Three - (Patreon)

Three *

In the mornings, my father and I could be alone. Even when you are waiting to die, there are too many hours in a day. They need to be filled. My mother and Simon went on long walks. My mother walked every day. Even here. 

My father and I read the obituaries. He read me the obituaries and he laughed about them. Got angry with them. 

"Sunday, I am counting on you to not let anyone say I died surrounded by nameless loved ones. Or that I lost my courageous battle with cancer."

"I'll tell them you won."

He laughed. I loved his laugh.

"Exactly! You tell them that. The cancer is dead. I did what needed to be done. I'm a hero."

And he did. He did what needed to be done. The cancer is dead. My father is a hero.

And when he died, I kept my promise. I wrote his obituary. I sat down with Simon. We even dressed up for the occasion. Button up shirts. Dress pants, just to sit on the floor in front of my laptop. And we wrote my father's memorial paragraph together. The few dozen words that would remember him to history. To a world of strangers. 

Simon understood. 

We used our recordings. We used our memories and our own voices. We wrote an obituary FOR our father, not about him. It was a love letter. It was a get well soon card. Wish you were here. Just got out of bed, wish you weren't dead.

This was our obituary:

"He was right. A weight has lifted. The leaves all fell. Fresh white porcupines have blanketed this whole stupid town. His cancer is dead. He doesn't have to drag his coffin around behind him everywhere he goes anymore. We don't have to drag his coffin behind us everywhere we go anymore. Our father succeeded where you failed. He did what none of you cowards had the guts to do. He threw himself on the grenade. He WAS the grenade. He did what had to be done. He cured cancer. There will be a Nobel Prize, but it will not have your name on it. Our father had a heart like napalm. He had a beautiful laugh. He was a sight for sore eyes. He is survived by everyone."

My uncle Frank took the obituary from us and said nothing. He didn't have time to look right now. Sitting at the kitchen table with his husband Jonah and our grandmother, working out funeral details. I don't think they expected us to contribute. But our father asked me.

"He asked me," I told Frank. "He wanted us to write it." 

And then, after Simon and I went to bed, they rewrote it anyway. 

They took our goodbye and replaced it with every other goodbye in every other obituary in the world. Simon wasn't in those words. I wasn't in those words. Our father wasn't there. 

Now everyone thinks he fought a long and courageous battle. That he passed peacefully, surrounded by nameless loved ones. 

Now everyone thinks the cancer won.

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