It started with my leg hair. I was bent like a contortionist inspecting the stubble on my calves. It was incessantly itchy. The hair fought valiantly against the confines of my skin, leaving an array of tiny red bumps in its wake. I was consumed by the irritable red bumps as the hair follicles beneath screamed and tormented me. I desperately began scratching to appease them, running my fingers over the inflamed area. 

Then the bed vibrated. 

Bzzz. 

Then the bed vibrated again. 

Bzzz.

 I abandoned my leg hair and picked up my phone. A missed call and two messages from my mom flashed across the shattered screen: "Are you sitting down?" followed by "Are you alone?". I know, crazy, but this does actually happen outside of the movies. I wasn't sitting because why would I be? It was late, and I was alone, but that didn't mean I wasn't preoccupied. I was busy investigating the scruff on my legs and prepping for an Art History class I would barely remember. My stomach twisted into knots, and my heart started cramping as I sifted through all the horrible things my mother could be calling me about. Paranoia had me in her clutches; she was running rampant, terrorizing all of my other thoughts with images I'd only seen in nightmares. She began feeding me thoughts about my grandmother being dead, my perceived worst-case scenario at the time. My mind was ultimately at her mercy as she crushed my body with her cruel fist. 

I needed answers, so I called my mom. The phone rang only once. My mother's voice was mellow, her tone hesitant as she spoke, "honey, your dad passed away." The news hung thick in the air around me, sticking to my every thought. This new reality coated my mind like hot boiling tar on a summer day, spreading and sticking until my entire skull was covered. I was paralyzed as I gazed at my defunct form in the floor-length mirror that hung from the back of my bedroom door, unable to make out my reflection through the glaze over my eyes. A new genre of debilitating daddy issues had been unlocked, and I wasn't (still am not) ready to face them. 

On the last day of my father's life, he visited his local Taco Bell and purchased his final meal, the last supper, so to speak. He was known for his soft spot for "Mexican Food," so this was no surprise. This knowledge wouldn't surface until a couple of months posthumously when I reluctantly played adult at the bank.

As the oldest, I was responsible for handling my fathers' affairs. Contacting J.P. Morgan's Estate Services to terminate his account was the task at hand. The fluorescent lighting that infected the stuffy bank lobby caused a pounding headache to swell across my temples. I remember methodically massaging as the swelling worsened as I continued to roast under the blazing lights. I was also sweating profusely, subsequently drenching my fancy new blouse and crisp slacks. All I could focus on in that Chase bank was how the chair kept getting damper by the minute. It was as if my ass was a slip n slide. Swamp ass always seems to strike when you're at your lowest point. This was already an excruciating experience, and now it's embarrassing too? I couldn't catch a fucking break. To make matters worse, I became acutely aware of my monstrous pit stains just as the devastatingly handsome bank teller handed me an incriminating piece of paper. An itemized list of my father's final transactions was suddenly at my fingertips. In my shocked state, my eyes glossed over the thousand-dollar transfer that occurred three days post-mortem and instead transfixed on a charge for $12.25.

On August 27th, 2020, my father's 2002 Chevrolet Silverado halted before the run-down Taco Bell intercom. It is safe to assume he was listening to his favorite Arizona talk radio, KFYI "The Valley's Talk Station," as he pulled up. The hot air may have assaulted his features, causing sweat to trickle across the small scar on his brow as he painstakingly cranked his window down. I imagine this was promptly followed by an underpaid high school student mumbling through the busted machine.

After countless agonizing calls to Taco Bell customer service and some mighty impressive investigative work, I learned three things: 
 

1. If you want people to listen, trauma dump. 

2. Taco Bell should stick with food service. 

3. My father's last meal was two Doritos Locos Taco Supremes and a small soda.
    

My father wore many hats. He was a Doomsday prepper, alcoholic, charmer, comic book fanatic, as well as gun connoisseur, and film buff, but most importantly, he was an excellent cook. This small detail, paired with what I learned about his last meal, angered me for whatever reason. It wasn't fair that someone who could make such a mouthwatering shepherd's pie unknowingly had Taco Bell as his last meal. With time, I've been able to reframe this detail as beautifully ironic rather than sad because I know that's how he would see it too.

Back in my room, the rest of the conversation was a blur; almost nothing my mom said would stick; everything went out as quickly as it came in. I remember the phone was wet against my face; I could feel the mascara melting down my cheeks. My hands trembled as the words, "honey, your dad passed away," flooded my mind, suspending my brain in a state of shock and despair. The only other thing I remember my mom saying was how he died. 

Even now, the story of my father's untimely death continues to change thanks to his nightmare of a girlfriend, Diane. When analyzing her account of these events, it is useful to note that she was the mastermind behind the mysterious thousand-dollar transfer I glossed over when closing out my father's bank account. To put it simply, she is not to be trusted. According to one of her many versions of the story, my father was swamped with home improvement tasks, and on that day, he was painting the kitchen cabinets a stunning shade of moonlight white. 

My mothers' voice lowered as she explained this next part. I remember feeling dizzy and must have sat on the floor in an attempt to ground myself. I sat with my knees hugged to my chest and tried to listen as my tears soaked into my socks, the absorbent fabric becoming increasingly harder to ignore as it dampened. I could feel the fabric absorb each tear as she spoke. According to Diane, he stepped off the step ladder, nonchalantly said, "I'm not feeling too good," and headed down the hallway. This is a known fact. My father's last words were, "I'm not feeling too good." Definitely, one of the stranger details, mostly because this is such an anti-climatic way to go out. This is not what I imagined a fifty-year-old man would say, let alone my father. When I think of this phrase, my father's last words, all I hear is one of the five-year-old boys at my job saying it mere seconds before vomiting into his hands. Nothing poetic. No words of wisdom. No apologies. Not even a wisecrack. Just, "I'm not feeling too good." As funny as it seems, it's these words that would haunt me the most. They somehow perfectly encapsulate my feelings about this entire situation. I'm not feeling too good either, dad.

