White hair.  If you asked me what I remember most about my Grandfather's funeral, I would say white hair.



    He didn't look like this last time I saw him.  Last time I thought I WOULD see him.  That was the plan, anyway.

    It was like being punched in the gut.  I hugged my dad, and barely croaked out, "Hey, Pop."  This wasn't right.  He didn't have white hair.  He was graying, certainly, salt and pepper.  My mind reeled, trying to reconcile six years of missing time in an instant.

    *****

    I have to leave.  I don't know how to have this conversation.  It's going to kill me.  But I've made up my mind.

    I tell him that in the end, it's for his own good.  He needs to get back on his feet, and take charge of his life again.  The only reason I've been here this long is for him, to give him the chance and the time.  It's all true, and even as I'm saying it, it sounds forced and hollow.

    And then I tell him part of what I realized.  I say that I thought about yesterday, and the day before that, and the week before that, and the year before that, and I can't remember the last time I was happy.  He nods, eyes downcast and clearly sad, but I think he knew even before I did.  And I think he knew this day was coming.

    I didn't tell him that I was also leaving because I found out he was letting my brother stay there, in my home, when I was at work or on vacation.

    *****

    I remember the first time I saw him truly vulnerable.  The phone was still in his hand, and I had heard a raised voice from his room.  He came storming out, and told me that he had to go across the country to Louisiana right now.  My (future) stepdad and brother were arguing about something again, and my dad thought there was some physical violence.  There wasn't, of course.  My brother was a fantastic liar even at that point.

    His hand was shaking uncontrollably in the way it only did when he was truly furious about something.  But then...he just broke.  He dropped the phone and started sobbing.  I could make assumptions about the crushing nature of his impotence in fixing the situation, but I'll never truly know.  All I saw was a man I'd looked up to my whole life drop to his knees and break.

    I didn't know what to do.  Was this where I was supposed to say something to fix things?  I didn't have the words.  I didn't have the experience.  Who the hell was I?  I walked over and hugged him.  He needed something to hold on to.  Minutes passed.

    *****

    "Why did you come back here?"

    A little girl in a nightgown is staring at me.  The question takes me completely off guard.  To the condo, I tell myself.  She means why did I come back to the condo.  The funeral and reception were now over.  I was sitting in the dining room of what used to be my aunt and grandparents' condo.  Then my aunt and grandfather's condo.  Now just my aunt's.

    "Aunt Toni asked me to," I say.  As simple and to-the-point an answer I would give my niece.  They seem around the same age.  She seems to take this as an acceptable response, nodding just a bit.

    Who is she?  Six years.  I have absolutely no idea what has happened in the lives of anyone here in six years.  Long enough for some to have kids.  Some are married.  Six more years for all of them to forget what little they ever knew about me.

    "Who are you?" she asks, a few moments later, after she decides that she wants to know.  I smile just a bit.  How do I answer such a brazen, amusing question...the kind I'd only let a kid get away with without assuming any malice behind it.

    "You know the giant, old portrait in the other room, over the couch?  I'm the boy all the way on the left."

    She tilts her head a little bit in thought for a second, then leaves.  She's aware that I'm family now, at least.  I think.  She's one of Kim's kids, probably.

    *****

    I don't blame him for his part in what happened.  Even as broken a person as I am, I just can't.  What he did, he did out of compassion.  He's too much like me.  His mistakes were made for the right reasons.

    *****

    I think more about that portrait later in the night, when I'm failing to sleep.  All the way on the left, on the edge.  A good metaphor for what I am in that family.  An edge case.  An outsider.

    They're not bad people.  Not most of them, anyway.  They tried a little, in their own ways.  Tried to include me.  The adults, mostly.  Cousins could take or leave me.  They grew up with each other, had those bonds.  I was one of the three Louisiana kids.  The ones who only showed up sometimes in the summer, or at Christmas.  A novelty.

    I didn't try, either.  I didn't know who they were, and I didn't understand how to find out.  I got along with the adults much better.  They at least saw that I was uncomfortable, and helped in what ways they could.  Aunt Toni was a friend and confidant.  Everyone else...it never changed.  Even when I moved there for the end of high school and nine years after, it never changed.  Always the boy all the way to the side.

    *****

    Oh, god, what have I done?  It isn't supposed to be like this.

    I'm standing outside the car at the motel where Dad is living.  We're dropping him off for the night, and I've just made a mess of things.

    I didn't mean to.  I never mean to.  I took him to the side as we got out of the car, and said firmly but clearly to stop complaining about his medical problems.  It's making my sister uncomfortable, I say, and I know he doesn't want that.  He nods, embarrassed, and instantly I know I screwed up.  I always do.  Why can't I manage to help someone without hurting someone else?  I'm talking to my father, the man who raised me, as though he was a child to be corrected.  Who the hell am I to do such a thing?

    I try to salvage his pride, mentioning that she's going through a rough patch with her boyfriend, and little things are setting her off.  It's not his fault, I try to say.  It's not that we don't care about his medical problems...we do, it's just that we can't do anything to help, and I don't want her to feel even worse right now.

    I don't know if it helps.  I go to bed not long after still feeling sick with guilt.

    *****

    When I left this place, it was with the intention of never coming back.  It had to be that way.  The only way that I could leave was to cut ties.  If I still cared about anyone here, I never would have made it out.  So I walled those emotions off.  It took time.  It took events.  It eventually worked.  When I left this place, I was leaving for good.  I was leaving all of these people forever.  I was leaving my Dad to live and die in his own way.

    I didn't want to attend the funeral.  I still don't know why I did.  And as simple a thing as it may seem, all it took was that white hair to break those walls back down.  So much pain and love and fear that I had left behind as part of another life all rushed back in.

    *****

    The planes home are, as they tend to be for me, times of great introspection.  There's an adage that says that every man is a hero in the eyes of his son.  My father certainly was to me.  But I'm too old for heroes now.  My father is a man.  He's made decisions, many good and many bad, and made mistakes.  He's taken pity on people and had pity taken on him.  He's lost nearly everything he spent his life working toward, but still he keeps going.  I don't know why.  I wonder...no, I know he's stronger than me.  I don't know if I could do the same.

    It scares me.  The white hair of a once-hero, now simply a man scarily similar to myself, the more I think about it.  It's evidence of the passage of time.  It's evidence of his eventual death, which before this trip I would scarcely have felt.  It's evidence of my own.  I love him for who he is.  I fear him for who he is.  At the end of the day, it's who I am.  I don't know what he's looking for in life.  I hope he finds it.

    *****

    "It was good to see your Dad, right?"  Mom is making small talk while we wait for our luggage.

    At this point, I honestly have no answer.  I give a weak, "Yeah," and hope it'll be enough.  For her, and me.