Friday, march 10th… My dad gave me the money to pay my college tuition…
Saturday, march 11th... Woke up at 2 in the afternoon, worked from 4 to 8 and got drunk with friends.
Sunday, march 12th... Woke up at 2 in the afternoon, went to work but didn’t work, talked about women and school, picked up some things in the supermarket, went home at 8PM for dinner with family.
Monday, march 13th, 2 AM. The phone rang, it was the police… “It appears that your father committed suicide”.
This is where my story truly begins, at the end.
The guilt of wasted time teaches much. In a moment such as the one I search words to describe, not much can be said, for, before it happens, is unimaginable, and after, indescribable.
I hung up the phone, there was lots of screaming in the house. My brother was sleeping, my mother was awake, we all ran out of the house, jumped in my car… I drove to the beach, half a mile away…
It’s a beautiful place, a fishing community… One of the oldest parts of town…
The water is calm and warm, the sand a bit thick… From here the view is breath taking… One can see all of downtown, the old bridge, mountains… at night, city lights, in the day, sailing boats encored, the sea…
This is a place of tourism, excellent restaurants, tranquility… a romantic place.
Dad was on his back, his shirt open…
He spent all night out thinking, by the pool, he seemed stressed about the treatment, as we thought, that he was supposed to start on Monday.
I was watching a DVD… He came in, made me pause it, asked me about the collateral effects of interferon in one’s body… Mom had given us a book to study a few months earlier, so to prepare us for the changes that were about to take place with our father… So, promptly, I listed: memory loss, confusion, hair loss, gastric-intestinal complications, impotence, general pains, anemia, etc… He stopped me, and asked: “Angel, how do you think I will be able to continue giving the life you are accustomed to without my job while on this drug?”
This was his reason, his message… I told him that we would find a way, told him to not worry…
He walked away, went upstairs to sleep, I presumed, grabbed his colt 38 and silently left the house…
At the beach the police awaited us, as if a TV show was about to start… He was all wet, his eyes closed and filled with blood, my mom fainted. I couldn’t get close at first, but then, for a second, I looked at his chest and it was moving, he was breathing! I ran and kneeled beside him, all that blood, I didn’t want to touch him, almost as if someone was holding me back… Yet, I was certain, even at less then 2 feet away, that his chest was really moving, I had to be sure it wasn’t a hallucination… I placed my hand above his mouth, it was wide open, filled with blood, his jaw had been dislocated from the impact of the shot, so I put my ear to his nose, nothing… Then it came to me: “his chest, touch it”… His skin was cold and rubbery, the sand under his head was crimson… Now I was sure… I wanted to kiss him… I can’t remember if I did…
Some how I didn’t cry right away… I walked around some, talked to the police, made a phone call to my aunt… It was like I was on auto-pilot.
2:45 AM. They had just covered the body… The van from the morgue arrived… he was taken away…
My mom was somewhat awake… My aunt, uncle and 2 cousins arrived right before 3…
I helped my aunt and cousin take my mom home, while my brother, uncle and other cousin went downtown to square things with the police and with the morgue.
The first thing I felt was pain… Allover my body, everything hurt, like I had been in a street fight alone against a dozen people… I could barely walk… The second thing was the complete lack of tiredness… It seemed like a dream, a nightmare without a feeling of danger.
Time stood still, the hours passed, the sun came up but it made no difference, like it didn’t exist… night, day, minutes, hours… all the same…
I don’t know if your life really flashes before your eyes when you die, but it certainly did that day before mine… I don’t know… Some new mechanism was created in me after that moment… It’s a constant thinking, it takes away your ability to sleep, eat… You just think endlessly…
Memories, imaginations, it’s like a movie, a very long movie, some of it real, some of it fiction…
I must have tried to save him a thousand times in my dreams the few nights I slept, always without success.
It was amazing to discover how many friends I had… In the early morning there were about 20 people at my house… It happened so fast, one phone call to a friend was enough, people gave me backrubs, made me stuff to eat, even laid down in bed with me and tried to help me sleep some… Everybody I knew was at the cemetery… In 17 hours he was under… Just like that… 57 years of life ended in a split second, and disappeared in 17 hours…
