One Day When He Was Dying

My father got angry with me. I’d made a joke, something about how worrying about him was aging me.

I pointed to the lines around my eyes. I plucked a few grey hairs and showed them to him.

I was 34 years old. My father had cancer. He’d lost most of his hair.

My father had beautiful hair and losing it bothered him so much he wore a blue knit cap to hide it that summer.

His face was full of lines, nothing but worry. He said, “Everything’s a joke to you,”

He said, “You idiot.” He said, “What’s the hell’s the matter with you?”

I was my father’s only daughter. I loved him so much I couldn’t bear it. I said, “I’m joking.” I said, “Relax already.”

When I was very young, I’d cry myself to sleep imagining my father’s death.

Sometimes he’d hear me and come into my room and plug in a Donald Duck nightlight. Donald wore a blue hat. The paint on his eyes was peeling.

My father thought I was afraid of the dark but when I told him, he laughed and kissed my forehead. He said, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll be around.”

He said that again, right before he died. I wanted to believe him the way I believed him when he said

he was too mean and stubborn to die.

Yesterday, over macaroni and cheese at Boston Market,

my 10-year-old daughter traded me her cornbread for

more of my mac and cheese. Then she started weeping.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said, though we hadn’t been saying anything about that. She said, “I want you to live forever.”

I made a joke about how I could never die and leave behind such delicious mac and cheese and made a big deal of stuffing my mouth full.

Then I kissed my daughter hard and smudged cheese

on her wet cheeks. I held my face to her long blonde hair.

It smelled like sweat and honey and gravy, like everything

that matters in this world, everything made of work and love and longing, and later, when I tucked her in, I turned on her nightlight and said,

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll be around.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” my father wanted to know.

I should have said everything.

Everything is the matter.