My New Dad

I had been putting it off for a while now. I had received a pink card from the post office weeks ago from an agency I never heard of. I knew what it was. I knew who it was. They didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, but we shared a package in common.

It was a call on January 6th. Just another Wednesday in the burning circus my life had become. I woke up to see my phone with 13 missed calls. Numbers I didn’t recognize. I don’t have that many creditors. I called the last number first. I gave them my name. Two minutes later I was transferred from hold to young man.

A doctor, younger than I was at thirty two years old, got on the line. “I’m sorry, Mr. vown Bruin? Vun Brown?”

I managed, “Erik is fine,” as my envy of his success yielded to anger over the mispronunciation of my name.

“I’m sorry Erik, but I regret to inform you your father died today of heart failure. Papers will be mailed to you shortly regarding the remains. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No thank you.”

I didn’t cry.

My father’s attorney called to ask if I was okay. After he successfully pulled off a miracle by getting me the permission to visit my dad, and I had disappointed him by turning around halfway to the hospital where my father was being treated, even he took the time to check on me.

I didn’t cry.

To my great surprise, the prosecuting attorney, who was justifiably advocating the death penalty for my father, called and asked how I was “holding up.”

I didn’t cry.

I called my mom. Told her the news. She began to ask if I was okay. Before she could even finish the question I promptly told her I was fine and had to make some arrangements and hung up before she could begin any kind of her usual passive aggressive questioning or patronizing pity.

I still didn’t cry.

The papers came days later. I signed them without really reading them. I tried to, but I couldn’t understand them. Maybe I didn’t want to. Regardless, whoever prepared them went to the trouble of placing colorful arrow stickers where I was required to sign, so I obliged. I mailed them back, stamp upside down.

Then the notices came. The first notice I discarded without a thought. I didn’t even realize it was the first notice until the second notice was unceremoniously folded into the handle of my front door. I threw that one away with the credit statements I couldn’t pay. When the third notice came, declaring failure to claim the package would result in its forfeit, it was more the thought of getting frustrated over receiving another pink card carrying a threat in bold caps than the loss of the package that compelled me to finally head to the post office. I suppose those notices do get the job done, eventually.

I carried my postcard sized pink threat to the local post office, which served as a tax agency in the community I was currently residing. It was next to a pizzeria and a liquor store. A Hindu behind the desk eyed me nervously as I was the only white person out of the twenty people in line. Surely I was there to cause trouble. The irony made me laugh out loud. I knew it would make my dad laugh too, so I stopped laughing. I could feel the energy of everyone else was now aligned with the nervous Hindu lady working behind the counter.

Fifteen minutes later I presented the card and the young woman let out an audible gasp as she struggled to lift the surprisingly heavy package. It was a foot long, maybe six inches wide, and weighed at least twenty pounds. I smiled and signed my name, hoping in vain this particular signature would provide some catharsis, or the reverberations of the past year would dry up as quickly as the ink.

I placed my father in the back seat of my car. On top of his will. I was supposed to fax his will to the lead FBI investigator on my father’s case, but I didn’t have the money. Which also happened to be the only reason I passed the liquor store in the plaza. My new dad remained in the back seat of my car. In a cardboard package. On top of his will.

The man who fought in World War II, killed numerous Nazi’s and saved one. Watched and read about his fraternity brothers being slaughtered. The man who would play a Wagner album and cry when he remembered the siren of the Nazi Stutka bombers sweeping down on his ship during pitch black nights. Who, with similar tears give me a rare hug on Memorial day. The man who looked down on me for not believing in his conspiracies and physically and psychologically abusing me. The man who lived more in five years than I had in thirty two. The man who never figured out how to be a father, but damn sure knew how to be a man. He remained in a cardboard box in the back of a Honda Civic for months. No flag presented. No funeral service. Nothing but hate to follow him to an afterlife by people who have already forgotten who he was.

And now I cry.