Into This River I Drown (62 page)

Everything flashes white.

the river crossing

I feel
the sun on my face, warm and beautiful.

I hear the sounds of the birds in the trees, bright and sharp.

A breeze ruffles my hair, like a caress, carrying with it the perfume of summer.

A river flows somewhere in the distance.

I open my eyes.

I stand on a two-lane road, the asphalt cracked, the double yellow line down the center faded and chipped. A bee buzzes past my face. I follow it as it floats up and down until it lands on a green sign on the side of the road. The sign reads:

77

“No,” I mutter. “Not here. Not again.”

No one answers me.

I turn around to tell Michael to take me from this place, but I’m alone.

“Michael!”

No response. All I hear are the sounds of a normal, sunny day in the middle of nowhere.

This angers me.

“Why am I here?”

I spin.

“What do you want from me?”

“Take me home!”

“Why do I have to choose!”

“
Michael
!”

My voice echoes over the valley. I stop, throat dry and heart sore. My chest rises and falls rapidly. I don’t understand why he’d take me to this place. I don’t understand why I have to come here. This place is sadness. This place is loneliness.

This place is my grief.

I look down to the river.

It runs softly, beautifully. The water is a crystal clear blue. It laps gently at its banks. It does not feel threatening. It is not—

A man is crouched on the riverbank near a large cracked boulder. His massive back is to me, his face hidden. He lets a hand drift in the water. He’s a big man, bigger than any man I’ve ever seen. He must be the biggest man in the world. In his chest must beat a great heart that pumps furiously to keep such a man alive. His dark hair is cut short, almost shaved completely, like my own. He’s staring down at the river as if looking at his reflection. I…. He….

Oh, my heart. Oh, my soul.

I need him to turn around, but I can’t find my voice.

Impossible,
I think.
Improbable.

I take a step toward him and then stop.

“Dad?” I whisper.

As if he can hear me, the man turns to look up to me. His green eyes shine like fireworks across a dark sky. Edward Benjamin Green, Big Eddie, my
father
, smiles up at me.

“
Dad!
”

And then I’m running. I’m running as fast as I can toward him, and everything around me slows and bleeds together and I—

am five years old, and he laughs a big laugh because no one laughs like my father. None laugh like him, and it is such a joyous sound, a happy sound, an amazing sound that my heart swells until I am sure it will burst. I

—leave the road, my feet crunching in gravel and dirt, and I—

am ten years old, and my father shows up to pick me up at school unexpectedly. He walks in, having to lower his head so it doesn’t hit the doorjamb. I am worried at first, thinking something is wrong at home. But then he grins at me and winks, speaking quietly with Mrs. Norris. She laughs, and he beckons me with his hand. He steers me out of the classroom and out the door and we spend the rest of the day fishing off the old covered bridge. My

—
feet hit the grass, and he starts to rise from his crouch and he—

asks me to hand him a wrench while he curses under his breath without looking up from underneath the hood of the Ford. I’m thirteen years old and scowl at his big hand engulfing my own when I hand him the wrench, wondering when I’m going to get my growth spurt so I can be big like Big Eddie. Somehow he knows what I’m thinking because he turns back to me, a grease smear on his nose, and says, “Only the size of your heart matters, Benj. The only thing that matters is”

—that I reach him as soon as possible. I feel like I could fly down the embankment. I feel like I’m—

dying. I feel like I’m dying as I stand under cloudy skies in a place called Lone Hill Memorial. I feel like I’m dying because I’m one of hundreds moving toward a waiting stone angel emblazed with fifteen words that mean nothing, that don’t even begin to show the measure of the man they are supposed to represent. People hover nearby. My mother, the Trio. Abe. Rosie stands to my left, next to Doc Heward. So many others. They’re all waiting for me to break. They’re all waiting for me to shatter into a billion pieces. How can I explain that I already have? How can I explain that there is nothing left to me but dust and shadows and memories that rise like ghosts? They can’t know. They couldn’t possibly.

But that is not this moment. All that matters at this moment is the weight on my shoulder as I help carry my father up the dirt path to where the stone angel stands, her arms outstretched. All that matters is I can feel the corner of the coffin digging into my skin, the pain bright and vivid. All that matters is that I carry my father so he can sleep.

We reach the hole in the ground, perfectly dug and fitted with the lowering device. A member of the funeral home rushes over and points out quietly how the coffin should fit against the device. This makes it more real, and I almost refuse, wanting to tell everyone to go home, that I’ve changed my mind and I will not leave him here. Abe must see the look on my face, because he steps to my side, putting his hand on my shoulder and whispering soothing words in my ear that I can’t quite make out. I nod and there’s a count to three and we set my father down.

Later, after we’re all seated, my mother clutching my hand, Pastor Thomas Landeros says, “Into the ground we lower a man who was a husband. A father. A friend, both to us and this community. God’s plan may not make sense to us right now, and it may even make us angry, but rest assured there is a reason for all things, even if that reason is hidden from our eyes. Isaiah forty-one verse ten reads: ‘Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; Yea I will help thee. I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.’”

Fuck you, God,
I think.
You fucking bastard
.
Fuck you….

We stand, and people sing a hymn behind me. Their voices carry and wash over me, and I realize I am not broken completely because yet another part of me fragments. A tear falls down my cheek. The singing gets louder in my head, and I float along the river because I’m bound to its goddamn surface, and these stones fill my pockets, and it’s into this fucking river I drown. I weep as I lay a single blue rose on top of the casket, my mother’s hand at my back. Tears drop onto the oak lid, and I feel my knees begin to buckle. They give way as the coffin starts to lower into the ground, and I let out such a scream, such a howl of heartbreak and loss that everyone in the crowd shudders and sighs, bowing their heads and I—

can’t get to him fast enough, I can’t get to him fast enough, I can’t get

—
over the fact that I’m graduating high school. It’s an odd feeling, really, that I’ve survived to get to this point. But when they call my name and I hear the roar from my family, I grin and walk across the stage. I accept my diploma and flip the tassel. I take a deep breath and walk down the steps. Later, we all throw our caps in the air, relieved and scared that this part of our lives is over.

