Dad,
You are at the Shore Cliff Lodge in Pismo Beach, California, which is in San Luis Obispo County, which, as far as I can tell, is really nothing other than a beach town and perhaps not even a spectacular one at that. Certainly not Miami or Santa Barbara or Maui. It would appear no one would travel to San Luis Obispo for the beach itself. And you didn’t either. You are there on business and you are depressed and it is morning and you have woken up to that same clutching in your chest you’ve had for the last 333 days, or maybe a lifetime, and you go to make coffee with the in-room coffee maker – I know that they have in-room coffee makers at the Shore Cliff Lodge because “p.jones” from Wichita reviewed the Shore Cliff on Trip Advisor dot com and mentioned the in-room coffee maker as the Lodge’s one redeeming quality; apparently the establishment suffers greatly from a pelican pooping problem and the smell you would figure would accompany such a problem – anyway, I think you are making coffee and thinking what the hell is the point and thinking you cannot go one more minute struggling for air and sanity and money and love and accomplishment and you go to look at the .357 that you stowed away in your luggage, unbeknownst to your lovely wife who kissed you goodbye three days ago, and you stare at it thinking how easy it would be. Your tears drip down the end of your nose like they did when your father died when I was seven and we sat outside your parents’ apartment in your purple Corvette. You want to die. You want to die and I want to say this:

DON’T DO IT.
DON’T DO IT.
DON’T DO IT.
DON’T DO IT, DAD. PLEASE DON’T DO IT.

I want to knock down the door to room #109 at the Shore Cliff Lodge and hug you in my arms and tell you that nothing good will come of this: yes, there will be no more pain but there will also be no walking me down the aisle in one year’s time or holding your granddaughter in two. There will be no seeing my name on the cover of a book. There will be no helping your grandson, the one you will never meet and who has your wild, curly hair and your sweet, soft heart, help dig for worms in the garden. There will be no sitting outside smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee in the cool morning air with your wife who adores you and has made her world around you and who you promised to love and cherish, well, till death do us part. But this wasn’t what she had in mind.

It’s what no one had in mind.

If we had, we would have kicked down the door to room #109 and hugged you and held you and wrestled you to the ground and taken that gun and thrown it off the Shore Cliff’s Cliff, if there actually is one, and then taken all six feet of you and folded you into our passengers’ seats and drove you to the nearest safe place where there would be food and love and comfort and nothing that could hurt you or worry you. We would keep you there, safe, until you were well again.

We would say: YOU CANNOT DO THIS. PLEASE KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOSING EVERYTHING. THAT YOU ARE TAKING EVERYTHING. THAT WE KNOW THE PAIN YOU ARE IN MUST BE CRUSHING YOU EVERY DAY AND THAT WE WILL HELP YOU. That we will sit with you and fight the pain with you. That we will give you money and time and a place to stay and we will do anything, anything at all to keep you alive.

We would say: you have no idea what a special person you are. How tremendous your gifts. How very much you will be missed by this world.

I would say to you Dad: YOU WILL MISS SO MUCH. YOU WILL BE MISSED SO MUCH. You told me I should figure out the things I love and make a determination as to how those things might be preserved in a world gone wild. But what do I do when that loved thing, one of my determined very most loved things, has gone unpreserved? And yet the world still goes wild. Without you.

Instead of saying this to your face though, the face that mirrors my own in so many ways, I am giving my keyboard hell right now and glaring at the breakfast voucher I have here next to me from the Shore Cliff – the one dated June 14, 2001. The one you never used because you were maybe dead by breakfast, but I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there to find you, to save you. A cleaning lady actually was the one who got to see you for the last time, a gunshot through your head, the center of your pain and genius both. I was in Los Angeles, floating on a cloud of happiness, less than a month engaged to the love of my life. I didn’t know you were lying still, bleeding out onto cheap motel carpet.

I would have been there. I would have stopped all of it and I would have taken you out for coffee and a steak and a baked potato and chocolate and fresh oranges and English muffins with lots of cream cheese and we would have listened to zydeco music turned up way loud or maybe Miles Davis and I would have let the wind blow through your hair and your brain and all the badness would fly out along with it, like crazy monkeys. We would drive off in my convertible, my chariot, stolen just for the occasion, and I would save you and protect you.

I would have never let you go.

All my love,

G