Instant: 4

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"Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed."

-Miranda July

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I remembered all too much about my father's death.

I remembered all too little about his existence.

He died when I was eleven. I remembered the day vividly, because you don't exactly forget the pinpoint moments that your life changes forever. I was at a piano recital, practicing in the little music room offstage. I was so scared of screwing up, even though I'd been practicing the piece for at least three months. I could have played it with my eyes closed, one hand tied behind my back. It was going to be perfect, my piano teacher had said.

And perfect it was.

My parents expected nothing less - well, my mother, at least. My father hadn't cared about the lessons when I'd started at eight years old, but the music that filled the house in the years after was what convinced him that piano was my gift.

Some time during the recital, I waited patiently for my turn to go onstage. My fellow classmates had each played their pieces effortlessly, filling the auditorium with fortes and crescendos and flats and staccatos.

I was going to play Fur Elise.

When the time came, my teacher gave me a pat and a quick shove onto the stage. Instantly, I became so nervous I stumbled over my brand new pair of pink shoes. The performance was not off to a good start, and an eleven year old version of myself blinked back tears because the moment was supposed to be perfect. I looked to the crowd - to the two seats I'd saved for my parents - hoping for a helpful "you can do this, Addie" look from my father. His seat was empty, and my heart fell to my gut. The other seat contained my mother, who was on the phone looking frantic.

As a kid, I remember thinking bitterly, "A work call is more important than me."

Little did I know.

Feeling hurt and ignored, I took a few small steps to the piano bench, pulling it out and sitting down. A single tear slid down my left cheek - the one facing away from the audience. "Smile," I remembered my teacher saying in her pep talk before the show had started. "Look alive." So I smiled, ignored the tear and my feeling of unimportance, and played the hell out of Fur Elise.

About half way through the piece, there was the alarming screech of metal against tile as my mother shoved her chair back and fled the room. Another tear fell from my eye.

I thought it was because of work. I thought my father missed my recital because of work.

When it was over, I stood up, bowed in the direction of the audience, and fled the stage. My teacher was waiting for me backstage when I rushed off. She caught the edge of my sweater as I tried to fly past her.

"Adira," she said in the posh and authoritative way she said everything. "Adira, there's been an accident."

That stopped me in my tracks. I turned, shrugged the woman off, and stared into her eyes - eyes so full of pity that the harsh old woman was hardly recognizable.

"Your dad--"

I was running away before I knew I wanted to leave. Racing through the door, out into the hallway, and down the stairs, only to run straight into my mother.

"Adira," she cried. "Adira we need to go."

"Mom, what happened?" I said louder than intended. She grabbed both of my arms, forcing me to look into her face. She was strangely calm, eyes glazed with a veil of tears, mouth straight and firm. "Mom?"

She swallowed, jaw clenching. Opening her mouth, she paused, but couldn't get the words out. I shrugged her off. "Mom, where's dad?"

So many things were flying through my mind, but I couldn't grasp any of them and couldn't let go all at once. Things were going in slow motion. It was as if time itself had stopped, leaving me breathless and grasping for something to hold onto. Gravity was gone too, and I was floating away.

"Baby," my mother finally said. "Honey, your d-dad was in an a-accident."

I didn't know which way was up or down. I was stumbling towards the stairs, tripping over the steps to run away. Blood rushed through my ears, drowning out the sound of my mother calling after me; drowning out the clatter of her heels against the stairs.

But I was quicker, and before I knew it I was back in the practice room, crawling under the piano bench and hiding behind an instrument that no longer meant anything to me.

I didn't know how long I was there - how long I'd been crying before I knocked myself out - but I woke up in a hospital bed.

I didn't know what had happened until I looked around. My mother was sprawled across an uncomfortable looking chair, permanent tear marks laid on her cheeks.

Get up, I wanted to say. Where's my father? Get up, please.

But I didn't speak. I already knew what had happened, deep down.

So I sat in the bed, wondering what'd I'd done to get put there.

When my mother woke up, she explained - between fits of tears and sobbing - that my father had been hit by a drunk driver on the way to my recital after work. And I was in the hospital because I'd had something of a panic attack, stopped breathing, and passed out. It was PTSD, they said. "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." In my own words, that meant I wasn't strong enough to handle what happened. In the doctor's words, I was "fragile."

The information didn't settle.

I'd pass out, wake up looking for my dad, and have to be told all over again that he wasn't coming back. That can be hard for an eleven-year-old to hear - that can be hard for anyone to hear.

I felt like I was taking attention away from my dad by being in the hospital, so around twenty hours after being admitted, I yanked out the tubes feeding into my arms, and walked out. And "walked" is a loose term. My legs didn't work right - the anxiety was taking a toll on my body, the doctor told me - and the nurses caught me about three steps outside the room to put me back in bed.

But I told my mom I wanted to leave, and she didn't argue.

The funeral was on a Saturday. The sky was crying, most likely in the hopes of coaxing some tears out of me too. Everyone came with large, overpowering, ink-black umbrellas, and I hopped from family member to family member because none of the umbrellas felt quite right.

Why black? I wondered. Dad always used his tropical one - the one with the palm trees, bright pink flamingos, and the tassels that dangled off the end, making it look like one of those little umbrellas in a cocktail drink. It was heinous, and I hated it, but at the funeral I longed for nothing more. Finally I just stood in the rain, letting the sky drown the loose curls my mother had done.

And then I cried, letting my tears mix in with the rain drops. Looking at a coffin containing a loved one is one of the hardest things to do in life. You know what's inside - who's inside - but you know that you can never, ever get them back. They're gone forever. A coffin is like a prison, holding your body away from the rest of the world.

There's nothing sadder, I thought that day, than a funeral. I decided I didn't want one. I didn't want the people I loved to feel as bad as I did that day and the days after.

And the story was unfinished. My mother had, much to my knowledge anyway, mourned the loss of my father, yet moved on in the way a businesswoman, like herself, would have. I still tried to play piano, although quit lessons immediately after the accident. Sometimes when I played, however, my hands would begin to shake and I would stop breathing again, something connected to the PTSD.

After the days, months, years after, life slowly started to go back to normal. Well, as normal as life could get when there was a huge hole in the place of someone you loved.

People say "time heals," which is true, in a sense. But it's not the time itself that heals, it's the brain's ability to forget. Forget just how important somebody was to you. The brain makes you forget some of the reasons you loved that person so much to begin with. It makes you numb.

The same numbness filled my veins the second my eyes landed on the letter stuck to my mirror. Suddenly my limbs were ice and I knew my lungs had stopped working.

There's nothing like the feeling of knowing you're going to pass out. Anticipating the moment when your brain lets you leave. Recognizing that you can finally

let

go.