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I’m thirty-two when I tell Big Eddie he’s going to be a granddad. The look on his face is one of such wonder I can’t seem to catch my breath.
I’m thirty-three when Jamie is born, all pink and perfect. Big Eddie is the first to hold him in his arms, telling him he’s so happy to meet him, that the world is such a beautiful place.
I’m thirty-six when Hailey is born and we bring her home.
I’m thirty-nine when Big Eddie calls to tell me he has cancer. I hang up the phone, my world crashing down around me. I book a flight that very night. He’s the one who picks me up at the airport, in the old Ford. We stay in the parking lot for an hour as he lets me sob on his shoulder, telling him he can’t leave, he just can’t. Telling him that I can’t make it through this life without him. He holds me tight.
I’m forty when the cancer goes into remission and I remind him that he can’t get away from me that easy. He just gives me that slow smile of his and drops his heavy arm around my shoulders, pulling me close.
In the world where the river runs and the sun is shining, I’m almost to him. His face, once adorned with a smile, is now scrunched up as he starts to break. He falls to his knees and opens his arms wide, his eyes bright.
There are so many memories. They rise like ghosts, and I remember stretches of days and weeks and months and years and he’s there. He’s always there. There are phone calls and visits and celebrations and sadness. There are bright days and dark days. Every emotion humanly possible is felt. But through it all, I realize the gift I’ve received. Whether or not this is real, I have been given the memories of what life could have been like had my father not drowned in the river.
And still I want more. I push for more.
He’s ninety-eight years old when I sit by his bed. Jeremy is with our kids, watching our grandchildren in the hall. I sit quietly with my father in the night. The doctors say it will be soon and that he will not wake up. The others have left me alone so I have my chance to say good-bye.
I try to find the words to say to him that could convey the depth of my love for him. I try to think of a single thing to say that would show him what he means to me. I rest my head on his arm, rubbing my forehead against his skin. I might have imagined it, but for a moment, there seems to be a hand on my shoulder and a breath on my neck and I think that everything is blue. But then it’s gone.
Finally, I say to my father words he’d said once to me. “There is no one such as you in this world, and you belong to me. I’ll believe in you, always.” I squeeze his hand and give him fifteen words that mean everything. “It’s okay to sleep now, Dad. I know that one day, we’ll be together again.”
As if waiting for my permission, he slips away only moments later.
There is a world where he sleeps under an angel made of stone.
There is a world where he passes quietly, watched by the one who loves him the most.
And these two worlds collide, pulling in toward each other, rushing and rolling, combining until I can see everything, until I can feel everything. I feel the life of my father. I feel the love of my father. I feel the loss of my father, and it happens over and over and over again. There is the world that actually happened. There is the world that could have happened. I think this might be what Michael spoke of, and I cherish every moment of it even as my heart shatters again and again.
Every memory flashes before my eyes. Every single moment we did and did not share. All of these memories are pulled down to a single point, the tiniest possible space. There’s an instant where it’s black and silent, and then it explodes outward, arcing through this world and every other. Wave after wave of my past and future washes over me, and I see all possibilities. Every path not taken. Every shape. Every pattern. Every design.
And this. Out of everything, I beg you to see this:
This is the world where the river runs wild. This is the world where I leap the last five feet, unable to take the distance between us any longer. I hear the beat of massive wings, I hear the earth singing, I hear all the planes of existence holding their breaths for just one sweet, freeing moment. It is in this moment that I break through the surface of the river and come out on the other side.
And for the first time since he died five years before, I crash into my father, and he wraps his arms around me, and oh my God, I am home. I am home. I am home.
We stay like this, for a time. My head on his shoulder as I tremble, arms tight
around his neck. He puts one arm around my back, the other pressing the back of my head with his big hand. I don’t even try to hide that I’ve broken down, sobbing into his shirt, clutching at him. He tries to whisper soothing things to me, but his voice keeps cracking, and I can feel my hair getting wet from where his cheek rests.
What strikes me first, aside from the fact that this is actually real, is the way he smells. If I’d tried to remember it even an hour ago, I wouldn’t have been able to. Not completely. But now? Now it’s everything I remember from my childhood. It’s wood smoke, it’s clean sweat, it’s grease, it’s wintergreen, it’s hard work. It’s all the things I remember about him all wrapped up into something that is distinctly Big Eddie. I shudder at the thought.
Finally, he speaks, and the sound of his voice is almost enough to set me off all over again. “Let me look at you,” he says roughly. “Just let me look at you.” He pushes me back, cupping my face, roaming his gaze over me as if to catalogue every little thing he can. His hands are shaking as he wipes my cheeks. He tries to smile, but it breaks and his face stutters again. He closes his eyes and takes in a sharp breath. He drops his hands to my shoulders, and his grip is biting. He opens his teary eyes again. “Benji,” he says, and I try to wrap my mind around the fact that I can hear my father say my name again. “Benji.”
I weep for my father.
Time passes, though I can’t say how much. I don’t know if it matters, or if I even
can find the heart to care. It’s deceptive, this place. The sun never seems to move from its position overhead, though I’m sure hours have gone by. The wind always blows sweetly, and the river babbles more like a brook than the Umpqua I know. The grass is the brightest green, the water the clearest blue. The trees seem to reach up to the sky, and the mountains are snowcapped, like they’re covered in clouds. It’s picturesque. It’s perfect. It’s not real.
What is real, though, is the weight of my father’s arm on my shoulders. We sit side by side, our pant legs rolled up, feet in the water. The water’s cold, but not so much it’s unbearable. The sun is warm, chasing away any chill. We haven’t really spoken yet, so overwhelmed the words aren’t taking shape. It’s like all my synapses have fired at once, and I can’t form a single coherent thought. Everything is sensory—the warmth of his arm across the back of my neck, the smell of pine and oak, the sound of birds and bugs, the light refracting off the scales of a salmon when it jumps out of the water, the taste of the drying tears that have tracked to my lips.
I have so much to say, so of course I say nothing. It’s not as if I’m scared, or as if I’m unsure of what I want to say. I want to tell him everything. I want to go through it all, day by day since I last saw him, leaving nothing out, so he can know the minutes and the hours he has missed. I want to tell him about Mom and how strong she really is. I want to tell him about Nina and how she might be the only one who understands why I missed him as much as I did. I want to tell him about Mary and how she kept us all together. I want to tell him about Christie and her betrayal. About our best friend Abe, who asked me to look away. About anyone and everyone he’s ever known.
But most of all, I want to tell him about Cal. I want to tell him about the man I love and the man I hate. I want to feel rage, I want to clench my fists and hurt something. I want my father to see just how much I hate the angel Calliel for taking from me what was rightfully mine, the consequences be damned. Fuck Michael and his beliefs about faith and sacrifice. Fuck Cal and his decisions. Fuck God and his games.
So much to say. I say nothing.
