The Counting-Downers (2 page)

We don’t know how he will go. Fate is not that cruelly kind to us.

We only know when. That is all we’re ever told.

When.

Not how.

Not where.

Not why.

Never why.

11 days, 4 hours, 22 minutes, and 58 seconds until my world falls apart and Fate whispers,
“Now.”

Of course, I might go before him.

I don’t know. And I never will.

But they do.

Everyone I encounter can see the digital clock above my head, counting down to my timed, untimely demise.

Family, friends, strangers, lovers, enemies, even you.

Everyone except me.

No one is allowed to tell me how many more times my heart will beat. Or how many more breaths I will take.

It could be ten thousand or ten million.

That’s just the way it goes.

We didn’t write the rules of life, but we have to live by them.

Grains of sand at the mercy of the fickle dancing wind.

My father may have 11 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes, and 43 seconds left in this lifetime, but the true timeless truth remains: Time is running out for all of us.

Ready or not.

Our days are numbered.

FEAR. CHOKING, TERRIFYING, clawing, suffocating, desperate, nauseating, all-consuming fear.

How do you say goodbye to someone you can’t imagine living without? How do you hug them knowing it will be for the final time? What are the last words you say to them, knowing they have to count, that they will be the most important words you will ever say? How can you capture the image of their face with your eyes and make sure it never fades? How can you record their voice, their laugh, their advice, so that you can replay it in times of soulless silence?

And when you finally break apart from that final embrace, how can you possibly let them go, knowing you will never see them again? What do you do when goodbye is not see you later? How is there any
good
in goodbye?

Despite having known my father will die on March 14, 2016 for as long as I can remember, I’m still not prepared to look into his eyes and be in his arms for the final time.

If you’re wondering how I know the precise date of my father’s demise, I should probably explain. We’re all born dying. That’s a fact as old and as true as time itself.

From the first gasp of air into our lungs, the very second we take our first breath and wonder what is going on, and who brought us out of darkness into the light, our days are numbered.

Each of us has a number. Me. Them. You.

Except, unlike you, we can all see our numbers. Well, not our own, but the numbers of those around us. When I look at my mother, my father, my brother, or a stranger on the street, I can see a floating digital clock just above their heads, counting down to the time when they take their final breath.

The countdown clocks are head-width, with the time formatted in years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. The bold text of the countdown adjusts to light settings so that it is black in the daytime and white at night or in the dark. This makes it impossible to escape or ignore. Still, we try.

Just as I can see everyone’s countdown, they can also see mine. But when I look in a mirror, I can’t see anything but my long blonde hair, mousy features, and emerald eyes staring back at me. No one is allowed to tell me my number, and I’m not allowed to tell them theirs.

That’s the deal; or as I like to think of it, the rules of the twisted game called Life. We didn’t just wake up one day with these clocks above our heads. This is just the way it’s always been since the beginning of civilization. Whether we evolved to have this unwanted knowledge, or someone created it for us, I don’t know.

I’m not sure if I believe in God, especially not at the moment. How can I when He, or She, threatens to take the center of our world away from my family? When He, She, It, takes away large groups of people in famine and floods, and curses them with souls full of heartbreak, pain, and suffering?

I digress. The point is, if you tell someone their ‘number’ or how long they have left, you both immediately fall into a never-ending slumber. ‘Lover’s Suicide’ is what it’s called for the desperate who tell each other on purpose. To avoid innocent children making a tragic mistake, or angry teenagers dropping the truth into a hormonally-charged argument, the ‘gift’ of seeing the countdown clocks arrives only when you turn eighteen.

If you don’t want to take the suicidal option, it means that even your goodbyes have to be carefully worded. Although it’s pretty obvious to the person in question when people start giving them living eulogies, longing looks, lengthy embraces, and tearful confessions. When all of a sudden, everyone you know wants to tell you what they think of you and how much you mean to them, how can you fail to see the proverbial writing on the wall? The one that says ‘TICK TOCK’ in large blinking neon letters?

