Remembering My Guardian Angel
“It’s okay, Jess. Take care of Levi for me. I’ll be okay if he is okay.”
These were my stepdad’s last words to me, although, he never actually spoke them to me, at least not in the traditional sense.
Gene came to me in a dream a few weeks after he passed away. The dream was so realistic and so heavy and so life-altering that it feels like I’ve had the same dream every night of my life. I don’t remember what I wore yesterday, but I remember that dream as if it were last night. I did some research afterwards and it turns out that plenty of people have similar dreams. Typically speaking, I’m not a very optimistic person but there is such beauty in being offered closure in a hopeless situation. Your subconscious can (and just actually might) offer you something solid; some hope to hold onto. I am not religious, but Gene has always been my guardian angel.
In October of 2005, I had just started my excursion into being a forever-in-debt college graduate. I’d traveled an hour north to go to a university with my best friend, both of us finding comfort in knowing how close we were to our families, neither of us knowing how helpful that choice would turn out to be. I have a few brothers, one of whom has a different father than the rest of us. Though my baby brother is not technically my full brother, my family has a strict policy of outlawing such distinctions. We don’t believe in halves in my family. Sure, we have a different last name and my skin is more olive than his — and he has a passion for not cutting his hair and rocking out to heavy metal — but none of that matters. His father was more of a father to me than my father ever was, and beyond all of that, without Gene in our lives, I would not have him. I owe Gene everything. We all do.
I met Gene Blair Richards at an age that I cannot remember, but it was one of those ages in which I was influenced by everything. My parents split when we were too young to care about stuff like that. I never felt like I suffered the loss of a father figure, but it’s because I had Gene. Gene was always just there, or that’s how I remember it. He taught me how to ride a bike because he had patience that everyone else lacked. (I can be difficult.) Gene taught me how to tie my shoes because it was too hard for me to learn the one-loop trick and he just understood that about me. Gene humored me and unknowingly taught me how to have a sense of humor at the same time. Gene was the funniest person I knew growing up, and I wholeheartedly believe that he passed it on to me and all three of my brothers. He never upset me. He never scolded me. He was on my side 100% of the time. He taught me what loyalty meant and he loved me so honestly and he gave me the most important person in my life. I owe him everything.
My mother and Gene split up, as people do. There are a million things that happened that I’ll probably never understand and that I’ll probably never want to understand. Gene moved back to his home state, eventually picked up a drug habit and went to rehab. He wrote my mother a letter that I read even though I shouldn’t have. It was about being sorry and about loving her and about loving us and about loving his son so much. It broke my heart but I was happy that he was getting help that I didn’t know he needed. He got better because sometimes people get better but then he got worse because sometimes people get worse. He lived with us again for a while but he slipped back into his habits and I realized as a teenager that drug addiction is as bad as any other disease. I worried about him every single day. The last thing he told me was that he was proud of me.
He’d be dead in a year.
My entire family shifted when we got that phone call. None of us grew up easy but none of us saw Gene’s tragic death coming. If I never remember anything else, I will always have the memory of my baby brother crying into my tie-dye shirt when we found out his father had died. It was unfair and it was tragic and it was something none of us would ever recover from. I considered not going back to school. I considered adopting my baby brother if I needed to. I considered hiding from the entire world because everything was too hard.
When people pass after a long battle with illness, we say they are in a better place. Gene was sick, undoubtedly, but I didn’t feel like he was in a better place. I wanted him with us. I wanted him to be able to watch his son grow into his identical twin. I wanted him to see his son fall in love young and maintain that relationship better than I could have ever dreamed. I wanted him to watch his son grow into the intellectual genius he is now. I wanted him to know his son. I didn’t feel comfort when he died. I didn’t feel that until I dreamt.
A few weeks after his passing, I dreamt of him. He was sleeping in the top bed of a bunk, gray blankets were everywhere. I walked into the room and he was just as he had always been — a stringbean of an adult man. His rough but comforting voice — as if he had just taken a drag off of a cigarette — spoke to me as it always had. I was crying. He was not. His low ponytail and black grunge shirt full of holes were so familiar to me, as if I were six years old again.
“It’s okay, Jess. Take care of Levi for me. I’ll be okay if he is okay.”
He is okay. He has had a rough life but he is surrounded by love and joy and strength. He has become so much like his father in all of the good ways one hopes to be like their parents. We are not religious people, and neither was Gene, but I believe in something. I believe in something because I hear him in every Nirvana song. I believe in something because we are all better people because of him. I believe in something because I still hear his laugh. I believe in something because my brother’s hair is longer than mine ever will be, because he has never stopped growing it to pay homage to his father.
I believe that Gene is okay because his son is okay. And I believe in dreams and I believe in Gene watching over us.
Exactly 10 years later, I believe in him still. I always will.
