Soul Food

Michele Marr

Years ago my friend Ruth Ann Summers told me that no matter how old

you are when your parents die you still feel like an orphan.

Ruth Ann is older than I am, and she lost both her parents some time

ago. It has been her habit to remember them each year with a memorial of

flowers on her church’s altar. It was on one of those Sundays that we got

to talking about how much she missed her parents.

At the time both of my parents were still living. Her remark left me

thinking a lot about how I had no way of really knowing what it was like

to be parent less. It wasn’t something I really wanted to know more about

any time soon.

Nevertheless, not long after that my father was diagnosed with lung

cancer. Everything that medicine had to offer him failed and he died four

months later, one week after Father’s Day and the first day of summer. It

broke my heart like nothing else in my life ever had.

My mother is still living, thank God.

I hope she stays healthy and that God gives her many more years. All

the same, I already know now that what Ruth Ann told me is true.

While my father was sick, by the time we knew he was dying, I felt

like I went through a lot of days like I go through a bad dream. I go

forward because there is no going backward. Either I wake up or in time

the dream ends.

I trusted God to take care of us. I did. But that didn’t in any way

seem to diminish the pain of seeing someone I loved so much so sick.

The cancer metastasized. It addled my father’s thinking a lot of the

time. Everything, he began to say, was like deja vu.

It was NBA season, so we would turn on the Lakers games. He loved to

watch the Lakers play.

But he would say, “I’ve seen this game before. When are they going to

play another game?”

It got to a point when everything in this world seemed already done to

my father. It was as though death rolled in like a fog. It didn’t come

suddenly and just snatch him. It lingered for a while just off shore.

My father was with us, but in a world so veiled it was hard at times

to know if we fully understood each other anymore.

He was usually cheerful and rarely irritable, though he often truly

deserved to be. He was always quick to return a smile with a smile, until

at the end he slipped into a coma.

That was four years ago now. Each year since, late in May, I begin to

dream of my father. The first dream is never pleasant. He calls me out of

my sleep. He is sick. He needs my help. He is going to throw up.

Then I dream that we are sitting in front of a TV. We are watching the

Lakers in overtime. Shaq slams a dunk. “All right!” my father shouts.

A few nights ago in my dreams I stood on the lawn in front of the

house in Cherry Point, North Carolina, where we lived when I was four. I

was waiting for my Daddy to come home. I wore a crown I’d made of purple

clover and held another loosely in my fist. It was to crown my daddy

with.

He pulled up in his shiny Ford. He got out and picked me up. He put me

up on his shoulders. I put the crown on his head.

“I love you,” he said, “I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug

around the neck.”

I put my check down on his golden hair.

“I love you, too,” I said. I said it aloud and it woke me up.

I lay in my bed and I thought of Ruth Ann. I said a prayer for us both

and for all the little girls in grown women’s bodies who are going to

miss their Daddies this Sunday.

Because Ruth Ann was right. No matter how old you are, you are never

too old to feel like an orphan.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]