A Letter to the Deceased

It’s irrational to be writing letters to the dead, I know. But I think you deserve at least one.

We both know each other, though we deny it. I’m the guy who watched you die a few weeks ago. Do you remember it, or was it a little bit of a blur? You were pretty drunk at the time. Stumbled on the hood of a car. You gave your little girl a good scare, and her grandfather’s cursing your name as we speak. I want to hate you. Even if it’s just a little bit, I really do want to hate you. You’ve caused enough trouble for me, and I didn’t even get the displeasure to talk to you. But I can’t hate the dead—I’m not allowed to.

You’ve given me something to think about.

Your daughter came to visit, while I was in the hospital. She isn’t anything like you, if I’m honest; people say you were gruff, unreasonable, an irritable little speck in the known universe. She’s…well, she’s nice. Polite. I heard her mother divorced you, and I’m sure it wasn’t without reason. I suppose it was for the better. Especially considering what occurred.

But I’m telling a story that isn’t mine. No matter how many people tell me it is.

She left some poppies for you. Orange, freshly bloomed, with petals smoother than the skin on her hands. She gave them to me, but I’m not sure if I’m the one to be sending flowers to. “Of course you are,” she told me, frankly, “You need to believe me. You are.”

That’s the problem, though—I’m not. I’m a man who woke up in a hospital bed with no memories of my past life, having strangers tell me I like the taste of beer even though it tastes like someone electrically charged armpit sweat and poured soda in the mix to make it tolerable. I’m a morally upstanding guy being told that I’m a monster who runs away from his problems. I’m not you. I can’t be you. And yet, I’m stuck here, constantly defending myself for something I haven’t done.

Your father hates you, doesn’t he?

He came to me one day during Emily’s frequent visits, screaming profanities into my ear. I was still in the hospital, only barely learning how to walk with a cast on one leg, and he stormed in with murder in his eyes and hair graying with every syllable that slipped from his lips. “I told you never to come near me or Emily ever again,” he screamed at me. I can still smell the rotting meat in his breath, the saliva staining my face no matter how much I try to wash it off. “You think just because I’m legally bound to call you my son it gives you reason to harass my family? You think that just because Emily has to call you your dad you’re allowed to see her, after all you’ve done?”

His skin is dark—like mine. Like yours. He has brown eyes that look like they’d be handsome if they were from a younger man, and a creased complexion that seemed to fit his mood. Emily kept clutching at the IV pump beside the bed, cringing whenever your father referred to you as a disappointment, a failure, a wreck.

I haven’t recovered from his visit, even now. He reminds me of a person I never was. He reminds me of something I should never have been. The doctors call it ‘amnesia’—he called it denial. I don’t know which one is right. I don’t remember you. But the back of my head is a graveyard with a thousand ghosts and one headstone, and I can feel your past clouding my present. “Don’t think about it too hard,” your daughter told me. “The past should remain in the past.” I could only agree.

I left the hospital on the fifth of March, crutches and all, entering a shabby apartment shared with your brother. He stared at me with perplexity drawn on the white of his eyes as I tossed a pack of beer bottles by my tattered mattress out, making a tenuous journey from the bedroom to the trashcan in the living room. “You okay, Nick?” he asked me, soullessly shoveling his breakfast on the coffee table. “Your head doesn’t hurt or anything, does it?”

With a struggle, I propped myself down on the couch, leaning back beside him. Your brother is a handsome man, a permissive man, from the looks of it. He has hazel eyes and lighter skin, the shade of caramel. He’s eternally in slacks and T-shirts with mildly clever slogans on them, an individual whose captivating nature relies solely on his indolence. He’d make an interesting psychological case study, but I doubt he made a particularly good guide for you. “No. Why would you ask?”

He tilted his head. “Well, you’re--” a chuckle lazily crawled from his jaw, and it took some time for his mouth to close back. “You’re throwing out the trash.”

“Isn’t that what I should be doing?”

“Well, yeah.” He reasoned. “But you don’t really care for what you should be doing.”

You don’t care. I do. It bothered me how people seemed to have forgotten that. In defiance to the sloth’s judgment on my character, I continued to throw out the trash for several weeks, until my—I mean, your room went from being a paradise of ant trails, beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn about into a space more hospitable for living. I threw aside that poster of yours, if you’d like to know. I didn’t like its blatant objectification of women, but if you’re so keen on having naked women on the walls I bought a painting to replace it. A kindly street artist let me have it for a fair price, and I thought it gave off an air of enlightenment to the rest of the room.

Eric looked a little flabbergasted, if I’m honest. Or perhaps that’s just how his face always looks. I suppose that says more of your character than it does of mine, but I welcomed the change with open arms. It was brighter, bolder, better in ways most would agree on. I’m not sure if you’d like it, though.

I took the privilege of visiting your ex-wife.

She called me sometime in the night, told me Eric told her that I told him I was a changed man (which I didn’t, in any case; though actions speak louder than words). “Are you feeling okay, Nick?” she asked me, in an edgy voice that wasn’t sure if it should be hostile or polite.

