Naomi Smith

21 September 2023

ENGL 398R

When I was in 6th grade, my best friend’s dad died. I still remember when she told me.

She called me around the same time she always did. My mom called out to me that she was on

the phone, which I had already known when I heard it ringing. I grab the rounded white phone

with the weird gray rubber antenna that’s gummy for some reason. I said hi and she said hi and

then there was a long silence, embarrassingly long, and I wanted to make the joke, what? did

somebody die? or did somebody get into a car accident? something like that, and then she told

me her Dad died in a car accident and and then I didn’t have anything I wanted to say.

My mom and I brought them cookies. We drove to her house, which suddenly felt a little

emptier, despite it being piled with baked goods and casseroles. My mom talked to her mom as

we sat on the wooden steps lines with photos of them, him in a dark green shirt on a white

background. He had helped start SharkWeek. She always liked to talk about that, marvel in his

other world-lyness. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember laughing with her

about some really dark joke. I was grateful that she trusted me enough to let me laugh at it too.

I got my period before most of my friends. I was at a baseball game. I had never been to a

baseball game before; I was amazed at all the free stuff they gave you. I wanted to come to all

the baseball games so I could have infinite pens and fun pads of paper. She had called to ask if I

wanted to come with her and her dad, and then sleepover and go to swim practice in the morning.

We sat in dark green plastic seats. Or were they blue? I can’t remember. I do remember feeling

heard, something I didn’t feel often. Nobody listens to 11-year-old girls. Not in the really serious
way I wanted. He had big, thick glasses which sat upon a tanned, weathered face and a thick

white mustache to match. I still remember the deep wrinkles he had, painting a life on his face.

My stomach had never hurt so badly before, and when I went to the bathroom I found out

why. I didn’t tell either of them. That night, I lay staring at the ceiling, in more pain than I had

ever understood before. It was one of the best sleepovers of my life.

He died in a car accident. A collision with a truck driver in an intersection I’ve gotten too

confused over the years to remember. Intersections seem a lot less unique when you’re 11. The

truck driver was charged with 2nd degree manslaughter. My friend had to testify at the trial. At

first she said angry things about him, but once the trial came she said she didn’t want him to get

in trouble. He didn’t mean to. She was only 11.

I remember wishing I had brought the card over to their house like I’d been planning on

doing. A birthday card or something, and I blamed myself in that way. If I had just brought it

over it would’ve been lying on the ground and he would’ve picked it up and through those thick

round glasses he would’ve squinted at it for a few seconds before smiling and putting it on their

Hickory wood table and then he wouldn’t have been t-boned by that truck driver.

** ** **

One of our family friends just turned 80. My dad used to be in a triathlon group with him.

A couple weeks ago, we all went to his 80th surprise party. He’s dressed in a floral short sleeve

button up, assumedly to honor Jimmy Buffet’s death that week. His ivory hair is longer and

wispier than I remember it, and it’s pulled into a ponytail. He always had the wittiest things to

say. As my family and I walked up to him, I could see how watery his eyes now were. I choked

on my own watery eyes. Later he says to my dad ‘ya know when you’re younger and you learn

something, it’s like carving in stone. When you’re old, it’s like drawing in sand,’ he laughs
heartily when he says it, like he always does. These were always my favorite parts of seeing

Pete, watching his eyes light up as he says out loud what he had been thinking for a while,

maybe forever. This time, I felt his glow dimming, trying desperately to embrace this. I watched

my dad not get swept up in his philosophical musing like he usually did, but stand, a little more

awkwardly than usual, with eyes of despair. He was never good with negative emotions.

Nobody close to me has died since then. Family members I’d met a couple times, but no

one who had helped me feel seen. I recently became obsessed with Mac Miller, and he died

monumentally 4 years ago, so I’ve been taking that hard. Almost 7 million people have died of

COVID. Every decision we have made for the past 3 years has felt directly linked to each one of

those deaths. Death has never felt more real, more overwhelming than in these three years. I

understand it so much less now and yet I feel it constantly. It never feels like you can appreciate

the single moment you’re in enough to make up for their death.When he died, she and I and our

other friends and her mom held onto him in stories and his stupid singing fish they had

downstairs that we had memorized the lyrics to and in his old pinball machines that didn’t work

but took up a whole room. Now, I don’t know how to hold on to everyone who I don’t know that

has died. I don’t know how to make space for them, the friend’s parents and grandparents for

whom they would always pack a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos to bring to India. I don’t even know

what they look like, or what they do, or what they like to think about. I’ve never felt something

so viscerally while not knowing what it is. For the first time in my life, I was focused more on

the dying than the living. It’s like the dying crept in and slowly slithered itself around until the

living forgot how to breathe. I still sometimes forget how to breathe. Tomorrow seems like a

good place to start. And if it’s not, I’m sure the next day can’t be much worse.