CHAPTER 34 - DEATH, AGAIN

"Pavel? What's going on?" 

Life gives you uncanny clarity at times. The bed I was on, the side table, and the young kiddo at my side, all pop now. 

"Mom and Dad were coming home from their anniversary weekend in Rhode Island when the Carmen Ghia crossed the median and crashed into an oncoming car, Van. A few miles from our house."

I froze. The toddler watched me. 

"How?" came out of my mouth.

"They don't know if it was a heart attack, drunkenness, or if he just fell asleep." 

My father was dead at age 48. He died immediately, they said. The steering wheel crushed his chest. They could not do an autopsy, they said. 

Pavel told me Carrie Hartford's family bought me a plane ticket for the next day. 

I walked around the house with the three-year-old boy trailing me, wondering why I was crying. I sat on the front porch with the boy and felt a spring breeze. Nothing had changed for the wind. It was the same pre- and post-mortem. 

I shaved my legs. Shaving made me feel guilty. My father is dead, and I am shaving my legs. 

I resented that life unnervingly went on. My dad was dead. Two months after his dad. Someone so imposing, who figured into my life so thoroughly, who I loved so deeply. Gone.

 

He controlled me when I wanted his validation and when I rebelled. Even dead, he was still in control. 

Carrie and her brother picked me up at Logan Airport and brought me to the tail end of the burial.