Cigar smoke visitation
The hallways smell faintly of cheap cigar cigarettes. Like Poppy smoked. I don't think it's really cigar smoke or otherworldly, but some odd mix of cleaner and burn smells that make some accidental olfactory echo.
Poppy. I miss you. I loved you. It's weird, loving someone like a parent that didn't always deserve it. He tried his best on many occasions and I'm forever grateful. Yet on certain occasions, he really chose cruelty, viciousness, and willful ignorance. Mom always said Poppy had a really mean streak. It got bigger when he drank.
Later in life, when he had the first of two cancers and Anthony was still sick but at the house, he was reminiscing and talked about Mom. Suddenly, he looks up silently for several seconds, finally saying, "I don't think I know how to cry anymore. I can't do it. That's fucked up right?"
I remember feeling an ache for him. I told him yes, it was fucked up. That he probably learned that was how he had to be to be a man. That crying is for women. But it was wrong and that being "like a woman" is not an insult, and I was sorry for that.
After Anthony almost died, my first visit to deliver Poppy his groceries, his meds, and give the report on Anthony before returning to the hospital, he said it again, "It's fucked up that I can't cry, huh?"
I didn't stop putting away the groceries and said, it really sucks.. It must be hard when you have something to cry about and it gets stuck like you can't release it.
He raised his eyebrows which always meant he was taking in and agreeing with something, "Yeah. It feels very stuck."
I felt like he was reaching for something and answered what I thought he wasn't saying directly, "While I wish you could cry when you needed, stuck doesn't mean you don't care or love Anthony enough. I think it means something that it's on your mind while he's in the hospital."
He was quiet like he had nothing he could think to say. I had moved on to his medicine when he finally spoke again.
"You're a very good kid and we both love you and appreciate you so much. You'll make sure he is all right in there."
At the time, we didn't know if he would live. Severe congestive heart failure, fungiating infection of some unknown origin, severe tooth decay, extreme pulmonary edema, and deep festering hidradenitis suppurativa.
"I will make sure he is okay." Partly unsure whether I was lying.
"Good, good. That my Chahnka Chan." Weird ass name he called me sometimes. I think it was supposed to be a play on Shaka Khan or whatever her name is.
In his last days, he still smoked those cigar cigarettes. I got to a point that I wasn't going to take them away. He had an extreme screaming meltdown the first - and last - time that I tried. It wasn't worth it, for either of us. For Anthony either, bearing witness to our father, once strong, agile, energetic completely unfold.
I did everything I could to make sure he had his meds, the only foods he'd tolerate, his cancer treatments, his cigarettes and his beloved back yard. He would sit, next to the grass on the ground, trimming it by hand when he was too weak to stand. Eventually he chopped the legs off an outdoor chair so he could sit low on it while working on a single place.
Thinking of him and that yard while his body got even thinner makes me so emotional tonight. Probably hormones.
I'm not sure why the memories feel so vivid tonight. I guess it's true what they say about memory and sense of smell. After he died, while I waited for the authorities to pull him out of the house, I could smell it still, but feel him around me and the police grief working volunteer. I was crying but I also felt so strongly that he was celebrating.
Very strong flashes in my mind of him being the young dad when I was a kid, running and climbing the trees with his bare feet and hands. And the loudest, clearest voice of his inside my head telling me he was free. He was happy and he could breathe again. He was going to see his mom and Mom who he'd been waiting to die for since 2002. It's different already, I will understand what I could have done better as a father very soon. I already see it.
At that moment, I breathed out and a cloud formed of my breath. It wasn't cold at all. The light by the shed clicked on with no one near the light switch. I asked the grief volunteer if she could see that. She nodded. She then tried to breathe it out like me. No fog. I asked her if it was cold and maybe I was too in shock to feel the temperature. She shook her head.
We both watched as I breathed in and out for about a minute. Fog each time until I felt a comforting weight around me that I hadn't really detected at first, release. The fog dropped from my exhalations after that.
Maybe, be did visit me tonight. I had an odd reprieve in the grief/heartbreak where I just felt immense love for those I care deeply about in my life today. I think he found the break and was able to come in while I was just allowing myself to appreciate the love.
I hope to have more moments like that as the grief hopefully thins out bit by bit.