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His whole face was open. Despite the rain pouring down, he didn’t flinch. He looked… lighter, happy, ten years younger than he had when he’d answered the door.
With one squeeze of my hand, he was telling me everything would be alright. I knew it would be. It was only my pride getting knocked around. Even if it didn’t feel like it wasjustmy prideright now.
So what if something ached inside my chest?
Gus was a good friend. A good man. He wouldn’t let this ruin us. He would somehow know all the right platitudes to make me understand how much he appreciated my “sweet gesture.” One day, we’d laugh at that time I got the crazy idea to propose to him just so he wouldn’t have to spend his life alone.
His eyes searched mine, looking back and forth between them at such a close distance.
Closer than we ever dared stand.
His lips parted.Here come the platitudes. Brace yourself, Dec. You had to expect this.
But with one word—his smile like a vow—the Earth shifted on its axis.
“Yes.”
Gus, the Feast of the Ascension
Dad lined up atthe tee: back straight, arms down and loose, feet parallel. After a few waggles, with his weight solidly on his back foot, his backswing looked good.
I blew out a breath and nodded. This was going to be the hole where it sailed down the green.
Mid-backstroke, his club wavered. The disappointing arc in his swing ended up tipping the ball, sending it sailing for all of fifteen yards until it sputtered out with a few anemic bounces.
“You weren’t set up right, Jim.” Father Vasili waved his hand, dismissing the stroke. “Take a mulligan.”
“No, no.” Dad walked toward the ball slowly, his breathing labored. “I’ve had enough exercise for one day. You two finish the course. I’m going to watch from the golf cart and look forward to the beer afterward.”
Dad had never been a strong driver. He played so rarely, no one would blame him. Taking a day off from the funeral home was a luxury he couldn’t afford. But golf was the one thing he said he’d always looked forward to once things eventually sloweddown.
Finally, Dad had retired, but only because he had something new consuming him.
Cancer.
And instead of enjoying retirement, and these long, relaxed walks on a golf course, both his disease and its treatments were robbing him of it.
I glanced at Father Vasili, my spiritual father, before my eyes followed my actual father lumbering to the golf cart.
Vasili shook his head. We were all done for the day.
Shoving our bags in the back of the cart, we headed for the bar. It was only ten a.m., but I’d bribed Dad to come today by promising I’d let him sneak a beer after the game.
Maybe I shouldn’t have brought him out at all.
No treatment—not the chemo, not the immunotherapy, not even the sugar-free diet Ma had inflicted upon him—seemed to make any difference in his bloodwork or scans. And now the pain had started. Pain that radiated out from his chest, seeping into his shoulders, arms, fingertips. Infusing every capillary with an ache so deep, he thought his skin would burst.
I was afraid.
I had no real intimacy with loss. Even my ninety-something-year-old grandparents were still alive and probably would be for at least another decade if their blue zone genes held strong.
I wanted to think of anything besides my dad getting worse, but thinking about worse was a funeral kid’s occupational hazard. One day, Dad would be the one in the casket in the front of the chapel. He’d be the decedent on the embalming table.
I’d officiate the service. We’d sing the Greek memorial hymns that Ma would insist on, and “Abide with Me” because that hymn had always given him a faraway look on his face whenever we played it for a client’s service.
Decca would know how to do this.
She knew death better than any of us. She knew it from all sides. Inside out. Upside down.
