Father's Day At a Cemetery

Father's Day At a Cemetery(Kerri Dominique) A lot of people hate a lot of holidays for a lot of different reasons. Some think Valentine's Day is cheesy and that Christmas is too commercial and Thanksgiving means a lot of hard work cooking for a meal that will take less than half an hour to eat. But there's really no reason to hate Father's Day, unless of course, you don't have a father.

Every year follwing that godawful day that took away one of my best friends on Earth, I've dreaded Father's Day. It would be one thing if it was simply that I felt like the only one who didn't have a father to celebrate, but it's another that everybody has to make a big deal about it. Like how my cousin always invites my mom, sister, and me to a picnic or something to "keep our minds off things." Or how my friend Becca, who now lives in Oklahoma, calls me to tell me that she knows "this must be so hard for you." Seriously people, can't you just let the day pass so I can pretend it doesn't exist and keep going on as if I'm a perfectly normal teenager and I've never experienced tragedy? I know what you're trying to do, but I'd really you rather just not waste the effort.

It's silent in our car as Mom drives us down to where my dad is buried, forty-five minutes away in the town he grew up in. I'm waiting for the moment Mom starts talking about him and Ali and I just sit there and make her feel awkward. I know she thinks I don't even miss Dad, that I don't even care that he killed himself, but that's not true. It's just that I somehow got in the habit of not wanting to talk about him and it feels weird to start now. Besides, I don't now how to refer to him. When he was alive he was always "Daddy" but I'm fifteen now and too old to call him that. But if I say "Dad" out loud I feel like I'm talking about someone else, someone who doesn't mean as much to me.

Much to my surprise, Mom never breaks the silence. Maybe it's just too much for her. She's been out of work for years now and I feel like lately my father's death has made her more depressed than it did after it first happened. And I didn't think that was possible.

We pull up on the gravelly road of the cemetery where a large portion of my family is buried. Mom's own father, who died when she was the age I am now, happens to be buried right next to Dad, and I know that every time Mom looks at the side-by-side graves, all she can think about is how shitty her luck is. Or at least that's what I think when I look at them.

We get out of our car and walk up the small hill, passing the familiar graves I've looked at countless times, on previous visits. It's been so long since I've last been here though, and I can see that there's a few new ones, leaving almost no empty space. I'm sure Mom expects the three of us to be buried here too, but it doesn't look like that'll happen. Good. I don't want to be buried here. I want to be buried far, far away.

Mom stopped on the way to get some flowers to lay on it, and she wanted me to carry them and do the honor.

"Go ahead Becca, put 'em down."

I lay them gently across the flat surface of the stone bearing my father's name. It's an ugly stone, and not the one Mom had wanted, but that's what we ended up with somehow. It looks kind of pitiful compared to the large, fancy one my grandfather has, which Mom is now staring at unwaveringly. I don't even bother to look at Ali, who hardly even remembers my dad and treats our visits to the cemetery like a fun trip in which she walks around and tries to figure out how old people were when they died. I used to join her, trying to forget the real reason we were there, but now we're older and it's not right to forget. We need to hurt. We need to know that our dad committed suicide and it might've been partially our fault.

I'm still staring at the grave and the sunflowers, which were my dad's favorite kind of flower. He loved gardening, and we used to grow some in our backyard. There was a time when I spent hours outside with him, watching him to do his work, and how whenever I came inside Mom wouldn't be able to get over the fact that both of us had managed to not get mosiquito bites. It was funny, because after he died, mosquitoes didn't stay away from me anymore. Now I can't stay out for ten minutes without my legs getting attacked.

Mom makes her usual comment about how "at least we know Daddy's in heaven," which always pisses me off because even if there is a heaven, which I highly doubt, there's no way people who committ suicide go there. If you're so weak you can't even stay on Earth long enough to watch your kids grow up, you don't deserve a heaven.

I've stared at the damn grave long enough and there's no other grave that matters to me, so with no explanation I head back to the car. Mom's asking what I'm doing and telling me she's not ready to leave yet and I'm disrespecting the dead or whatever, but I keep walking. I get back in the passenger seat of the car, lock the doors, and cry. And I know Mom will only be so mad at me because she's been waiting for me too. She's been waiting for years for me to show some emotion on Father's Day.

After all, a girl should be allowed to miss her daddy. No matter how old she is or whether it's Father's Day, and even if there's no such thing as heaven and he doesn't deserve to be there anyway.