“Don’t call me Nick,” I told her, lying on the couch with Eric’s phone by my ear. “It’s—it’s Nicholas, alright? I don’t like it when you call me Nick. I don’t feel like a Nick.”

“Nick—Nicholas.” Her breath brushed against the line. “Does this have anything to do with the accident?”

I mulled over it. “I don’t even remember what happened,” I answered, “I mean, I can feel it at the back of my head, but I can only see it in blurry vision. Headlights. Screaming. A little girl behind broken windows. I don’t remember anything else, and I’m not sure I want to. I’m just—I’m not Nick anymore. I’m Nicholas.”

She paused. “Nicholas. Listen, I--” a sigh. “Are you trying to win back Emily? Is this what you call your redemption arc? Because a little redecorating and an accident won’t win you as much sympathy points as you think it will.”

“You can have Emily,” I answered, “Whatever I did to lose her, I probably deserved it.”

“Now, don’t you—wait,” she stopped. “Did you just agree with me?”

They really ought to make an audible language for facial expressions. It proves difficult trying to translate the arch of a brow and the chuckle of bewilderment in words. “Well, it’s only reasonable.”

I take it you weren’t reasonable.

She hung up, the implication being it was out of shock. I was not going to spend too much of my own time wasting hers, so I went on to have dinner with Eric.

There were calls. She was usually the one initiating them, of course, but they were interesting to say the least. I like your wife; I wouldn’t make her go through the trouble of dating—well, physical you again, but if I were given the opportunity I’d happily accept a dinner invitation or two from her. She was getting used to hearing your voice with another man’s soul behind it, and I was getting used to her presence stimulating memories that didn’t belong to me. “Do you not remember anything?” she asked me, at some point.

“I told you, no. Not at all.” I answered. “Flashes come up, if I’m lucky. Or unlucky. Depends on the memory.”

“So, Nick is…”

“He’s not here.” I told her. “Gone. He might be there, if I look hard enough, but it’s all blurry otherwise.”

She seemed bemused. I imagined her in her home, clutching at her phone in a mix of distress and relief, perhaps on her dinner table shoveling cold macaroni from her plate. “I’m sorry if I sound—strange, when I’m talking to you,” she laughed, nervously, “I’m not used to hearing you so civil, is all.”

I chuckled. “I’m not used to hearing people talk to me as if I might snap at any moment,” I added. “Though I’m getting used to it.”

There was a pause. I imagine she smiled, somewhere during it. “Yeah.” She said. “Me too.”

Our relationship blossomed from most of our phone conversations, but there were moments when she and Emily paid a visit or two to Eric's apartment. Neither of us minded. I enjoyed the time I had with her--I'm not sure why you'd dislike her, Nick. She's kind, intelligent, loving. A woman in the truest sense of the word.

Despite our quickly blooming relationship, my status with Emily seemed to decrease slightly with every day where I got too comfortable in your skin. She's a strange 14-year old. She used to be kind, loving, a daughter that would make anybody proud. But she became distant since the hospital visit. Quiet. As her mother and I would talk in the living room, occupying Eric's one recliner and his public couch, she'd be sitting in the dining room, watching us from the window that connected the two together. There's an air of observation to her, a scientist's atmosphere--cold, callous, calculating.

She came to me, once, while her mother was going to the bathroom. She had a deck of cards with her. "You used to love this game," she told me, optimistically. "I remember when you beat grandpa four out of four times at Blackjack during Christmas. He looked like he was about to explode, and for once it wasn't because you drank from the kitchen cabinet again."

I arched a brow. "Is that so?" I asked. "I always assumed my father hated me, from how he acts."

Emily looked up at me, before shaking her head. "He doesn't hate you, dad," she told me. "He's only trying to protect me."

"From what?"

She paused. "You've...done things. Drunk a little too much, got into fights with mum," she told me. "He doesn't appreciate it, I guess."

I watched her for the longest time, analyzing the shade of her skin. She had your brother's genes in her, with a little bit of your wife's curly hair. It was a good mix. "Do you?"

The young don't know what to do with themselves--they're trapped between knowing that there's such a thing as right and wrong, and not knowing which is which. Emily had no problem of that sort. She knew exactly what was right, in her mind, and what was wrong; I, on the other hand, don't. "Maybe," she told me. "But for all it's worth, I wouldn't trade you as my dad for anybody else."

She wasn't talking about me, of course.

I was not her father. I couldn't win a game of cards against her, I had no idea how to face her disappointment, and I was utterly lost when it came to crude conversations teasing her mother or some other present entity. I was wrong to judge her as a stereotypically good Christian girl--she's your child, if only for the habits. And as much as I hate to say it, I think it's a perfect fit. You would've been moonshine, in my mind, still dirty but intriguingly horrible, and she a bottle of refined liquor. The vices all remain the same, but the styles almost complement each other. Compared to you two, I resemble a cup of milk in the morning.

