A Note On Being Here

I’m sitting here alone in the quiet of my apartment as the ambulance siren wails across the street, and I realize that sound is the same one trapped in my throat. Stuck like something I swallowed whole. It’s been there for weeks, months... I don’t know. Time folds in on itself when you’re waiting. And we’ve been waiting for f*cking ever. For “back to normal.” For the other shoe. For peace. For the call that comes when you finally forget it could come anytime.

…

We were just sitting there waiting so I asked my Papa, “What’s the one piece of life advice you have for me?”

He didn’t lift his head or even open his eyes. “Be happy.”

Wait. What? That’s not what I expected him to say. “That’s not what I expected you to say.”

He smiled a 1/4 smile. A blink-and-you’ll miss-it smile. “You only go around once. You gotta be happy.”

“I don’t know how! I know how to work. I know how to fight. I know how to do what I think is right. I don’t know how to be happy...” It was a lament, this.

Nothing. He was done talking. He said what he said.

“Well, hell.”

The dialysis nurse came to wheel him away, and I was left with my questions, my indignance, my sorrow. Left to wait.

…

I don’t have answers or fixes or resolutions. I have a guttural howl. I have a terrible know-how for waiting and holy listening, and keeping vigil beside the parts of us caught between here and there, not anymore and not yet.

No, I don’t know how to be happy.

I know how to be here.