Emails from My Father’s Mistress, Posthumously [Part II]

After I met Wendy in the fall of 2002, I treated her like I did all of my Dad’s friends whom I met and liked: I got her e-mail address and sent her an e-mail saying it was nice to have met her and suggesting we should keep in touch. She agreed. We exchanged a few brief e-mails in the months thereafter. When I talked to my Dad, which was at least once a week by phone and more frequently by e-mail, I would sometimes ask if he had heard from her. I found out at some point he had created an e-mail address just to e-mail her, which he tried to only use on his work PC, since he knew my mother regularly went through his other e-mail inboxes.

This behavior did seem to suggest something more than just a good friendship. I was busy being a barista and trying to find more excuses not to go to law school the next fall back in Arizona. Consequently, I didn’t spend much time thinking about it.

On November 13, 2003, my father died of an aortic dissection during his Master’s swim practice at the Downtown Phoenix YMCA. His swim teammates said he had just finished several laps of butterfly and was climbing out of the pool when he collapsed on the ground. I learned later aortic dissections are a death sentence unless you happen to already be on an operating table with your chest open. This is something that helps me feel better about not being there at the practice: no one could have done anything, most of all me.

I was twenty-two. I got the call on a Wednesday night, when I was leaving the coffee shop and heading to my friend Brandy’s house for our weekly “Spaghetti, Wine, and West Wing” evening. My phone had been in my locker at work all day and I remember listening to the voice mails, one after the other as I drove down the hills of Santa Clarita. No one would say what had happened, but I had gotten ominous voicemails from my grandparents, uncle, and mother, asking to call them immediately. I knew something was very wrong with my father because he had not left a voicemail.

My mother was the first one I called, and therefore, was the one to tell me my father had died. I was driving on a surface street in North Hollywood at that point and it was a miracle I managed to pull over, as I was immediately sobbing and screaming with grief. My mother said at some point, “How do you think I feel?”, which helped me get off of the phone with her.

I have no idea how I made it to Brandy’s apartment. I just remember lying on her couch and trying to stop crying, but I could not. Her boyfriend Grady drove me home and dropped me off at the house I was renting in Pasadena at the time. Somewhere in all of this, my friends had started to find out about my father’s passing. I do not remember who I called, but I know I didn’t call everyone who began to take action to take care of me that day and for the many days, weeks, months, and years that would follow. My roommate Anthony was waiting with a bunch of irises, some truffles from Trader Joe’s, and hugs.  I had not stopped crying when I walked in the door. I finally stopped crying when I felt like I was going to vomit. I laid on our bathroom floor, dry heaving, until I could pull myself together.

I had to leave for Phoenix, where my parents lived, the next morning. My friend Chad, whom I had only recently met through our mutual friend and my roommate, Anthony, bought me my plane fare to and from Phoenix. Although I thanked him at the time, this is a kindness I have thought about over and over as the years have passed–it still floors me when I think about it. So many kind and wonderful people I am privileged enough to call friends came out to support me then and as time went on thereafter.  Listing them all is not what this post is about, but they all should know I carry those memories in my heart with great thankfulness.

I did not have much practice burying folks, especially not one of my best friends. My father’s shiva (what we called the two day open house we held instead of a formal funeral, although it does not meet the traditional Jewish definition) felt as short as it did long and will surely be the subject of other blog posts, but not really this one.

When I got back home to Pasadena, I knew I had to call Wendy. For those friends of my father who could not attend the shiva we held at our house, I had tried to call them to deliver the news during the week I had been in Phoenix and had e-mailed several more. My mother was in no shape to do these things. Most of my dad’s friends did not like her anyway. By the time I turned eighteen I frequently took my mother’s place at work and author-related events my father had to attend because my mother would state she did not want to attend outright, or would cancel at the last-minute. Hence, I knew some of these people better than other children in my position might. I also felt it was my job to notify his friends who didn’t already know. I didn’t want people to find out about my father’s death by reading a paper or by word of mouth if I could avoid it.

But I dreaded calling Wendy. Although at the time I had no confirmation of their romantic past, I knew in my gut it was not going to be like calling most of my dad’s other friends. I felt terrible his shiva was already over, but there was no way Wendy could have attended anyway. And the fact she couldn’t have attended was my father’s fault–he had chosen his path, made his bed, picked his priorities.

I don’t know how long we stayed on the phone talking. I do not remember most of what we said. The single thing I do remember was the howl Wendy let out when I told her Dad was dead. It was a mix between the cry of a coyote and the scream in a movie when the heroine has just found her lover murdered. It ripped something loose inside of me: I still do not know what.

***To be continued