This next part is where the story starts to get muddled. From my understanding, this is how it went down: Diane found my father unresponsive and blue in the face, his lifeless body dangling off the edge of the bed. There was a laundry basket on the floor next to him and a pile of folded towels crushed underneath him. He had just fallen over and died at 50 years old, coincidently the same age as his father. A month later, she said she found him slumped on the couch, and most recently after the money scandal came to light, she "remembered" that he actually went to the bathroom before heading into the bedroom. Honestly, it doesn't really matter how she found him because at the end of the day, he was dead. There was no sugarcoating it. This was the end of him; this was permanent; he had lived his last day. 

The official cause of death was Hemopericardium, brought on by Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease. In layman's terms, his heart stopped. As cliche as it sounds, so did mine; a part of myself died when I picked up that phone. But really, it was his lifestyle that killed him. It was 37 years of plastic vodka bottles and chain-smoking seemingly endless cartons of cigarettes, two habits of my own I'm grateful I've kicked. Of course, as a child, it’s expected that you will live long enough to see your parents die. What they don't tell you is that sometimes, parents die with unfinished business. My father's life was far from over, and I had lived my life believing I had so much more time with him. I still thought I had all the time in the world to mess things up and put them back together. Nobody prepares you to lose a parent when you're still young or how to deal with it at inconvenient times, like in the middle of prepping for an art history class. Also, fuck whoever decided a parent's death is simply an unavoidable event we must accept and move on from. I never expected to be 23 years old and need chair work. Laugh all you want, but my next therapy session will consist of myself, my lovely therapist Allison, and three chairs. Spoiler alert: one is for my dad. 

That night I sat on my bedroom floor silently for a while, catatonic and thoughtless. I felt like a shell of who I had been hours before, and all I could do was sit there as my perspective on life completely shifted. I was a prisoner in my own head, every involuntary bodily function roaring in my ears as I allowed grief to curl up in my lap and make itself at home. The pounding of my heart was so intense it shook my whole body with each incessant beat. I must have called my boyfriend at some point because the next thing I remember was the street lights whirling and rushing past me as I sat in the passenger seat of his tiny truck. I don't remember much from the drive, just that I was frozen against the matted cloth seat—every thought I had somehow brought me back to the topic of my father. The flickering street lights made me think about how epilepsy ruled his life ever since he was small. 

Small, I was small that night and have felt small ever since. I shrank and shrank and shrank, grief rearing its ugly head and stomping on me like a household cockroach. I was a cockroach in the laundry, crushed beneath the weight of my father's death. I carry the weight of his death on my back each day, my shoulders gradually caving in as time passes. The weight grows heavier when I'm reminded he's no longer here to discuss the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker with me or debate how Batman is actually a vigilante, not a superhero. I would give anything to hear him go on and on about his rock fascination, to hear him laugh so hard he cries after that one part in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels where Steve Martin's character pisses his pants at the dinner table, what I wouldn't give to hear him call me his clever girl one more time. This weight was much too heavy for someone so small.  

I snapped back to reality at the sound of a crinkling bag. My eyes shot up from the floor and locked with my boyfriend's. He looked at me like I was a skittish animal that would bolt if he approached too fast. He reached for my hand, and I must have instinctively pulled away because the next time I snapped out of my daze, his hand was compassionately caressing my thigh as we continued to sit in silence. At this point, I began to convince myself that it wouldn't be real if I didn't tell anyone he had died. If I could hide the pain and sadness, it would be just another memory that would fade with time. If I kept it to myself, nobody else would have to carry this impossible weight on their shoulders. I wanted to suffer in silence because sharing that suffering was an alternative I couldn't bear. That level of vulnerability was unheard of to me, and I was not about to face that beast when I was dealing with much more pressing matters. This led to me doing what the Smiths do best: repress, repress, repress. If I could appear stable on the outside, I could get by. 

I then began to wonder how many more phone calls of that nature would I have to live through. Where will I be when I get the call that my grandmother died and I wasn't there? Will I be sitting down when I get the call my mother died? Will I be alone when the call about my sister comes? In an act of compliance, per my therapist's request, I will admit that these thoughts continue to dominate my life to this day. Despite this, I've lived so many days. We Smiths are resilient like cockroaches -- we continue running long after we've had our heads cut off. A resourceful, resilient creature is what I've become.

To make a long story short, the drive was quiet in terms of talking but loud in terms of thoughts. Next thing I knew, I was criss-cross applesauce in the center of my boyfriend's California King mattress attempting to choke down a few measly bites of the contents of that aforementioned bag. As I sobbed into my dinner, my dad's salt and pepper goatee flashed across my mind. His icy blue eyes beckoned me to spill my guts, which I did after a painfully long pause. After I managed to utter the impossible phrase, "my dad died," my boyfriend was silent for a moment and slowly began raising his hand. Still in shock, I numbly raised mine to meet his, our hands thundering above our heads to create the world's most empty, hopeless high-five ever. "Dead dad club," is what he said as our hands smacked. He chuckled, and I cried. That night I went to bed as my dad's clever girl: with a head full of tar, itchy legs, a cockroach mindset, and a stomach full of Taco Bell. A Doritos Locos Taco supreme, to be exact.

It killed him. Would it kill me?