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"Gotta clear all this." I heard Hank's voice cutting through the fog in my brain. I barely registered him opening refrigerator doors. Then, he continued gently, "It won't be goodwith everything turning bad. We’ll have to throw stuff out. We’ll come back and go through his things later."
It wasn't dramatic. It was mundane. That Dad’s space would have his absence made tangible not just by the emptiness between walls, but by the smell of rotting food. Like any regular person, his life wasn’t just in grand ideas and unfinished apologies, but in the ordinary that suddenly was no longer there. His fridge stocked with things he once ate, would slowly decay into nothingness.
That was it. Not just the end itself, but the end of every 'what if'. We couldn't make up this lost day, we wouldn't have that first awkward walk outside of that hospital before his death. There was only this terrible finality. He'd been frozen on that bed, an image forever burned into me. This was my dad as I would always remember him now.
A memory flashed unbidden through my mind. It was that tiny flicker of joy in Dean's eyes when he learned of me. Finding his daughter at such a late stage in life had transformed him, even for just a flicker. The hope in his cracked voice when he finally agreed to get help. Those hesitant smiles during phone calls that were finally not burdened by an all-consuming sadness.
That joy slammed violently against the current reality. Dead. Alone. And beneath it all, that insidious question: was there a sliver of a chance he took this final act from fear of what lay ahead? Not of more hospitals, not even necessarily of the sadness within, but fear of losing that final glimpse of hope? What if all these weeks his mind kept returning to the person he was before it all fell apart? And I pushed him too fast, didn't let him linger in that joy long enough; that he died believing what he'd always believed - that love was simply not meant for him.
With that final thought, the dam within me finally shattered. The raw sobs racked my body, spilling a river of tears for him and for everything we never really got the chance to become. Daddy held me tighter, his usual stoic composure cracking against the tidal wave of my grief.
Through gasps, I finally confessed to the burden I'd carried. "What if he thought no one loved him? And it was the reason he..."
"Lina." His voice was gruff, choked with his own emotions, "Love doesn't cure what plagued him. He knew you loved him. I saw it on his face. But his fight was one you couldn't fight for him. It was his demons, the twisted way illness made him see the world. I’ve been through what you’re going through. I’ve asked myself all the same questions. We have that in common."
A shuddering breath went through me. "We? You never told me."
"Yeah." Daddy finally let go. With a heavy sigh, he sat close, but just far enough so I could see the weariness etched into his features. That's when he broke, when his strength gave way to his vulnerability.
"You think I haven't told myself the same thing, every damn day." he said, voice low and filled with pain, "Over and over in my head since it just happened."
"Happened?" My voice broke through my tears.
Daddy looked directly into my eyes, and I saw the truth behind his protective shield crack open. "My brother, Patrick. He didn't drive off a cliff on some accident like you might have heard at the office." His jaw clenched tight as if forcing the words. "My brother died the same way as your Dad.”
Shock slammed into me, sharper than the despair. Patrick - gone all along, not through some sudden misfortune, but the same silent battle. Maybe that's why Daddy watched me those first weeks, always ready to catch me on the verge of falling apart. It wasn't just Dean’s pain he understood. All along, as I fought for a happy ending with my lost father, I'd missed the signs of that same struggle hidden closer to home all along.
"Patrick," a choked sound echoed between us, "He loved to cook. Even burnt the kitchen when we were kids trying to make pancakes because everyone said he had magic in his hands." It felt like he was speaking aloud a half-forgotten childhood memory, but now overlaid with a chilling new context. Cooking – not as a fun escape, but as the first of many dreams of Patrick stifled.
And then, in that apartment steeped in shared and unshared grief, Hank spilled everything. Not just the sadness, but the rage buried deep beneath it.
"Dad wanted Patrick to pursue a 'practical' career instead of becoming a chef," he confessed, the bitterness a raw edge upon his words. "That being successful and respectable mattered more than the rest. Damn if Patrick wasn't the one who always followed their orders. Business school, steady job... and hated every minute of it."
And that's where the diary came in. Hank confessed to finding it at the office, a box filled with Patrick's old things gathering dust in a forgotten attic corner. Every mundane day documented, alongside scathing comments against a life of pleasing others. And something more - veiled references to a 'him' he kept secret, the longing for a kind of love Patrick apparently only felt safe enough to write about in a hidden journal.
"We never knew he was gay. How could I miss those signs? Maybe Patrick felt safer telling paper than his brother the truth about himself…" Hank went on, his normally solid voice cracking. “Anyway, when father found out, he acted just like Joe’s father did. He wanted him to bury that part of him and lead a so-called normal life. With every decision that he made, he broke Patrick piece by piece. And poor Patrick. He wanted nothing but to please our father, just like he had manipulated us into doing since we were young.”
I understood that guilt. I’d pushed dad toward hospitals, therapists, toward finding an 'after'. Had Patrick faced down his fears about their father, would it have been enough? But Hank's next words struck like a sudden blow.
"He dedicated his life to that office," his voice was low, filled with self-loathing. "Always built that business up higher than any of us imagined. Dad would brag how happy Patrick was. Turns out the guy’s dying inside all along, living a lie, and just kept working harder hoping it'd fill the hole."
I saw it as clearly as if it were a movie - the picture painted by Patrick's journal entries, the way his joy in creating food must have been slowly eroded by his need to be everything his father wanted. Every success, a tighter shackle. I thought of Patrick’s restaurant that now belonged to Hank - his outlet, his passion, something built outside the mold, and understood.
And finally, it came – the final nail in Patrick's coffin, the last straw that must have snapped him. "The restaurant," I whispered, already hearing the pain laced into those simple words.
Hank nodded grimly. "His escape plan. Few months before the end, he finally wrote in that damn diary the one thing he wasn't afraid to admit wanting. To quit it all to follow his owndamn dream. But dad called it ridiculous when Patrick discussed it with him. An unnecessary risk. Told him we’d all look like fools."
Every piece of this puzzle now fell into place. And what I was staring at wasn't just Patrick's tragic end, but a reflection of what had happened to Dean.
The words tumbled out before I could stifle them. "Daddy, I'm so sorry. What you went through with Patrick, and keeping it all bottled up... I swear, I would have listened."
A soft sigh echoed in the quiet space between us. "Back then, Little One," he answered gruffly, a rough hand coming to rest on my shoulder. "I didn't even know how to talk about it myself.” A rueful chuckle filled with bitterness escaped him. "Guess I still don't do that whole feelings thing right. I still try to fix everything and never take time to grieve properly."
DAD'S FUNERAL – A HOLLOW, STARK AFFAIR matching the empty apartment we'd cleaned of all life's leftovers just days before. Dad had few friends, the priest a stranger who'd only met him those final months. And yet, something held us there. My mom, an odd comfort alongside me, with Ron holding her gently against his shoulder. Mike and Joe stood near Hank, their expressions filled with quiet reverence for a man they never knew.
It felt surreal. Was this how closure works? In this sterile room filled with forced condolences that dad probably would've scoffed at if he knew. All of them here, not for him perhaps, but for me. And in that strange irony, his final gift wasn't the journal on my lap, his words untainted by illness scrawled across it.
Now, it was Hank whose silent hand steadied me when my knees betrayed me, his gruff mumble cut through sobs whenI drowned in them. And the demon – that insidious little devil called 'what if' - whispered about every decision. My pushing dad towards help, every word echoing against the knowledge of his struggle with the weight of a million missed yesterdays and lost tomorrows.
