Creative Nonfiction Contest Winner
When Leaving Saves a Life
My mom left and saved my dad’s life.
There was a lot about him that was 80% blocked for me.
A memory of standing between my dad’s anger and my younger brother. The words rising like black smoke, billowing up to our high ceilings. They were gone in the morning, but I still smell them on my clothes years later.
A loud conversation at a Longhorn Steakhouse that turned heads and reverberated through hushed whispers around us. He stormed out, more smoke enveloping me in words I can’t unhear. We drove separately home.
Somehow more painful, are the memories of the mornings.
He sat peacefully with a newspaper, a hot Earl Grey tea, and a hardboiled egg. While there was the occasional eye-roll-inducing lecture, our interactions were peaceful, clear-eyed, and familial.
Sometimes grief is not about what you’ve lost, but what you wish existed in the first place. A world where “Morning Dad” was just Dad.
My grief and anger about our relationship, about the way alcoholism turned Morning Dad into a swirling wildfire of chaos and hurt, is most of the time blocked. I carry it in my bones and release it at therapy once a month, slowly but surely healing each…
