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The hospice nurse called yesterday to tell me it was time.
To come home.
To say goodbye.
And to take over.
Two years of college down and two more to go, now on hold indefinitely.
Because I couldn’t say no, couldn’t tell my father that I didn’t want to take over the family business.
My eldest brother had his own business to run. Even though it was only a block away, Fiorino’s Deli took up all of Giovanni’s time. And our middle brother couldn’t step into Dad’s shoes, not with a new wife and a baby on the way, happily living out their fairy tale on the west coast because my sister-in-law ‘wouldn’t dream of leaving California’—and Leo wouldn’t dream of doing anything to upset her.
So it mattered not that I had goals and dreams of my own—and a scholarship that would now be wasted—the onus of taking over fell on me, the baby of the family. Because the men of the Fiorino family had always told me what to do and when. Out of love, I knew, but control was control, no matter the motivation.
I hung my head and closed my eyes, breathing deeply to steel my nerves. The living room lay between me and the hallway that led to his room. Just a short few yards away, but I couldn’t bring myself to push off the front door and move toward him.
“Oh, honey,” Muriel said, her voice laced with sympathy as she entered the living room. “I thought I heard you come in.”
Lifting my head, I met the hospice nurse’s gaze, and the look of pity in her eyes broke my resolve. The tears came hard and fast, but I covered my mouth to muffle the sound so my dad wouldn’t hear my grief.
In a blink, she was on me, pulling me into her arms and pressing me against her bosom like a scene out of a Hallmark movie. She soothed me with quiet murmurs as she ran her hand over my long hair. “It’s okay, honey, let it out.” After a moment, she added quietly, “He can’t hear you.”
And something about that statement did it.
I broke.
The agony of my father not being able to hear me cry from just down the hall was somehow even more profound than knowing I came here to say goodbye to him.
He was already gone.
Even if he still breathed, the man I knew was gone.
The man who raised me. Loved me. Drove me crazy more often than not.
The man who did his best as a single parent of three young hellions.
The man who somehow ran the butcher shop and this household without giving up on either—even when doing so would have lightened his load tremendously.
In the arms of this stranger, I crumpled to the ground and she lowered with me, rocking me as I cried.
“I should have come home sooner,” I sobbed, my hands clenching around her cable knit cardigan.
“No,” she whispered, “he wouldn’t have wanted you to miss your studies. He was so proud of you going to that big ol’ school upstate. His brilliant baby, he called you.”
Her statement gutted me and I shook with a deep wail as my heart ripped in two. The acknowledgement of his pride meant little when he’d called me home to take over the store. He was proud that I pursued higher education, just not proud enough to let me complete my four years and move forward into achieving my goals.
Her words felt like a slap in the face, but I knew that was not her intention.
And I knew it wasn’t his, to make me feel like my dreams didn’t matter. He built that shop from the ground up, and he did it for us. Every ounce of his blood, sweat, and tears went into creating something my brothers and I could depend on long after Dad was gone.
He just didn’t account for the fact we might not want that gift.
So, in Muriel’s arms, I cried for the loss of my father. And I cried for the loss of my dreams.
Because, over the next few days, I would move back into my childhood home and step into my father’s shoes.
I would carry on his dream instead of my own.
