The man in front of me was lost. I could see his mind drifting behind his eyes.
The cancer had spread from of his lungs to throughout his body. It had gone into his brain—a fear in which he’d seen coming for quite some time. Before it all went to hell he’d said, “Take my body, but just leave me my mind.”
Leaving this world as anybody other than himself was a concept too terrifying to deal with. And there he was, my dad—the man that had set the bar impossibly high for every other man I’d ever meet—dying by his own nightmare.
It was the week before death had come for him when he asked me to do something I will never forget. My mother had gone out to run some errands, taking my sister, Mia, and giving her a much needed break. I had returned home since he took a turn for the worse. It was the only consecutive days I had ever spent away from the office. But I had my laptop.
The hospice bed had been put in the downstairs living-room, as climbing those stairs had become as insurmountable. But being down there was something he enjoyed. People came in and out, and the sixty-five inch TV had provided plenty of comfort in the end.
I could feel him watching me as I siphoned through emails, corresponded with colleagues, and worked on a campaign for a new brand of canned soup.
“Liv?” he asked in a croaking voice. “Put that away for a minute, and come talk to me.”
“Give me a sec, Dad, this is important.”
I still can’t believe I said that. I had asked my father, who I adored more than anyone in the world, to give me a second. The man barely had a second to spare.
I closed the laptop and moved along side his bed. It was hard for me to look him in the eyes. His once vibrant complexion had become smothered in grey. His eyes stared holes through mine; I couldn’t look away.
“I need to ask you something. It’s something I wouldn’t dare ask your sister or your mother. I don’t think they’d be able to answer it.”
“Huh? What? Then why would I?”
“Cause, you’re the strong one in this family, you always have been.”
I laughed out loud at that one. “I don’t know about that, Dad. I’m petrified to ever give birth. Mom did it twice, and Mia’s all ready one up on me.”
“You’re a different kinda strong, Liv. You’re strong enough to go after what you want, and put all that other bullshit aside. That’s not easy to—“ a vicious cough cut off his sentence. He hacked up fluids, black and slimey.
“Okay. You say strong, I say selfish.” I wiped up his drool, causing him to laugh and create more. “Now what’s the question?”
He looked at me like he never had before, almost as if he were looking through me, straight into my heart, to see what the question itself would do.
“Kill me.”
Grim, right? Imagine how I felt.
First I laughed, thinking it was one of his bizarrely off-colored pranks he’d always liked to play. The worst of which was at Thanksgiving six years earlier at Aunt Sophie’s house, when he pretended to have a heart attack after claiming winning it big in the lottery.
“Kill you?” I said after a confused giggle. “First off, that’s a statement, not a question. Secondly, you are joking, right?”
I looked at his face. There was no humor attached to it, only a stern resolve. In his days of chuckling and prank pulling, he’d sell you joke with a serious face, but if you knew him well enough you could see the comedian waiting behind those solemn eyes. I couldn’t see him that day.
“I’m sorry my Liv, but no, I’m not joking.” He spoke slowly, making each syllable count for the limited words he muster out. “I’m ready.”
The feeling was too obtuse to explain. A fog had rolled in and blanketed my mind, leaving everything dim and senseless. I understood what he said to me, but I couldn’t comprehend why he said it to me.
“But… wha… why would you think I could…” Words were as fleeting as my thoughts.
“I’ve seen you,” he said, his voice gaining strength for something he deemed important. “You’re stronger than your sister, you chose a life of work and success, a life not easy to live. Mia was married with a baby before we could blink, and if I asked this of her, it would weigh heavier than it would on you. Because you’re more like me. And I guess that’s what scares me the most.”
“What? What do you mean? I don’t understand any of this.”
He sighed, and realized it was futile to hold anything back from me.
“I’ve been working since the day I was born,” he said, “and that was my biggest mistake of all. Listen to me, Olivia, I don’t mean to be profound on my death bed, but I’d be robbing you of a realization if I don’t. You’re doing it wrong.”
I said, “Dad, this is crazy, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” The look he gave me was the same he’d give when I was a kid. The look that said, you should know better.
“Life is not work, Olivia… you gotta live to live.”
“I do live, Dad. I have a good life.”
