Member-only story
Beauty And Terror
Two years ago, I got the call I knew was coming, but when it did, I hit decline. I knew it when my aunt’s name was flashing on the screen, but I didn’t want to hear it. She left a voicemail that was obviously the kind of voicemail you leave when you are trying to stay calm and not just blurt out the horrible thing you need to tell the other person.
My dad died. Her brother died. She found him.
I remember being five or six. I’m in the car with my dad. He says, casually: I will be dead before I turn 30. He was wrong. He lived twice as long as he predicted and died at 61.
At the time I had no concept of age, but I remember being scared because it sounded like my dad was saying he would die soon. No kid knows how old grownups really are. I don’t know if he was joking. But for as long as I can remember, I was always vaguely surprised that he was still alive while constantly anticipating his imminent death.
Because my father died March 8th, 2020 during a time when COVID-19 travel restrictions and shutdowns were rapidly being updated, I was booking flights and cancelling and rebooking and canceling for good. And then feeling guilty for canceling. Then air travel shut down and the whole world went into lockdown.
Life as I knew it was getting dismantled piece by piece and I felt disoriented. I had just barely started…
