Can we just stop!

Leah sat staring into her untouched latte while her senses were slowly overwhelmed. It was the first time she'd left the apartment in the weeks since she'd been back in the city. The coffee shop smelled of roasted beans and cinnamon; its warm hum of quiet conversations and the clinking of glass cups provided what would normally be a soothing scene, but it was just too much for her. She sat across from her best friend, Zoe, seeing her lips moving but not hearing her. The steam swirled upward from her cup, dissipating before reaching her face.

Zoe stirred her cappuccino with unnecessary vigor, her nervous energy evident in the far too-wide smile plastered across her face. 

"So," Zoe began, her voice bright, "How are you doing? Really doing?"

She never knew what to say in those moments when people asked. On the one hand, she was grateful for the acknowledgment that she was going through the loss of her father. Then, on the other hand, it felt like such a stupid question: How am I doing? Not great, babe. But people don't want the honest dialogue in your head; they want the boxed and bowed, pretty answer so they can move on to other topics or act like they are helping you move through the grieving process. Of course, they care, and it comes from a good place, but Jesus, no one wants the honest answer, and no one wants to sit there in the grief with her, so why ask?

Leah's lips twitched into something that might have been a smile if her heart weren't weighed down by the excruciating ache of loss. 

Instead, it came off as a smirk: "Day by day, they say. I'm… managing," she said, her voice soft and distant.

Zoe nodded quickly, her relief palpable. "That's good. That's really good. You know, when my childhood cat, Samson, died, I was a mess for weeks. It's amazing how much they mean to us, isn't it? Pets are like family."

Leah blinked, her head tilting slightly. She wanted to appreciate the sentiment; she knew it came from a good place, but it felt like trying to catch smoke with her hands. Her father was gone, and Zoe compared it to losing a cat, an animal, not the head of a family.

The smells of the coffee shop felt too sharp, the burnt tang of espresso and the cloying sweetness of pastries mixed into a heady scent that made her nauseous. The chatter of strangers felt invasive, like static in her brain. Each voice was just slightly too high, deep, or loud. Zoe's voice droned on, some anecdote about Samson that Leah couldn't follow. The words blurred, the edges of her vision going black, her chest tightening. Someone dropped a glass, making her jerk and knocking her own coffee on the floor.

"I'm sorry," Leah muttered abruptly, rising from her chair. Her legs felt unsteady, but she grabbed her coat and bag in one swift motion. "I… I have to go."

Zoe's eyes widened. "Oh, hun, I didn't mean to…"

"It's fine, I'm sorry. I'll text you later." Leah interrupted, though her voice cracked under the strain. She turned and pushed through the door, the brutal winter air outside hitting her face like a slap.

She walked without direction, her feet carrying her to Central Park, a few blocks away. The world moved around her, indifferent to her grief. Cars honked, people laughed, dogs barked. It was maddening, the way life just kept going.

"Can we all just take a fucking minute?" she muttered under her breath as she found an empty bench and collapsed onto it. Her fists clenched at her sides. "My dad is dead." Her breath came in heavy pants. "Can we… can we just stop?" She screamed.

The world got quiet. The world had stopped.

The cars froze mid-motion, and a pigeon suspended in the air above her suspended as if pinned to the sky. The wind halted, and the leaves hung motionless in the trees. It was silent, utterly and completely silent. Leah stared, her breath caught in her throat. The sudden stillness wasn't comforting. It was eerie and disorienting. Had she passed out? Was this a panic attack?

And then she heard it, a voice, low and familiar. "Hey, kids."

Her head whipped around, but there was no one there. Yet the voice came again, softer this time. "You're not done yet. Come on."

She stood, her feet moving of their own accord. As she walked through the frozen park, memories rose around her like living pictures. She was eight again, running barefoot through the grass of her old backyard, her father's laughter echoing as he called out clues for her and her baby brother for the Easter egg hunt.

"I remember this…" Leah said, continuing to walk.

The scene shifted, and she was older. She was sitting at the kitchen table as he guided her hand with a pencil, showing her how to sound out words and write them for her invitations to her 12th birthday party.

"That's right, it sounds like PHEE-NIX, but there's that silent O in Phoenix," he'd said, his voice full of quiet pride.

She kept walking, and the memories kept coming. She was back in Ireland, standing on a grassy knoll with her mom and brother on either side as the wind howled around them. They'd just had a family fight, where they all said horrible things to each other. Her father's hand steadied the camera to take a picture in front of the Blarney Stone castle. 

"Act like you like each other," he'd said. The warmth of the moment clashed with the sharp edges of their arguments. Her and her father's voices were raised earlier at one another, both too stubborn to back down. She remembered the spot where this forced picture still hangs in her familial home.

She felt the weight of his arm around her shoulders, and tears silently ran down her face as they watched the ending of Across the Universe. His quiet acknowledgment of the distance that separated her from her long-distance boyfriend.

And then, the harder memories. The day he taught her and David poker while pale and shaking from his Hep C treatments. They sat on the ground with the curtains drawn; he couldn't be in sunlight, which is hard to do in Phoenix. His hands trembled, but his voice was steady as he shuffled the deck. 

"Poker's not just a game," he'd said. "It's about reading people, understanding what they're not saying."

The night her brother died loomed large. Even this playing of the memory felt like it was done in reverence. She hadn't been there; she was in Boston for graduate school, but she could hear him in the background on the phone when her mother called to tell her what had happened. She heard her father's cries, guttural and broken, the sound of a man who had lost a piece of his soul. 

She saw herself giving him a gift to honor her brother's memory one Christmas, the way her father's eyes filled with tears as he said, "I wish I was dead. Nothing is keeping me here." She remembered running to her room in confused rage and hurt. 

Her steps faltered, but she kept moving. She relived his final days, cleaning him up when he couldn't make it to the bathroom, cooking and feeding him his favorite foods, and opening the windows in the house so he could feel the breeze one last time as he gasped for those final breaths.

Even when the cancer had overtaken his brain, she remembers the soft "I love you too," he'd said back, his voice slurred but sure. It was the last thing he ever said to her. 

She was back at the bench, her legs folding beneath her as she fell into the seat. The moment she took a steadying breath, the world started again. The pigeon flew, the leaves rustled, and the cars honked. The park was alive with sound and motion as if nothing had happened.

Leah sat on the bench, the park's sounds blending into a dull buzz. Instead of being confused about this gift she'd just received, she openly wept.

Her father had been the most muscular man she'd ever known until he wasn't.

But he had loved her, and she had loved him, and that love didn't disappear, even if he was gone, even with the complex feelings and emotions surrounding their imperfect relationship.

The world kept moving, and this had to be enough for now. That she remembered.