Dear Dad by Erik Christian Read Free Book Online

resumed my normal shitty life and daydreamed about our trip for months. I began to drink again and met up with the wrong crowd. Many hungover mornings, I sat in bed sick and wished I was healthy and researching restaurants and exotic places like Haas was. I had placed him in the back of my mind, when my mom knew I was friends with him and asked if I had heard about him. I said “No, what?”. She texted back: “He died.” Simple as that. I had never really experienced death before, at least with humans. I am a huge animal lover, and have grieved tremendously more for pets I have owned. But, this was my best friend. “How?” was all I asked. “Heart-attack.” I had uncontrollable tears and clamoured for the bottle. The binge lasted years.
     

    THOSE WHO LEAVE US
     
     
    (my mom's dad on left.)
    “Those who leave us behind will stay close within our realm until we let go”, a friend had said, as he consoled me after a close friend of mine died. And yes, I spiraled out of control and it was finally a real excuse to drink and pill copious amounts. Spirits are real and they will live around us until our memories fade of themselves. It is a gentle transition, this life to the next, whatever you believe. My mom’s dad died when she was seven. It is unclear how he died but alcohol is loosely mentioned. She has forever held an optimism that is almost childlike without the idiocy. Billions of people have died in the History of humans and yet it’s just you and I and we still laugh even in our wheelchairs, as we laughed in the sand on the beach when our shorts rubbed the sand into our skin until we were beet red. Why are people so petty until real traumatic events drops the bullshit and brings us all together. Look at 9/11. There was a certain silence in all of humanity after that one. Would it take World War III to humble us a little longer. . .and drop the bullshit?
     
    My mother’s dad, I suspect, appeared in my doorway when I was ten. It was dark in the hallway and my room, but his permeable presence was made out of the orange night light that shone from the bathroom and struck across my bedroom floor. He stood for a second at the door, as if he were asking if he could enter my room, nothing was heard, but then he walked toward me and that’s when I screamed. He disappeared and nothing spiritual had happened since, until my mother talked about seeing and hearing certain things after her mother’s death. I won’t get into details of that, except both her sister and herself heard crying at their mother’s funeral, and it was wailing, not weeping, and they looked around and it seemed no one else heard it.
     
    There’s a feeling sometimes, that animals are just waiting for us to catch on. That we all feel the same basic emotions, all need Love, and feel sadness and anger. I walked through town one night and was unusually calm and centered. I noticed two foxes playing in a field down the slope of a hill in front of a Victorian house near the water. One was orangish, but the other was almost black. I had never heard of a black fox before, and this is not fiction. They noticed me and trotted up closer until they were twenty feet away. We stood and watched each other. It was like two solar systems getting ready to merge, only this was the Animal Kingdom allowing me to visit. I knelt down and held out my hand. The orangish one remained behind, but the black one slowly approached and got to my finger tips and started sniffing. I turned a finger and got to touching its nose, as the fox playfully nibbled at my finger. It was ludicrous and completely real.
     
    They ran off and I got up and walked on, forever endowed with a secret of trust between the animal kingdom and the fucked up humanity I lived in. It didn’t matter if no one believed me. It was as profound as losing virginity with an angel. To this day, I pray with the friend’s name who passed away. It keeps him close to the realm I live in. My mother’s eyes are