By Nathan Asala

Dear Rick—I mean—sorry, Dad,

Mom told me to call you Dad. She said it was rude to refer to you as anything else. I–this is weird, but I’m trying this again. The eulogy I tried to give at your funeral was…shit. It’s my fault, though. I procrastinated. Even worse than that, I just assumed that the words, the emotion, all of it would just…come. All I had to do was see your body beneath the dirt, see the mournful eyes on me, feel the wind in my hair, and I would be able to deliver the perfect eulogy. I really believed that. I really did. But that wasn’t the case. I choked, Dad. I fucking choked. My mind went blank. I felt the wind in my hair, saw the mournful eyes stuck to me, saw the dirt that your body lay in, and…I realized that I don’t actually know anything about you. I mean you liked cars…and sports probably. 

I don’t know what Mom and the others actually expected me to say. You had this bright red car when I was nine. One day you got inside it and you drove until you couldn’t remember our names. The second phone call after you left, the last phone call, I remember that you called by your stepkid’s name on the phone. For fuck’s sake! When you drove away you became a stranger. There was maybe a point when I knew things about you, but when you rode off into the sunset, it was like…they were all erased. Now, I know you as much as I know myself! That’s your fault!

I’m sorry, this…this isn’t coming out the way it was supposed to. I just want to tell you that…I wish you had stayed. At home. With mom. With me. When you left it didn’t just tear a hole through our family, it tore a hole through me—my entire being. For eight years I’ve been wandering around trying to fill that gap. Find the positives within the negative space. Mom was an angel. Gave me everything she had, and did everything to distract me from…you. But even with all of that love and devotion, there was just always something missing. A piece of the puzzle that always remained lost. So I’ve been searching for it. 

I—I hate beating around the bush, Rick, I don’t know if you remember that about me, but I do. I hated bushes the same way I loved climbing trees. The endless longevity of them all. The way they just never seem to end. The way that you can look at them from just the right angle and they can seem like they touch the sky. I’ve been searching for love in all of the wrong places. 

I’ve lost count of how many ‘boyfriends’ I’ve had. I think I saw you in all of them. Sometimes their faces actually morph into yours—and before you start, I know how fucked up that is. With each new guy, it’s like I…I reshape my personality to fit them. To fit what they want and their expectations. Some want to be taken care of. Most want to take care of me. All wanted it. Again, I hate to beat around the bush, but I…this is supposed to be a goddamn eulogy. Or eulogy adjacent. So, I’ll say that…they liked fast cars. And pretty much all of them liked to drive fast. A lot of times a bit too fast for my liking. It’s been kind of hard to picture the way I was before…this. Puberty. Before…driving became one of the only ways I was able to cope. With all of the loneliness and the insecurity. 

Why couldn’t you stay? Why was I just not enough for you to stay? All these years and you never actually gave any explanation. Or any reason. I could never feel okay with myself once you were gone. I would have a hair out of place and there would always be this voice in the back of my mind saying “This is why he left.” So I projected in order to give myself a second chance. And—the sad thing is…I fell in love with all of the guys I dated. Love. I complied more times than I didn’t. 

I’m a fucking shell, Dad! A dead tree that’s stopped getting nutrients and has shriveled. Has become grey. I want to love you! And I want this letter to mean something. Even now that you’re…dead. I want to miss you, but I don’t even really know what to miss! Honestly, in some ways, I think that my heart gave out long before yours did. And I hate myself for saying that. I feel like I feel love in the wrong way. Like it shouldn’t be so…immediate and unconscious. I couldn’t tell you what I liked about those boys. But I can tell you that they didn’t love me. Did you? Before the heart attack? Did you think of me? Did you see my face in your new wife’s complexion? In that of your stepson and daughter? Did you hear my laugh interweaving with theirs? Did I leave a gaping hole in your chest? Did you search to recreate me? Or was I just that…disappointing? Forgettable? Regardless, I hate what I am now. Because I see nothing when I look in the mirror. And I don’t know if this will ever change. Especially now that there is really no chance of us ever reconciling. And because now I will never get an explanation. All I have now is more negative space. A black hole that’s engulfing everything that surrounds it.

So, it may be selfish, considering the circumstances, but please just do this one thing for me. This ONE thing. As you rest beneath, above, and within the soil, picture me in the trees, intermingling with the branches and the sky, breathing in the clouds before everything hit the ground and you pierced me like a knife. 

Your child, who… loves you

–

Nathan is a young Canadian writer who primarily focuses on poetry, short stories, and screenplays. At age 16, he published his first poetry book, The Proposition of Disaster. Nathan is also very involved in the performing and visual arts, passions that he would like to build into a career.