When My Father Died (Excerpt)

I was in Aspen, Colorado when my father died. He fell from the top of the tall aluminum ladder while nailing new shingles down in patches on our roof. My mother was at work, and with no one home he lay on our back porch for four hours before our neighbor found him. Mom had called the house, had called the neighbor, and had finally called the hospital, and by the time she found out what had happened he was in the basement morgue, laid out waiting for her.
Mei and I were choosing from a menu in the only restaurant we could afford in Aspen. I was ordering a bagel with lox and cream cheese when my phone rang.

I had expected the world to stop turning when my father died. And it’s true that I don’t remember the next three minutes at all, so perhaps it did. My father died, and the world stopped turning, in salutation, for three minutes.

I was in Montreal when my father died. Mei and I had driven eight hours on our first day out, bypassing my grandparents in New Hampshire and entirely ignoring Vermont. We were sitting in a familiar diner drinking coffee. I had expected Canadian coffee to taste different. I had not expected Canadian diners to be familiar.

We had walked through Montreal’s Chinatown that morning, and I bought slightly pink pearls, which were scattered over the table in tiny clumps as I pulled them from their string and sorted them over and over. They were heaped around the bottom of Mei’s saucer. When I dropped them there, they clicked. We were too tired for words.

I went silently to the bathroom and came back. As I slid into the vinyl I looked up, out the plate glass window for the first time. Across the street a church was glowing in the sunlight, all warm pink stone and covered in scaffolding, with the roof half off. I stopped, laughed.

“I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to notice that,” Mei smiled. He lifted his cup to his lips and the pearls rushed together, clattering. “Your phone is ringing.”

I was driving through Toronto when my father died. Toronto is a surprising city: surprisingly clean, surprisingly green and pleasant.

Dad was broad-sided by a truck in Boston while driving to Rhode Island to see my grandmother. The last time he was broad-sided, in New York on my graduation day, the side impact beam of the old gray Volvo station wagon saved his life, although the airbag didn’t go off. This time it did. He still died. I was on a back road somewhere in the suburbs of the surprising city, trying to either find Route 7a or a bagel shop, we didn’t care which. When my mother called she told me to pull over. Afterwards Mei had to drive all the way home. I swore I’d never drive a Volvo again.