artwork and photos down from the walls didn’t bother me the same way those little things did. Tossing out his toothbrush, bathrobe, and razor. Sliding his bookmark out from between the pages and donating the book to a secondhand store. Putting away Grandma’s afghan. That all felt so…final. So much like the moment when the machines were removed and the ECG flatlined.
It was an ironic train of thought, I supposed. One of the hardest and most decisive moments for me had been when, during my third year clinical rotations, I’d witnessed someone being taken off life support for the first time. How brutal it had been for the family members, and yet how cathartic—as if the grief had been utterly overwhelming, but so was the relief of knowing that the ordeal was over and their loved one was no longer suffering. It had made me realize medicine was too big and too devastating for me. I didn’t know how to be the person who calmly declared that it was time to let go and, upon consent of the next of kin, went through the motions to disconnect the patient from the only things keeping them as alive as they ever would be again.
Ironically still, while it had ended up being a moot point, Dad had always made it abundantly clear that his living will said no artificial life support beyond what was necessary to harvest organs for donation.
So in avoiding the small pieces of his life, was I taking the cowardly road and, in a symbolic way, denying my father his longstanding DNR?
I was overthinking this, that much I knew. Sooner or later, all these things would need to go. But not today.
Instead I wandered into the walk-in closet, which was almost as big as my bedroom in the cramped apartment I’d been bleeding myself dry to afford back in Los Angeles, and it was absolutely stuffed with my dad’s things. Folded clothes on shelves. Pressed shirts, jackets, and trousers on hangers. More shoes than I’d ever owned in my life. There was probably a joke in there about my straight dad having more shoes than his flamboyantly gay son, but I didn’t have it in me to find it.
I leaned against the door frame of the Narnia-sized closet, and I exhaled, letting exhaustion and something like grief wash over me. There was so much to do in this house, every bit of it overwhelming in its own way. The whole task was so huge, just thinking about it paralyzed me, either because whatever smaller task I wanted to tackle had some irrational baggage attached to it, or because it all just seemed futile. Like trying to move a mountain one teaspoon of dirt at a time.
Like trying to move the mountain my dad would never descend.
The thought made me flinch. If there was one thing more overwhelming than the house, it was the reason I was here at all. The magnitude of my dad’s death—the freak accident, the part where his body couldn’t even be retrieved from the peak he’d conquered just minutes earlier—made my entire brain shut down.
I pushed myself off the door frame and left the bedroom. I made it as far as the stairs, and I sat down on the top step, pressed my elbows into my knees, and kneaded my throbbing temples. I’d get through this. Somehow, I would process my dad’s death, and I would turn this house into a place where I could live without his shadow looming over me at every turn, and I would metaphorically unplug the last few machines connecting him to this life. To this house.
It wouldn’t be today, though. I didn’t have it in me. Not yet.
I needed to be somewhere else, and my mind immediately went to the most pleasant place I’d known since I’d arrived in Laurelsburg: Aaron and Will’s house.
Just thinking about them sent a rush of warmth through me. I’d spent one evening in their company. One fun, relaxed, and smoking hot evening. As I’d driven away last night with a satisfied grin on my lips, imagining all the things we’d do when we met up again, I’d felt better than I had in a long, long time. Since well before that call a few months ago that had yanked my life off its meandering rails.
I took out my phone and opened my texts. I’d messaged with both of them earlier this morning before they’d had to get to get to work. Would it