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Though Kazu and Cindy is still a match made in a romcom if I ever saw one.
Once I pull a Brumehill Black Bears hoodie down over my head, I see that Summer’s attention is directed at the picture on my desk.
“I never noticed this before,” she says, her eyes glued to it. I sidle next to her.
“Hm,” I hum thoughtfully. “It’s my favorite picture. Hell, my favorite thing I own.”
“Your mom?” Summer asks.
“Yeah,” I say warmly.
“She’s so beautiful.”
I nod, humming an acknowledgement. I grab the picture frame and hold it up.
It’s me, when I must have been four years old, with my mom. She’s holding me up to look at a bird perched on a low-hanging tree branch. It’s early Spring, and light-colored leaves skimpily adorn the forest background. Both me and my mom have the biggest smiles on our faces.
Something tugs in my chest as my gaze settles on her. Summer’s right, she was beautiful. Her chestnut brown hair has big, looping curls that fan out around her head.
My dad took this picture. I wonder if he was smiling, too, like we were. He probably was, though it’s hard to picture that now. I can’t remember the last time I saw my dad smile.
“Your dad took the picture?” Summer asks, the subject of my thoughts suddenly jumping into reality.
I hum another sound of acknowledgement, but this time there’s a more unpleasant edge to my voice. One Summer can’t help but take notice of.
“Do you have more pictures of your mom?” Summer follows up after I remain silent for a beat.
I nod. “Yeah. Have a bunch in some boxes in my closet. This is the one I always put up, though, wherever I am.”
“There must be a lot of pictures of your mom back at your house.” Summer says it like a statement, but I can read the question in her words. A question there’s a sad answer to.
“No.”
Summer takes her eyes off the picture in my hands and turns her head to me.
“Not one,” I continue. Resentment swells inside me. Then, in a low voice, I add a thought that’s gnawed at me bitterly for years. “It’s like he doesn’t even care.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Summer says, sympathetically.
Do I really think it’s true, myself? Not really. I remember my dad when Mom was around. They were in love. They were happy together.
I remember, just days after she passed, seeing my Dad in the spare bedroom that he used as an office, when he thought he was alone; seeing something I’ve never seen before or since: his eyes red from tears, his breathing uneasy as he battled sobs.
I remember wishing he would stop fighting those sobs. That he’d let them out. Let the tears out. Then I could join him, and we’d cry together, sharing our loss. I didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling at the time myself. I just saw my dad bottle it up, try to be strong and stoic, and I took his lead. I didn’t know what else to do.
I just remember wishing I could cry with my dad, talk about how we were feeling, then maybe we’d be able to share memories of her with smiles on our faces, rather than avoid any conversation about the loss—but that’s what happened. We avoided conversation about my mom. That’s what we still do, eleven years later.
“Do you ever talk to him about her?” Summer asks.
I shake my head. “I learned not to.” Whenever I tried to bring her up in the years after her passing, my dad would change the subject as soon as he could. Of course, there was always something close at hand for him to shift our conversation towards: hockey.
You need to think more about the future than the past, I remember him saying years ago when I tried to bring up the memory of a family camping trip we took when I was eight, because the way you played against St. Sylvan Prep last night isn’t going to impress any talent scouts.
I’d let one puck into the net in a game that saw us winning 4-1.
“Everyone grieves differently,” Summer says. “Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing at the time. Trying to be strong for you.”
A long sigh swooshes out of my nose. All I know is my dad doesn’t keep anything of Mom’s around. No pictures. No trinkets. He doesn’t talk about her. For all I know, he doesn’t even think about her anymore.
