She realized that she spoke when she woke up. Her dream, fading fast as she grasped to pull it back to her mind to analyze it, like she often did, was something about her car driving off the bridge and falling slowly towards the water. She remembered too that she wasn't alone that he was in the passenger seat, unmoving, silent as they fell. There was no expression on her face in the rear view as the water came closer and closer to her bumper. Just a silent resolution that this was happening and there was nothing she could do about it. The whisper then was simply a declaration of what was happening in the final moments of her dream but she felt that it reflected where she was right now as well. Drowning in a sea of sheets, the sound of rain and negative emotions.
Melissa sat up slowly feeling the weight in her body grow as her muscles came to life. She had felt weightless laying there as if she were still falling but now that the dream was firmly whisked from her head and reality came back she felt heavy. It wasn't just a heaviness of body weight, she realized a few weeks ago she had put on a few pounds since the summer had ended, it was a weight inside of her. She pushed herself up to a seated position and in the darkness grasped around for her phone. The weight now more vivid and present in her chest like a bowling ball hanging from her rib-cage by a chain, swinging where her stomach should be. The shock of the bright light from her illuminated phone gave her eyes a sharp pain but it was quickly replaced by a lengthening of the chain in her chest, no new messages. He had messaged her the most, more than a boyfriend ever had. Now her phone was silent like he had been.
The past week had been rough and while she was happy to have a day off finally the loneliness that came with being at home was almost as bad as the feeling of being at her job. There was an isolation here in her room, under the covers, and there was also an isolation sitting at her desk looking at account numbers and answering phone calls. She might have been surrounded on the outside but on the inside she felt like the next person was hundreds of miles away. Which to her was ultimately true. The only person she wanted to talk to was hundreds of miles away now, not physically but in a more profound way. He'd never be back now. Not from where he went to.
It had rained that day too, funny how mother nature seems to know what weather to throw your way to make things that much more worse or poetic, depending on your outlook. They put him in the ground and she almost slipped in the mud as she walked over to the grave to throw a flower in. She didn't' speak much that day. Her face stoic and unmoved by the circumstances, like her face in the car as it tumbled over the bridge. This was happening, there was nothing that could be done, played in her head as she saw the flower fall and get covered by a shovelful of dirt.
It had been six months since her father passed away. Right at the end of the summer. They had come back home from another family vacation but something was wrong with her father. He was sick or hurt, she can't fully remember which. She actively tried to preserve his memory from before and not let it get overshadowed by the image of him in the hospital, growing weak and small and grey. She couldn't get rid of that image though, how he noticeable lost the color in him and turned a morbid grey before her eyes.
As Melissa sat in her room listening to the pounding rain stuck staring at her empty phone she let any and all memories come to her of her father. Good, bad, sad, happy, anything. She had felt numb ever since the funeral and it only got worse as time went on. She wanted to feel something, even if it was pain because pain told her that she cared, it showed her that she could still feel. She wanted anything, anything but him in the hospital, anything but that.
Then suddenly she recalled an image of him with her when she was 9 years old. It was donuts with dad at school and her dad had driven her to school, she didn't' have to ride the bus that day. She was so excited because she had never been driven to school by her parents, she felt special and excited to show her dad to her friends, and to eat some donuts. She pulled him from the parking lot by the hand trying to run and carry him with her all the while they both smiled on the bright chilly morning. She wanted to bring him to the cafeteria first but Mrs. Bracken said they had to wait for the others so instead she brought him to her classroom to show him what she had been working on. Some drawings and a poem she wrote but hadn't brought home. After every affirmation from him she hugged him tightly breathing in his old spice deodorant and felt the cold still clinging to his jacket from the outside. He kissed her head and his beard tickled her skin. An announcement went out that the children with their fathers could finally go to the cafeteria to get some donuts and Melissa drug her dad once again through the halls. Laughing and constantly talking about her friends her dad would meet and her teacher and how excited she was to have been driven to school. He simply smiled and nodded letting her whisk him to and fro through the morning.
Eventually they sat at a table with Melissa's best friend Emily and her father. There was a lot chatter, most of it coming from Melissa and they happily ate donuts. Her father however seemed distracted and kept looking around surveying the room. He tapped Melissa on the shoulder and pointed to a little boy and girl sitting alone away from the others. Melissa frowned but said nothing. Her father stood up and walked over to them and Melissa mouth half full stood up to follow him, quickly saying see ya later to Emily. Her father sat down and waved to the kids by themselves. They looked up but quickly averted their eyes until Melissa came up behind him. He turned to her and moved his hands, she nodded and turned to the two kids.
