Papa

I am eight. I take an hour-long bus ride to and from my small parochial elementary school every day. And one afternoon, I go in and out of hiding in my puffy, multi-colored florescent coat to bite my secret candy bar: eating is strictly forbidden on the bus. I am peculiar looking, pulling my hands and entire head inside my closed coat, but I am discreet. At a stop halfway home and halfway through my candy bar, my sister tells me Mom is there to pick us up. 


With our backpacks slung over our small shoulders and sleepy post school stories, my brother, two sisters and I file off the bus and pile into the minivan. Buckled in my seat with my chocolate now out in the open, I go to take my first legal bite when Mom begins to cry. I watch her eyes move and her cheeks flush in the rear view mirror as she says, "Papa died in his sleep last night, the most peaceful way to go." The chocolate in my hand suddenly becomes like a weight, a bothersome thing I must hold until we are home. "The most peaceful way to go." She says. In a strong sense, I do not know what it means, this "go". Because I do not understand the finality of death, I wait for Papa to return. Say he got lost driving to the grocery store or something. But he doesn’t return and my father stays with Nana all week. 


After the open casket wake where I am instructed to hug Nana and kneel to say an Our Father; after the funeral where the cantor sings "On Eagle's Wings" and I cry clutching damp tissues between my sweaty fingers, trying not to make a sound, I understand that Papa is not coming back.   


Until recently, I had always believed that Papa passed away from old age, but Papa died of cancer. I was too young to know the truth, they tell me, so they, the grownups, fibbed. Papa has a cold. They'd say. "Don’t kiss Papa on the lips or you’ll get sick." They were really saying, Don’t kiss Papa on the lips or you’ll get him sick. He didn't die of old age; he was still close to sixty.