PB&J in the early a.m.

Dear Diary,

it's 2:59 and I miss my dad and the rain won't stop. Why won't it stop?

I can hear it, drumming on the roof, like hundreds of wet fingers at once. I can smell it, too, the soaked asphalt outside, the drenched grass, something soothing and gentle, something that reminds me of being a little kid, even though I'm not anymore and I have pimples the size craters marring my forehead and I'm graduating high school this year.

It's funny how smells can take you somewhere else - somewhere kind, soft, a place where your dad picks you up and throws you over his shoulder, a place where the rain trickles down the nape of your neck, just along the patch of skin that isn't protected by your bright yellow coat, but you don't care, because your dad is there and the rain doesn't feel so cold if there's laughter warming you up from the inside out - and honestly, I should be sleeping - I should be sleeping underneath the the covers, a very deep sleep, the kind of sleep that sanitizes your mind and clears out your head - so you can take on anything the next day. And yes, dear diary, I know I shouldn't be up, I shouldn't be thinking about the rain or the grass or yellow raincoats - or my dad.

The reason I'm sitting here, with the window eased open a crack, letting the moisture seep in and fill up my room like a bathtub, the reason my hand is cramped from writing right now, and my back aches from hunching over my desk, is that tomorrow is the funeral, and I can't sleep.

It's been two weeks now. Two weeks of school assemblies and white roses and weak-lipped smiles that are supposed to be understanding, but aren't, because nobody could ever understand that my dad was more than a neighbor or a friend or even a father.

He was more than that. He was somebody who could make me laugh hard enough to keep me warm on rainy days, when the nape of my neck was getting cold and wet. And maybe that sounds stupid, but it's true.

He'd make me laugh now, as I'm sitting here, in the early a.m., moisture leaking in through the open window, reminding me of him.

Maybe I should just get up and move around for a while, maybe sitting here and wearing out my right hand is the wrong choice, maybe if I go downstairs to the kitchen and quietly make myself a sandwich in the pale electric lights, I'll feel better, feel less like somebody who's not real, at least. Peanut-butter and jelly, maybe? Whole wheat, for the nutrients, my mom would recommend, don't spread the jelly too thick, it's full of sugar.

But my dad would smile and roll his eyes and get out the soft, fluffy bread, the one I like, the color of cream almost.

You know what, I wouldn't mind a PB&J right now. Nobody hears the sound of barefoot footsteps over carpet, then tile kitchen floor at, what time is it now, 3:05? Right?

Unless mom is up again. I saw her the other night. I'm not the only one who can't sleep in this house, maybe because it feels like it's too big for the both of us now, maybe we're both just too lonely to even sleep. It was late, and I had headed to the bathroom to pee, when I heard the rustle of papers from the living room, and then my bleary eyes noticed the light slanting across the carpet through the open door. I remember moving closer, still in that weird trance you're in when you're awake, but not quite, and you don't know if you're still in a dream or if this is real life, and I peered in to sneak a glance at the living room.

And there was mom, her rhinestone-studded glasses sliding to the very tip of her nose, cross-legged in her favorite armchair, sitting like she never sits, like a little girl doing her homework, a frown deepening the lines on her forehead. She dyes her hair blond, but I could see the dark roots emerging on her scalp. The coffee table was snowed in with papers, all business-y, lots of fine print. Dad's stuff. Debts. Bills. Unpayed.

I love my dad.

But I don't love what he left behind.

I watched her rearrange the papers for a while, then huff in defeat and cup her face in her hands.

Maybe I should have gone and comforted her, told her it was gonna be okay, but honestly, how could I, when I knew I would have started crying, and God, I am so sick of crying, and I know she is, too. That's one thing we can both agree on, mom and I. In that way, we're so alike. Crying does not solve problems - yeah, it can be healing, and of course we cried, heck, I'll cry buckets at the funeral tomorrow, or should I say in five hours and twenty-two minutes - but what I'm trying to say is I knew that night, with my mother curled up in her armchair, I should just pee and go to bed, and not make a midnight mourning session out of it. We'd had enough of them at noon.

I wonder what it'll be like, tomorrow. At the funeral. Who will turn up. A bunch of dad's colleagues? Maybe. All of our neighbors for sure, a couple of parents from my school, my grandparents, a few awkwardly smiling coworkers, clad in mourning attire, who will shake my hand and say a few words they practiced in the car on the way, and I'll play along and produce my own share of rehearsed lines. I wonder how many people will be earnestly sad tomorrow. Neighbors, maybe. My friends. Not that I have many.

High school sucks when you're the new scrawny kid from another state and your dad has a really bad reputation at work. I mean, that was the reason we moved in the first place - to start anew, a clean slate for my dad. People talked about him behind his back, not too kindly.

Those same people acted the most sympathetic when they heard about the car crash. I was in there, too.

I've already written about it in all my other notebooks.

It wasn't dad's fault, or mine. Dad was picking me up from school, and we were gonna go grab ice-cream, my dad's little way of saying he was working on...well, everything, I guess.

He likes liked Rocky Road. I like PB&J. My mom likes mint-chocolate-chip. But that's beside the point. The point is, a truck driver was drinking, and now I'm sitting at my desk in the early a.m. and I can't sleep.

My hand hurts. And so does my belly. If I want that sandwich, I'd better make it now. I haven't been eating much, admittedly, the school counselor says it's a side effect of grief.

Yeah, I can see that - when I woke up in the ER from the crash to my mom pulling a sandwich out of her purse, PB&J, of course, just the way I like it, extra thick jelly and white bread, I could see on her face something was terribly wrong. I remember lying there, my mind feeling like goo and my bones like they'd been broken and then reconnected - and mom watched me take cautious bites of PB&J. And then she told me about dad, and my favorite sandwich immediately seemed to turn into sand between my teeth.

So, yeah, kind of weird I have a hankering for said sandwich in the early a.m., five hours and fifty-three minutes before we bury the person who made it the best.

If only I could sleep. But the rain is too loud, or maybe just my thoughts are.

Five hours and forty-eight minutes until the funeral, which leaves me a grand total of, say, four hours and fifteen minutes of sleep, though I might be able to get a little rest on the thirty-minute car-ride. I'll be wearing a suit, and tie, which will take some work to put on, and my hair needs to not look like the local pigeons decided to rent it out for the weekend.

Dad used to tie my ties for me. My mother would complain how I'd never learn myself if dad always fixed it, but he'd retort we'd have plenty of time for tie-tying-lessons.

Well, dad, I thought so, too.

I'll have to say a few things at the service. Mom's not super religious, and neither is my dad - church was only a thing on Easter in our family - but dad was raised catholic by his parents, and they wanted a funeral in the church and then a traditional burial in the graveyard. I think he would've wanted that, too.

So in five hours and one minute now, I'll be standing over the casket, which I insisted on being closed, and I'll be looking at apologetic coworkers, the PTA from school, and the few kids that the parents managed to scrape up. And mom. And I don't really know what I'll say - I have a few drafts somewhere in my sock drawer, but they just don't feel right.

My father wasn't the best coworker, or friend, or neighbor, he didn't show up to work all the time, he didn't pay off all his debts, he wasn't even the best husband, that I know - but he was the best dad. And when all those black-clothed, sniffling people will be standing over the coffin and looking at dad's framed photo at the ceremony and secretly ticking off all the times he let them down, I'll only be thinking about rainy days and coats and water-repellent, magic, keep-you-warm-laughter.

The rain has sort of eased up, I think.

Five hours and forty minutes to the funeral. Four hours and ten minutes of sleep.

Good night, dad. I'll say goodbye tomorrow.