"My dad wants to know if it's okay if we sit with you." Melissa said, already taking her seat and grabbing another donut from the rather untouched box at the table. The boy nodded but gave her father a strange look. Melissa saw this and smiled. "Don't worry he doesn't bite." Eventually the boy and girl warmed up to them and they all sat talking, mostly Melissa, and enjoyed the box of donuts together. Her father smiling and laughing along with them as much as he could until time was up. Another announcement was made and the fathers had to leave. Melissa got up, sugar all around her lips and hugged her dad again leaving sugar on his shirt. He wiped her face and kissed her head again.
As he walked away he turned at the door and motioned with his hands "I love you" and Melissa signed back. The boy came up behind her and asked, "Why doesn't he talk? Is your dad okay?"
"He's great, he's just deaf. That's why I do most of the talking for him." Melissa said eyeing another donut not worrying too much about the question.
"Thank you." the boy said, the girl nodding behind him sheepishly.
"You're welcome." she said smiling, not realizing then why he had said it. She realized now.
Back in her room Melissa felt rain hit her crossed legs. It was warm though and not cold like rain should be. Then she realized it was a tear and not rain. The rain had subsided somewhat while she was lost in thought. She could feel something after all, she thought as she sat quietly sobbing on her bed. She wiped her eyes and the image from the dream came back again. She was sitting in the drivers seat of a car toppling over a bridge in slow motion, her father seated next to her quiet like he always was but this time her mind was drawn to his hands and not his face. In the dream he was signing, "I love you". In that instant the weight she felt, the ball on the chain felt like it lost a few of its pounds as she exploded into tears.
"I miss you so much," she whispered, "I feel like I'm drowning."
Melissa spent the next few hours attempting to leave her room but to no avail wrapped up in reminiscing about her father and the other small things he had done over he lifetime. All the times he had been there silently watching her, smiling, and loving her in his own way. He had been her best friend, her confidant, and most of all the best father she could ever ask for. But now he was gone and all that remained were the memories and the pain. She wiped another tear from her face and saw a picture sitting on its side on her desk of him and her at her graduation. The memories and the pain, the two things that made it real. The two things that reminded her that she still felt something. All she had left of her father.
The rain finally stopped at 4 a.m., Melissa had woken up from her dream at midnight and sat in her bed in the relative dark, between lightning flashes for those hours thinking and reminiscing. She started to feel tired again and wanted to fall back asleep so she wrapped herself tighter in her sheets and breathed deeply hoping she'd see her father again in her dreams but hoping this time she wouldn't be in the car, on that bridge, falling.
The sunlight blinded her as she blinked and covered her face letting the shadow guard her from the light as she caught her surroundings. She was outside her childhood home, where she lived with her grandparents and her father when was still in elementary school. She saw the bus coming up the street and from the house a little girl in yellow and blue ran out to catch it waving back to the house and signing "I love you" to the man in the shade of the porch. The bus drove off leaving the man alone standing with a smile that slowly faded. Melissa ran up to him but felt like her feet were made of lead and her legs were springy like rubber. The image shifted as she felt a weight in her chest. Now she was in the living room, a few years before, the man carrying a smaller girl to her room and kissing her good night. Melissa stood in the hallway and watched as he shut the door and turned to face her. It was a younger version of her father. The beard had no grey and his skin wasn't as worn but the smile was still the same.
He turned to face her and brought up his hands. "I love you, I'm sorry I'm gone now. I'll never stop loving you. I'll always be with you in your heart." She ran to him and buried her face in his chest turning into the same child he had just put to sleep and began to weep.
"I miss you so much, daddy. I love you." Melissa wept and she felt him squeeze her and lift her up like he used to when she was little. She saw a tear form in his eye and his mouth opened to speak.
"I love you Melissa."
Melissa woke up again, the sun shining in her room. The weight she had felt the night and many days before seemed to slowly dissipate as she pushed herself up from the sheets. She sat at the foot of her bed her head in her hands holding on tightly to the dream, her father's voice, rarely heard, speaking her name still at the forefront. She took in a deep breath and looked quickly from side to side. She was sure she smelled his old spice just then. She jumped up but stopped before reaching her door. It was just a dream, she thought, letting her hand fall, but in the realization the pain didn't return. She put her hand to her chest to feel her heart beat and knew her father was in there. He was still with her and now, in the light of a new day, streaming through the mist of the morning, she felt like she could go on.
She didn't feel like she was drowning.
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