Kintsugi

Trigger warnings: Loss and dementia 

I got an email this week about submitting to a short story contest. The theme is The Five Stages. What stage am I in, spending my first Father’s Day thinking about the father I have in pieces? Is it selfish to say, “I want more of you”? Is it ungrateful to say, “There just isn’t enough”? I miss the whole. The parts that are left are too small, and the parts I remember are things I want to forget. They’re under my skin like shards of glass, and I need them to rub down into sand alright already, Jesus Christ Almighty, etc. 

You forgot too much and I forgot too little, and now here we are, your broken bits and my shitty Scotch Tape. If I have to listen to one more white person sing about Kintsugi, I’m going to lose it. Why don’t I like more art made of found materials? Is that the final bastion of you holding out in me? They put a neon light in your home, and you called it ugly, or did I say it first? You could be a collage. You’d hate that. A photo album, then. Prints of Renoir paintings of long-haired women. Rural Ukraine with people you met once 40 years ago and never stopped loving. Track lists from before I was born, Linda Ronstadt again. Black-and-white movies starring Alastair Sim. Your friends Jim — and John —, who you speak about often and always with their last names, as if there might be another Jim or John you love that much. You covet tradition, and what a blessing that is, since the pieces you’ll be the longest are the ones that were there first. Nice, because I remember your mother dying for both of us. Sad, because you’re losing things that still love you back. 

My new boss reminds me of you. Can’t say why. He’s an old white guy. Are all old white guys going to remind me of my father? Read up on reddit later. My boss loves candy, and it feels like a gut-punch. You don’t like candy. You’re like me. You like chocolate, mostly the good stuff. Callebaut and Lindt. You travelled with a Snickers bar but hated when we ate junk food. Judged us, so we made girls’ trips to Dairy Queen under the guise of running errands. Now you have a sweet tooth. When I hear you talk about it, I want to cry. All my shame comes up at the same time as I think, “How cute,” because there’s something boyish about this despite your grey hair, you in your old-man slippers and too-big khakis.

You wanted me to be a little girl who plays with tools. You wore lipstick on Halloween. You were a hippie and an actor and a teacher. We were flying back from a funeral when I told you I had to medicate to keep myself sane, and you don’t judge me one bit. You were on my couch when you said you were afraid to take medication to keep yourself sane, in case you had to pee a lot. You said “I’ve always been a dog person,” then sang to my cat under the bed. It might have been a Tom Jones’ song, but we watched Looney Toons together on leather couches you loved, so you would sing “Puddy tat” instead. “My daughter and T.S. Eliot.” How lucky was I? How lucky am I?

If I went to visit you, would you call me “boop boop”? Would you call me “sweetheart”? When I got my first job, you called me your working girl. I had to tell you to stop. You had no idea. If I went to visit you, maybe you would have no idea again. Maybe you would ask me, so polite again, “Who are you?” Sweetly confused. I won’t know. I can’t go see your pieces this weekend, even though it’s Father’s Day, and parts of you are still my father. You don’t know what day it is. A year ago, I bought you a card. It had a tie on it. You loved ties, maybe still do. I bought you a gift you couldn’t stay awake to open. I kept it “for your birthday,” and your birthday was no better. “So for Christmas,” but Christmas was too late. I regifted it to Mom. I’m so afraid I’m punishing you by trying to keep myself whole. Make note to schedule therapy session after work, before move, between friends, in a time slot where I am supposed to be coping. 

Your disease is hereditary. I am going to fall to pieces too, and sometimes I can’t wait. I’m ready to lose the things I saw, the things you said. I want to see a meme and laugh. “And then there are the horrors,” it says, and I don’t see the horrors about you. 

I want both of us in bits. 

You don’t have a piece of lead stuck in your thumb from when you were a boy. I don’t have the hiccups. You are my dad, whole. We are on the deck you built with two now-dead men. I’m having a birthday, and there’s a magician in the backyard. You listen to birds in the morning in a maroon bathrobe. I cry because I hate piano lessons. You smell the lilac bush in the backyard. I am depressed and angry and you step in. You teach me how to wrestle. Nothing makes you happier than a tickle fight with me. Also YouTube. I wonder if you still love YouTube. I want to remember more, but I have to smash whole parts of me to find this. A thousand words and I’m wrung out of tears. Finding more that I can stomach is like pulling teeth. But I have to keep digging past the things I don’t want to look at anymore. If enough of us breaks away, maybe we’ll both be whole.