For a moment, I’m putting all of it aside. The worrying about money, my newly-increased rent, my distance away from friends, my concern about the new snow this weekend and how water keeps seeping in through my boots. The important errands I’ve been putting off. The terrible week at work where I got yelled at for not organizing the new shipment of cookie cutters the “right” way. All of it. Putting it aside.

And here’s why. My friends’ dads are dying. Or they’re dead.

It’s happening, it’s happened to three now that I can think of automatically, three. Three friends with three dads, and suddenly their dads have cancer. And then suddenly they’re gone, they disappear from the inside out, they are gone, and my friends are dadless. And I’m sorry.

There are a couple of reasons why this affects me like it does. One is this:
These people are my friends.
Another: I always figured my dad would die first. You know, out of my friends’ dads.
Another: I think that, in some mysterious and primal way, our entire lives gravitate around the death of our fathers.

My best friend Jenny gave me a book a few years ago, and I read it all in one sitting, and it became my favorite book. It is called The Pharmacist’s Mate, and it was written by a woman named Amy Fusselman. The Pharmacist’s Mate is about many things, but mostly about Amy Fusselman trying to get pregnant by insemination with her husband Frank. And about doing this right after her father has died. And what that’s like. You know.

It isn’t easy- getting pregnant, and being without her father. The book is short, it’s under 100 pages. I’m pretty sure Amy Fusselman is short, too. But that doesn’t keep her from writing passages like this one:

I want to get pregnant. Or maybe more accurately, I don’t want to die without having had children.

Or this one, and this one is an entire chapter, Chapter Eleven to be exact:

What is it about my dad being dead that I can’t say it enough? That I feel like My Dad Is Dead would be a good name for my son?

That I can picture myself saying, “I can’t talk right now, I have to pick My Dad is Dead up from hockey?”

Singing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear My Dad is Dead”?

I look My Dad is Dead up on Yahoo! and discover that there is a band with that name. And they’re from Ohio, like my dad, like me. And I can listen to their song right now, a noisy, static-y MP3 called “Don’t Look Now.”

My dad isn’t even dead yet, but I know she’s right on about that, about what it feels like. Except she’s rather calm about it most of the time. And I imagine I won’t be.

I imagine it a lot. I try to prepare myself a lot, because I have to. You would too, if your dad drank like mine does. You would too, if you’d seen what I’ve seen. Maybe you have, and if you have, then I’m sorry some more.

Lots of times in my dreams there are dried brown leaves over his face. I try to rake them off with my hands, but there are so many I can’t. This is a true story, about these dreams I have.

If you’ve never read Hamlet, just stop reading this and go read Hamlet and then you can come back and finish this if you want to. It’s ridiculous that you’d be spending your time reading badhousekeeping.wordpress.com if you’ve never read Hamlet, but whatever. Go read it now, and then when you’re done you can come back here or a better idea is to read King Lear, which will help you understand even better. It’s important to understand this.

We can all agree: Claudius is a creep. He kills his brother and then gets with his dead brother’s wife, assuming the throne. Only Hamlet isn’t buying it. But even though we know Claudius is a grade-A creep, he is never quite so creepy as in the following soliloquy, in which he tries to convince Hamlet to stop being sad that his dad is dead. If you’re not lazy, read it carefully. If you are lazy, read it anyway.

‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool’d:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! ’tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
‘This must be so.’ We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father…

Don’t fall for that beginning part, that “sweet and commendable…nature” part. Hamlet didn’t. Skip ahead, to where he says Hamlet’s grief is “incorrect to heaven,” from “a heart unfortified, a mind impatient, an understanding simple and unschooled.” And why? Because it is common, because everyone’s dad dies. In fact, nature’s “common theme/ is death of fathers.”

Why so it is.

I used to study poetry. Sharon Olds, an accessible and I think great contemporary American poet, wrote a book called “The Father,” a series of poems that, chronologically, follows her as she watches her abusive and alcoholic father die. As she tries to help him die. Sometimes it gets weird- she imagines herself as sperm inside his body the day before she is conceived. Other times it’s just, well, sad. Angry. Sad. Angry. No, sad.

My dad’s dad died. I remember it very well, I was in middle school and it was the first time someone I knew had died, and it was my grampa, and he had lung cancer. And it was terrible.

I had started wearing this coat, this long black one that my uncle wore when he was in the army, and it was January and for some reason I thought that was a good idea, wearing this coat. I took a walk one night before my grandpa died and it got late and got dark. My dad came looking for me, and walked me home down our long gravel driveway.

He held my hand, which made me uncomfortable, because he’s quiet and doesn’t show affection too often. Then he stopped, beside the barbed wire fence, beside the cow pasture. He said he’d talked to my grandma, his mom, and he’d started crying, and she’d said, “Well, baby…”

And then he fell over, onto me basically, I had to strain to hold him up, and he was sobbing and he kept saying, “She called me ‘baby.’” over and over. And I think I was just looking at the field, you know? I probably had an algebra test the next day. Thinking, this is one of those times. I’m never going to forget this. I’m not sure this is even happening. I’m fourteen years old. Nothing makes sense except this grass, these rocks, and this coat. I’ve got to get my dad in the house somehow. Which will be hard, because I’m not very strong.

I’ve lived almost twice as long now, I’ll be twenty-seven in less than a month, and I’m still not very strong. I know it, I just know, when my dad dies, I will crumble like, well, some metaphor about how the most fragile thing you can imagine crumbles under the weight of the strongest thing you can imagine. Like a dandelion seed under the breath of God. Like something more fragile, under something more strong. Got it in your mind? Like that. I know it. I know it like I know my dad… in a way I can’t explain to other people very well, but is one of the greatest truths in my heart.

At the end of Sharon Olds’ book, her dad is dead, and she is struggling somewhere between hatred and love.
At the end of Hamlet his dad is dead, and he dies too.
At the end of Amy Fusselman’s book, her dad is dead, and she becomes pregnant.

My own dead dad story doesn’t have an ending yet, thank God. And even though I don’t usually pray, I will pray for mercy and hope for those who are just finding out what their own will be. Over and over again, amen.