12

My father was the one who taught me how to be tough. When I was in elementary school, some of the boys called my father names because he was defending a man accused of killing his wife and children. My father argued the insanity plea—his client believed that the gods required a blood sacrifice—and my mother provided the psychiatric testimony. I got in a fight at school, and my parents found out about it.

That night, my mother lectured me on why violence was never the answer. She grounded me and sent me to my room while my father stood by silently. Later, as I was stewing about being punished for defending my parents, my dad came in and sat down on my bed.

“Did you win?” he asked, his voice a conspiratorial whisper.

“Yes.”

“Good. Tell me about it.”

After I got done describing the fight and getting some pointers about the next one, he kissed me on the forehead and got up to leave. “For the record,” he said, “I’m opposed to fighting too. But I do know this—if you’re going to fight, you’d better get in the first blow, and you’d better make it a good one. And, Jamie . . .”

He waited, commanding my full attention.

“If you get the other guy down, don’t let him up.”

Maybe that’s why it was so hard to take my father off life support. He was a fighter. I just knew I would come to the hospital and there would be a twitch in the arms, a blinking of the eyes, my father slowly but surely getting up off the canvas one last time. You could never count him out.

But after Antoine Marshall received his stay, I realized it was time to let Chris pull the plug. Even before Friday’s disappointment, I had worked through the phase of grief that denies reality. I wasn’t yet ready for my dad to die, but I knew I never would be. I had finally accepted the fact that he was never coming back.

By the time I got to the hospital on Saturday morning, I had cried so much that I felt like I didn’t have any tears left. I was already weak from the grief of knowing what we had to do, as if somebody had squeezed all the energy and joy out of my heart. I met Chris and Amanda in the lobby, and we made our way to Dad’s room, where we met with Dr. Guptara and a few nurses. We asked for some time alone.

I entered the room without using the hand sanitizer and stood on one side of the hospital bed while Chris and Amanda stood on the other. Holding Amanda’s hand, Chris told my father how much he loved him.

“I’ll miss just picking up the phone and hearing his voice,” Chris said to Amanda and me. “I’ll miss watching him get down on the floor to play with the girls.”

He wiped his eyes and placed a hand on Dad’s forehead. Tears rolled down his cheek as he closed his eyes and thanked God for giving us such a wonderful father. “I don’t know what I did to deserve a father like you,” he said to Dad after finishing the prayer. “And you deserve better than this.” He paused and swallowed hard. “Give Mom a hug for me when you see her.”

All day long, I had been thinking about what I might say to my dad during these last few moments with him. But now it all seemed so pointless. The tears had welled up in my eyes as I listened to Chris, and now sorrow choked my words.

I knew that the last words my dad had truly heard me say were the ones I’d said on the way out the door the morning of his second stroke. Because his first stroke had impacted his short-term memory, I had made a habit of writing things down so he could remember them. On the morning of his second stroke, I had reminded him to bring the trash can in after the city trucks came by. “Don’t forget to take Justice for a walk. I’ll probably be working late tonight, so don’t worry if I’m not home for dinner.”

There was no hug. No I love you. My dad was already in his study, pretending to be hard at work.

“See you later,” I’d said. “Have a good day.”

And now, as we stood at his bed one last time, it seemed futile to try to make up for that. I wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand and looked at Chris. “I can’t say anything.”

Chris nodded. “It’s okay. We’ll see him again one day. You can tell him everything then.”

I leaned down and kissed my dad on the cheek, my fresh tears wetting his face. The nurses shaved him every day, but I could still feel the stubble from his beard. When I was little, he would wrestle with Chris and me and sometimes pin us down and tickle us or rub that stubble gently against our cheeks.

The thought of it made my heart hurt. We hadn’t been a picture-perfect family, but we were doing our best until Antoine Marshall came along and blew it all away. I straightened and held my fist over my mouth, trying to hold it together. I sniffed and nodded at Chris.

I don’t remember him going out to get Dr. Guptara, but I remember the doctor taking my spot next to the bed, scribbling on his chart, telling us that this was the best thing for my dad, and unhooking the life-support machines.

When Dad passed, I was standing near the foot of his bed, watching the monitors. It was amazing to see how quickly and quietly my dad’s heart stopped beating. A wave of grief and guilt washed over me as the finality of it sank in—we had just taken away all hope of a miraculous recovery. My knees buckled, and the room started spinning.

Chris came over and gave me a long hug. Neither of us spoke. Eventually I moved back to the bed and gave my dad one last kiss on the forehead.

Numb, I filled out the paperwork and assured Chris and Amanda that I would be all right.

I don’t remember the drive home. I felt dead myself, as if someone had taken over my body and forced me to go through the motions of life while I floated outside myself in a pool of grief and despair. At home, Justice sensed immediately that something was wrong and tried his best to console me. He found a toy and nudged it against my leg—Wanna play? When I refused, he lay down next to me, placing his head gently on my feet, occasionally glancing up at me to see if I was okay.

After a few hours, I put on my dry-wick running clothes and took Justice on a long run. I worked the hills hard until it felt like my lungs might explode. The pain helped dull some of the sorrow. When I finally arrived home, exhausted to the core, I sat on the steps of the front porch for a long time, my head down and Justice lying next to me. I remembered the good times with my dad, and the tears began to flow again, forming a little puddle between my feet. This time, I did nothing to stop them.

After I showered, I put on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and one of my dad’s sweatshirts, then curled up on the couch. I had agreed to meet Chris at the funeral home at five. We had a memorial service to plan and burial details to discuss and an obituary to write, but I also knew that everything would get done with or without me.

The house seemed more lifeless than ever, and I struggled with the thought of having to clean out my dad’s stuff and put the house on the market.

“It was his time,” Chris had said at the hospital. “But nobody can take the memories.”

On that point, Chris was right. So I went into my dad’s study and pulled out the book that he had read to me as a little girl. I snuggled with it on the couch, and Justice looked up at me with pleading eyes. I patted the cushion beside me, and he jumped up and curled next to my legs.

For the next two hours, I was my daddy’s girl again. He was Aslan, and I was Lucy, and whenever he would try to put the book down and tell me it was time to go to bed, I would beg him to read just one more chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.