presently no one will know what you and I know.” -Vladmir Nabokov

Dad,

It is eleven years now since the April we lost you to icy river water. Eleven years since I last hugged you, since I last awoke to the rich sugary smell of your huckleberry pancakes browning on the stove. Eleven years since I heard the sound of your voice tell me to stop intentionally irritating Theresa, to eat all of my peas, that you loved me.

On Easter that year I read the news of you leaving us before Mom had the chance to tell us herself. I was in a news hungry phase then. I was twelve, almost thirteen, and I read everything I could see, everything I could hold in front of my face. I practiced spelling words forward and backward in the text of newspapers and books just like I started to do with the text adorning billboards and building signs whenever you would drive us around town, or the hour and a half up to the lake.

That day in our newspaper I read the story of a man who dove into the river at a juncture called Donkey Island. Rescue crews were still searching. I didn’t know Donkey Island, was wholly unfamiliar with the stretch of river that had claimed your life, and after reading the short article put the paper down, feeling sorry for the family of the man who I was certain would not resurface alive.

Mom’s words were like short bursts of fist to my abdomen. I instantly felt pain, felt sick, felt exactly like I did in the fifth grade after Brandon Gilbert kicked a soccer ball as hard as he could and I made the mistake of intercepting it with my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t cry. Instinctively I doubled over and wrapped my arms around my knees.

When you dove you were confused. Disorientated. Upset. I believed them. No one in their right mind would willingly jump into that river in mid-April, its bowels churning wildly with Spring run-off, every wave dripping with the frigidity of freshly melted glacier water.

You probably succumbed to the hypothermia before you drowned, they said. That I didn’t believe. Even then I knew a person could drown faster than they could freeze to death. And I couldn’t see why everyone was so hell bent on believing their telling me such a story was somehow comforting. As if freezing from the inside out was somehow a better alternative to lungs filling with water and drowning the possibility of you ever again breathing.

I used to sit at the river’s edge and wonder if you were scared that day. I wondered what you thought about when you realized there was only the end light ahead of you. Did Theresa and I cross your mind? Were you mouthing that you loved us even as you were fighting to say afloat? Did you call out to us? Did you call out to God? What if I would have heard you first? What if someone would have jumped in to save you?

I don’t know. Not any of it.

I do know that I miss you, that this month I always miss you more than usual. More than what is normally bearable. I do know that, as Lamartine so perfectly stated, “Sometimes when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.”

I used to feel such anger when faced with the reality that I don’t get to know. So much of the story I must be content to recall only as told by others. Others who are not you, and who can’t tell me what you were feeling or thinking or wishing moments before you left us. I used to feel such anger at the mere thought that I don’t get to know you beyond the twelve and a half years’ time we had, six of which I was too young to remember. It always seemed unfair, cruel even. I wanted more time. Needed more time. Deserved a moment to say good-bye.

Some days I still am angry. Some days I still don’t understand, and don’t want to. But most days I do.

Most days more than angry and broken I am longing and hopeful, thankful for time spent and assured of future time granted. Most days I know I will get to see your face that looks like mine again, and on that day I will get to see the corners of your mouth turn into your mustache as you smile, will get to hear your laugh that to me always sounded like feet dangling off a dock in the summer-time.

Most days I am content in the not knowing. Because most days I know that your plunge to the river bottom was no end. Not for you. And not for me.