Such is the case with my perceptive father. He’s spent the past week with me and my brother, Oscar. He gave me advice about men and marriage; digging out photo albums and taking trips down memory lane, making us laugh and creating new memories. He told me how proud he is of me and how he’ll always be there for me, whether in person or in spirit. But what he hasn’t done, is questioned my tears or tight embraces; he’s only promised me that everything will be okay in the end.

We all have to talk around it, speak in hypotheticals and synonyms. I’m running out of breath and ways to say ‘I love you.’ It should be a part of every other sentence that leaves my mouth, interspersed with expressions of gratitude, truth, and praise.

I’m struggling to think of everything I may want to ask or know about him, everything I may want his advice on in the future.

Over the past year, I’ve used up the memory on my phone and cameras taking pictures of the two of us together, and of us as a family. I’ve interviewed him about his life, keeping notes on everything from his favorite color, book, and song, to his first kiss, and blood type. I’ve recorded secret videos of him playing with my brother, or spending quality time with my mom, dancing in each other’s arms and whispering silent promises to be together for an eternity of lifetimes.

And it still doesn’t seem enough. We always want what we don’t have, and I just want more time. If only I could trade it. Five minutes off my life for five minutes more with him.

Time. That’s what it always comes down and back to. One word with four letters shouldn’t hold so much power. But I guess you could say the same about…

Love. Hate. Fate. Free. Evil. Life.

Four letters can change, create, shape, or end a life.

There will never be enough time to say goodbye, and even if there were, I still wouldn’t know how to.

I don’t know what life has in store for me or when my time will be up. There may be someone out there ‘destined’ for me. But although he may not be the
only
love of my life, my father will always be the
first
.

How do you prepare for the end of first love? I’m on an express train speeding toward the last stop on the line and I’m not ready to get off.

I’m sick of people pretending time is so benevolent. Time may heal, but it doesn’t explain its decisions or apologize for its scarcity. Time waits for no man, and answers to no one. Time is kind of an asshole.

And while it’s busy being one, darkness is closing in. As my family’s doomsday approaches, my chest is compressed by the encroaching weight of grief. The letters of my least favorite four-letter word, time, have wrapped themselves around my throat and are threatening to suffocate me.

At this rate, I may die before my father. I cannot only see the clock ticking down above his head, but I swear I can hear it with every foreboding beat of my heart. The reminder that I’m still alive is also a reminder that soon he won’t be. The person who helped give me life, who contributed to a heart that began beating nineteen years ago, is now being sentenced to death by the very thing he created.

My constant worry is that I’ve forgotten something, something I haven’t asked him, or said, or done, that I may regret long after he is gone. All I can do is make sure he knows how much he is loved, treasured, adored…and will be missed.

IT’S BEEN A week since my father passed away from a heart attack. Since he walked out the door to go to work at his office in central San Diego with an hour left above his head, kissed us goodbye, and never came back.

I didn’t go out that day and my mother took the day off work. It was probably for the best.

She said she didn’t want to receive or have to make
that phone call
. You know the one. Shrill rings, which interrupt the silence with tones of doom, and the threatening promise to change your life. The type of phone call that makes you wish you’d never answered. That somehow, if you had just not picked up the phone, there would be nothing for the person on the other end to say and you could continue living on in blissfully ignorant denial.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? If someone dies and no one is there to pick up the phone and shoot the messenger, are they still alive?

My mother may not have been able to spare me the death of my father, but at least she prevented the living nightmare of being out somewhere in public when I was told my world had ended.

At least she spared herself the utter humiliation of being told the devastating news in the most hushed of tones by someone who couldn’t even make eye contact and wished they were anywhere else. If my mom hates one thing, it’s a scene, so it makes sense she would try to avoid an emotional breakdown in front of her colleagues. Supposed friends who would have stood around like schadenfreudic spectators, showcasing the worst of human nature by gawking in silence at someone else’s suffering.

At least we were able to cling to each other on either side of a lake of tears. We were conjoined twins from the time the door clicked shut after my father for the final time, to the moment his devastated boss rang with
that phone call
.

At least he wasn’t alone.

At least we were able to say goodbye.