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Ironically, I have no trouble calling him that—Dad.
Most people who’ve had the kind of relationship with him I’ve had would avoid the affectionate term altogether, preferring the distance of a more technical patriarchal word—something formal, like Father. But I’m not one for overly complicated emotional statements.
He was what he was—the complete opposite of me, his fun-loving, quick to smile, big-hearted son.
Domineering and oftentimes mean-spirited, Hall Hughes was a man many feared. He was brisk and frequently harsh, but he never saw it as a fault. He spoke his mind—always—even if it might be to the emotional or physical detriment of those around him.
And yet, he was also very nearly omnipresent.
I can’t recall a time when he wasn’t around. He never missed a game or a milestone, showing up for me both physically and financially, no matter what. I shake my head slightly, an unwavering stare lasering in on the ornately carved mahogany casket.
He was always there, all right—disapproving vocally of my hobbies, choices, and performance.
Always fucking critical, that was my father.
Still, I guess in some simple way, I’ll miss the idea of having someone unabashedly present. My mom passed nine years ago, shortly before my twenty-fifth birthday, from breast cancer, and he’s been the only family around ever since.
Luckily for me, I’ve got a group of family-like friends—one made up of a band of misfit billionaires and their much-too-good-for-them women—to turn to when I need a support system. Though, as much as I love them, I didn’t invite them here today.
I know they would have been understanding, but sometimes a man needs to find his way through grief in solitude. Especially when that grief looks nothing like the usual sort. Like a woman’s heart attack, my feelings about my father are quieter, stealthier, bubbling just around the edges and in the cramp of my jaw.
I lick my lips and release the tension I’m holding there. If it weren’t for the soreness at its apex, I wouldn’t have even known I was clenching it.
The symptoms are subtle, but I know better than to avoid treating them. Sadness, even over an idea of a person who never truly existed—the father I wished I’d had—left unattended would eventually lead to some kind of systemic failure. Sepsis of the heart, I suppose.
The reverend lifts his head from its previous bowed-in-prayer place and surveys the small crowd that’s amassed. Mostly people my dad worked with—and almost definitely there for the purpose of assuring themselves the bastard is really dead, rather than paying any form of last respects—the crowd at large didn’t participate in the ritual. Perhaps they’re agnostic, but I also think, conceivably, they all prefer to save their God save the souls for souls they think actually deserve them.
Courtesy of my mind’s morbid sense of humor, a smirk threatens one corner of my mouth as the reverend continues the funeral, speaking a whole lot of very kind words a man like Hall Hughes most likely didn’t earn.
“Hall’s earthly body will be missed by many, but his spirit will live on among us. His lessons, his kindness…”
I think I hear a snort from somewhere behind me, but whoever’s responsible has the decency and good sense to cover it up with a secondary cough.
“His impact on the community. We won’t forget, even as Hall moves on to live out the life God intended, free of worry and free of pain.”
I stare at the hole in the ground under the fancy wooden coffin and drown out the rest of the scripted speech.
I can’t help but marvel at the simplicity of our process when the people around us die—the quickness with which we dispatch a sometimes century-long life. Prepare the body, encase it, send it below ground at a level capable of preventing the ruthless hunting of all manner of animals. Which is really ironic, if you ask me. We spend decades upon decades taking from the nourishment of the earth but refuse to give any back. It just confirms how greedy we are as members of the animal kingdom. Even in death, we refuse to sustain the species around us.
I imagine there’s something really profound and symbolic about it all, but I can’t pick out the details. All I know is that my father paid half a million dollars of his money for this spot in the ground—one of the only two plots left in New York City—so his body could be where he wanted it to be for all of eternity. A body he’s no longer connected to.
If what the reverend said was true, if he’d truly been an impactor of lives, he would have used that money on something other than his corpse.
Lord knows he didn’t spend it on my mother. Ellie Hughes was buried in Teaneck, New Jersey, the damn cemetery only a half mile behind a ShopRite—and he loved her. According to my mother, they were both completely head over heels—silly, goofy love—when they were younger; I guess it took time for him to turn into the asshole we’re parting with today. I can’t even imagine where she would have ended up if their marriage hadn’t been strong in its foundation.