The tenth time I lost to her on Blackjack, she shook her head, leaning back on my couch. "You're good at this," she told me, "I swear, you are."

You are.

I'm not.

She put distance between us, since then. Your wife told me she’s just readjusting to ‘the new Nick’, but I think it was more. She was the only one who understood what was happening. She was the only one who understood that I wasn’t who they say I was.

At some point your wife decided to arrange a family gathering of sorts, by the park near your neighborhood. Eric came, and so did your father. He was more mild-mannered, surprisingly; perhaps it was the sight of me still in a cast, struggling to get out of Eric’s old Pontiac with crutches at both sides. Perhaps Emily was right about him not being angry. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. His opinion of me wasn’t as important as I thought it should be.

Your wife was keen on talking with me, from the looks of it, but I wasn’t in the mood. They prepared the picnic blanket under gleaming starlight, and I told them I was tired (“My legs feel heavy,” I told them—my head was a little heavier). She found occupation with your brother, and I found a bridge to stride to, resting my legs by the stream.

“You aren’t my dad.”

Emily followed me. I turned to face her, only barely catching a glimpse of the poppies in her left hand. “Yeah,” I answered, frankly. “I guess I’m not.”

“Why do you keep pretending you are, then?”

I shook my head. Laying my crutch aside, I clapped the ground next to me. “Sit,” I instructed. “It’ll ease your mind, give you good insults to throw at me if you need it.”

She paused. “I’m not angry at you.”

I smiled. “Neither am I.”

The girl stood in her place, before finally inching towards me, propping herself down. She plucked a petal from her poppy, leaving it on the waters. It floated away from both of us, following the flow. “How long has it been?” she asked me. “Since he…disappeared.”

I shrugged. “Since the accident.”

She nodded, sadly. “I sort of figured,” she said. “I thought I could bring him back. I thought I could still hear bits of him in your voice, begging to be rearranged, to be whole. Fixed.” She panned up to me, plucking off another petal. “Is he really gone?”

I couldn’t say for sure. I could never say for sure. “Yes,” I lied, “I’m sure.”

She nodded a second time. This one was more accepting, as if she’d seen how she was going to die and decided it was better to let fate have its way with her. She looked down at her fingers, counting the petals left on her poppies. There were tears in her eyes. Her face crunched, uncomfortably. “Darn it,” she shredded the poppies in her fingers, throwing their carcasses into the water. “Darn it, darn it, darn it.”

I drew out to touch her, only to have the girl slap my hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she demanded, pulling away, “Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, don’t even think about me—you’re not my dad. You don’t have to act like you are.”

“Emily--”

She stood up, beginning to trot away. “Did I do something wrong?” I pleaded, grabbing my crutches. It was useless. Even if I got up in time, she was too quick for me to catch up. “Did I let you down? Am I missing something?”

“Why would you care?” she screamed at me. “Why would you need me so much?”

“Because--” I stopped. “Because I’m obligated to.”

She swerved towards me. “Why?”

“I—I don’t have anything else.” My words were futile, indifferent. She didn’t believe them, and neither did I. “I don’t feel like I am anything else.”

She glared at me. “Who are you?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

Who am I?

Why am I here?

The questions never left my mind. It’s been a week since the picnic. A week since your daughter brought my existence to light. I’m considering the possibility of leaving Eric’s home, once I get the cast off; getting a job, finally affording my own space. I still don’t understand this body you’ve given me. I don’t understand the restless thoughts I’ve inherited from you. I don’t understand a lot of things, and I feel as if I never will.

Maybe it is denial.

Maybe I’m just denying you. Maybe if I think hard enough, if I dig deep enough, I can reach you. Maybe you’re still there, under the rubble left by the accident. Maybe one day I’ll be able to down a bottle of beer without puking. Maybe one day I’ll be able to come down your wife’s home, and challenge Emily to a game of Blackjacks with a face of confidence. Maybe one day I’ll be able to tolerate piles of trash by my mattress, and a poster that shouldn’t be on my wall.

Do I want that?

Is that who I am?

I don’t feel like it is.

Perhaps I’m not you, after all. Perhaps I’m just a separate entity, somehow given the curse (or blessing—I could consider it a blessing) of a body well deserved. Perhaps I’ll always be clean shaven man your wife seems to like. Perhaps one day I’ll be courteous enough to earn your father’s approval. Perhaps I’m supposed to be something better than what you were.

It might not matter.

You won’t read this letter. You’ve been cast aside, thrown somewhere deeper than hell, higher than heaven; the human subconscious. One day, I might pick this up, and figure out that I’m not the same person I was ten to twenty years ago. I might join you where you are now, one day. Nothing is immortal. Thoughts and mindsets aren’t an exception to the rule.

I’ll figure out who I am in my own time. I shall die in my own way, and be replaced with another fresh-faced, bewildered child I was months ago. But until then, I’ll stay content living as something I’m not. Until then, I’m content carving out my being from your cadaver.