My father is the first to reach me, running almost full tilt, and I freeze. I freeze, because for a moment, I think he had died in a river when I was sixteen, drowned after his truck flipped into the Umpqua. I have the feeling of being split, a duality that threatens to tear me apart. But then it’s gone because he’s laughing that big laugh and hugging me tightly, spinning me around in circles like he used to do when I was a kid. “You did it,” he whispers in my ear. “Congrats, boy, you did it.”

In one world I reach the bottom of an embankment, running toward my father while trapped in the memories of another world that never happened.

I’m twenty-four when I come home to Big House for Christmas. I’m nervous because for the first time, I’m not coming alone. I knock on the door, dusting snow off Jeremy’s hat as he winks at me. My mother opens the door and smiles at me widely, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. She shakes Jeremy’s hand before laughing and pulling him into a hug. Big Eddie waits just off the doorway, looking imposing as all hell, big arms crossed, a stern look on his face. My boyfriend Jeremy (who I might just be starting to love) quakes a little in his designer boots but holds his head high and reaches out to shake my dad’s hand. My dad just stares at him until Jeremy drops his hand awkwardly. I roll my eyes and punch my dad in the arm, and it’s all he can take before the façade breaks and he welcomes Jeremy with open arms.

I’m twenty-eight when Jeremy asks me to marry him.

I’m twenty-nine when my father stands beside me as my best man, trying his best not to cry as Jeremy slides a ring on my finger.

I’m thirty-two when I tell Big Eddie he’s going to be a granddad. The look on his face is one of such wonder I can’t seem to catch my breath.

I’m thirty-three when Jamie is born, all pink and perfect. Big Eddie is the first to hold him in his arms, telling him he’s so happy to meet him, that the world is such a beautiful place.

I’m thirty-six when Hailey is born and we bring her home.

I’m thirty-nine when Big Eddie calls to tell me he has cancer. I hang up the phone, my world crashing down around me. I book a flight that very night. He’s the one who picks me up at the airport, in the old Ford. We stay in the parking lot for an hour as he lets me sob on his shoulder, telling him he can’t leave, he just can’t. Telling him that I can’t make it through this life without him. He holds me tight.

I’m forty when the cancer goes into remission and I remind him that he can’t get away from me that easy. He just gives me that slow smile of his and drops his heavy arm around my shoulders, pulling me close.

In the world where the river runs and the sun is shining, I’m almost to him. His face, once adorned with a smile, is now scrunched up as he starts to break. He falls to his knees and opens his arms wide, his eyes bright.

There are so many memories. They rise like ghosts, and I remember stretches of days and weeks and months and years and he’s there. He’s always there. There are phone calls and visits and celebrations and sadness. There are bright days and dark days. Every emotion humanly possible is felt. But through it all, I realize the gift I’ve received. Whether or not this is real, I have been given the memories of what life could have been like had my father not drowned in the river.

And still I want more. I push for more.

He’s ninety-eight years old when I sit by his bed. Jeremy is with our kids, watching our grandchildren in the hall. I sit quietly with my father in the night. The doctors say it will be soon and that he will not wake up. The others have left me alone so I have my chance to say good-bye.

I try to find the words to say to him that could convey the depth of my love for him. I try to think of a single thing to say that would show him what he means to me. I rest my head on his arm, rubbing my forehead against his skin. I might have imagined it, but for a moment, there seems to be a hand on my shoulder and a breath on my neck and I think that everything is blue. But then it’s gone.

Finally, I say to my father words he’d said once to me. “There is no one such as you in this world, and you belong to me. I’ll believe in you, always.” I squeeze his hand and give him fifteen words that mean everything. “It’s okay to sleep now, Dad. I know that one day, we’ll be together again.”

As if waiting for my permission, he slips away only moments later.

There is a world where he sleeps under an angel made of stone.

There is a world where he passes quietly, watched by the one who loves him the most.

And these two worlds collide, pulling in toward each other, rushing and rolling, combining until I can see
everything
, until I can feel
everything
. I feel the
life
of my father. I feel the
love
of my father. I feel the
loss
of my father, and it happens over and over and over again. There is the world that actually happened. There is the world that
could
have happened. I think this might be what Michael spoke of, and I cherish every moment of it even as my heart shatters again and again.

Every memory flashes before my eyes. Every single moment we did and did not share. All of these memories are pulled down to a single point, the tiniest possible space. There’s an instant where it’s black and silent, and then it explodes outward, arcing through this world and every other. Wave after wave of my past and future washes over me, and I see all possibilities. Every path not taken. Every shape. Every pattern. Every design.

And this. Out of everything, I beg you to see this:

This is the world where the river runs wild. This is the world where I leap the last five feet, unable to take the distance between us any longer. I hear the beat of massive wings, I hear the earth singing, I hear all the planes of existence holding their breaths for just one sweet, freeing moment. It is in this moment that I break through the surface of the river and come out on the other side.

And for the first time since he died five years before, I crash into my father, and he wraps his arms around me, and oh my
God,
I am home. I am home. I am
home
.

We stay
like this, for a time. My head on his shoulder as I tremble, arms tight around his neck. He puts one arm around my back, the other pressing the back of my head with his big hand. I don’t even try to hide that I’ve broken down, sobbing into his shirt, clutching at him. He tries to whisper soothing things to me, but his voice keeps cracking, and I can feel my hair getting wet from where his cheek rests.