“Yes, you do. You’re very successful, you have nice things, you did very well for yourself, and yes, I am proud of you for all of that. But is it really a good life? Are you having fun?” Usually when that question is asked, it’s from a person radiating happiness and making sure you’re feeling the same. Not this time, my father’s gray complexion and hollowed eyes made it horrifying.
“Dad, I can’t hear this right now, I have to finish my wor—” The irony of what I was about to say stopped me.
“Do you want to know my dying regrets? It’s not so often such wisdom can be bestowed on someone,” he tried smiling, but it took effort. He went on, “I’ve always maintained a healthy attitude, with a sense of humor. You know me, you’re the same in that way, you could bust balls with the best of em’. But it’s our work ethic, Liv, that’s what does us in. You know I’ve never been out of the country? In fact, I’ve never been off the East Coast. Trips to Florida in the winter were our ideas of exciting getaways. It’s insanity if you think about it. With how big the world is, how endless the experiences are, and here I am, sixty-four-years of life behind me, and throughout all that time, the experiences I’ve had could fit in an urn with my ashes.”
“Life is about living. All of it, everyday; it needs to be an adventure. I played it safe and cushioned. My risks were maintained; I held a percentage to everything. Low risk, low reward. Life is about the risk, I see that now. Without risk you’ll be left lying on your death bed, fantasizing about what could have been. But let me tell you something, sweetheart, everything could be, you just have to make it happen. You, your mom and your sister are my greatest accomplishments, and that’s nothing I could ever regret. Without you all, I’d wanna be on this bed years ago. But Liv, with all my regrets, I at least know I always had you. That’s what scares me, because you don’t. You don’t want a family, do you?”
“I have a family, Dad. You, Mom and Mia, you’re my family.”
“You know what I mean, Liv. A family of your own; it’ill change your life for the better. But I’m telling you first and foremost, live your life. Just leave, disappear for a year. See it all.”
“I can’t, I have a business. I can’t just walk away.”
“Then take my word for it. You’ll regret it.” He coughed and choked. Pain was evident in every morsel of his being. He surrendered to it.
“I’m ready, Liv. This is too much for me.”
I began to cry; the shock of his words had warn off and reality sank in.
“I can’t, Dad! I won’t!”
“Please, sweetheart, just help me go, it’ll be okay. I can’t do this to any of you anymore. My dignity died a year ago. Let me go now, while I have this moment of clarity, and you can still remember me for me.”
“No!” I screamed, got up and ran out of the door.
“Olivia, wait!” I could hear him try to yell, but I was all ready gone, not wanting to hear anymore.
My car was parked outside, but I didn’t get in. Running seemed like the only option. I ran through cross streets and neighbors’ yards. Tears swam across my face and into my hair. I ran through town. Business owners I’ve done work for waved to me, confused to why a woman in wedge pumps would be running so hard. I ignored them and ran. I ran on the bike trail, going through the backwoods of town. I ran past joggers, sprinting at olympic speed in comparison. I ran till my feet felt ready to explode, my ankles on the verge of snapping. Every word that my father said replayed through my mind, pushing me to run further, to run faster. Yet no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t out run it.
When I finally stopped I was in a neighborhood I only knew from driving through. Air wheezed out of my lungs in desperate gasps, and fluids leaked out of my face from every orifice.
“Are you okay?” some lady asked as she collected her mail.
“No,” I said, “My dad wants me to kill him.”
I still don’t know why I said that to her, but it made her walk away, and it almost made me smile.
I took my shoes off and walked barefoot back to my car. Mia and my mother were all ready back home. Their car was next to mine and I saw them through the window, talking to Dad. I didn’t want to face them knowing what I knew—knowing that he was ready to give up.
I got in my car and I left. A sinking feeling filled my stomach, which sounds contradicting, but if you’ve felt it before you’d know what I mean. I didn’t go home that day, my feet had stopped running but my mind kept racing.
Throughout the night I worked, eventually falling asleep at my desk; my head smushed into my folded arms. I was hunched over when I woke up to my cellphone ringing under my face. My head exploded up as my back cracked in a drumroll down my spine. I looked at the phone, it was Mia, and it was three in the morning. That sinking feeling had drowned me in.
“Mia? Is everything all—“
“Where the hell did you go?” It was obvious she’d been crying. “Dad didn’t make it through the night.”