I mean really seeing tears. Seeing his forehead with all his scars, wrinkle up as he squints back his tears. His strong hands reaching up to his eyes to brush his hair away from them. His eyes are lonely, and he seems empty for a moment.
I want to hold him, and I want to hold him back from falling. I want to keep him with me. But I can’t help but think that a person half his size could never help him. A hug that can’t even wrap around his shoulders will do anything to soothe him.
It would seem to anyone looking onto the scene that I’d entirely missed the importance of the situation, but that is untrue. I only sit and stare out of confusion and fear. I watch because I don’t know how to react. I don’t know if I should cry or if I should hug my father. I am powerless. So I sit. I stare.
I do the same as we ride home. And I do the same as we sit at the dinner table, slowly picking apart chicken that’d been made for dinner two nights before. My father doesn’t speak. He just cries. I just stare.
As we clear the plates and wash them, I study my father. The way that his shoulders are stooped. The way that his mouth is pressed into a straight line. The creases in his forehead seem to increase with in number every minute. He hardly picks his feet up off the ground as he moves.
I am confused; so I press my lips into a line, stoop over, and wrinkle my young forehead awkwardly. I must have looked stupid. But I had no other way to act.
I sit at the funeral with my hands in my lap, just as my father does. Sitting with his face in an expression of stone sadness, with his feet slightly crossed at the ankles. I am even wearing the same color as he. Black. It is a pretty color. It reminds me of night. Of darkness.
People come up to me and offer words of sympathy. I do as my father does, shake their hand politely, and utter an automatic ‘thank you’. I am acting like a child, a child who wishes to act just as his older brother. Or wishes to annoy them. I used to do that to my brother.
After a long night of sadness, similar to the ones before it, I lay in bed sifting through papers and photos. There are pictures of my brother. There are pictures of my mother. There are pictures of my family. The family that is no more. After looking through numerous pictures, I go down stairs to get some food. I hear a noise as I reach the doorway to my kitchen. A familiar noise. It is my father. Crying.
I walk around the corner to his room. The room he once shared with my mother. I don’t see him. I follow the noise. It is coming from his bathroom. As I open the door, I stumble backwards.
My father is crying, sitting on the ground in his bathroom. I do not stare this time. I clamp my eyes shut. I see blood. I see my father. Crying. Blood.
The crying does not seem to stop. He doesn’t see me. I open my eyes. He is looking down and doesn’t know I’m there. I walk toward him and kneel down in the blood on the floor. He looks up slowly, and I can tell that he is weak. He tries to speak but his voice is caught in his throat. I search franticly for the wound. I finally spot it, two large slits in his arms. I do not say anything. I only press a towel to his arms, in a desperate attempt to do something. I am frightened. I am confused. I don’t know what he’s done.
He stops crying. I look into his eyes. There is nothing. His forehead is not wrinkled. His lips are not pressed together. And his body is hunched over. There is no stone sadness on his face. He is still.
I drop the towel and let his upper body fall into my arms. My breath is coming deeply and I am getting dizzy. My father is not crying. He is not sad.
I am confused. And I have no one to follow. I can’t do as my father does. I am alone.
A tear makes its way out of my soul and finds its way to my eyes. I am crying. This was the first time the angels have ever seen me cry. The only other time they’d seen me cry was at the end of Armageddon but that doesn’t really count.
