Five Years

Five years since the day Lyman died. He may be one of the few people who have really, truly seen me, understood me. He saw me long before I wanted to be seen.

They sent me down to visit him when I was maybe twelve, long after my Grandma died. On the first day of my visit, at the sandwich shop, the only one he probably ever went to, he sat across the booth and said something that really pissed me off. “My father left me too,” he said. And by day three he sat across from me at the dinner table telling me I was really, really smart and I stood across from him screaming “NO I’M NOT!!!” And by night three I laid on the guest bed hating him to the sound of Poison blaring on my headphones.

There’s the last time I saw him and the last time he saw me.

The last time I saw him, he was lying on the couch after we got him out of the hospital to die. He woke and asked, “where did the music go?” I turned the radio back on. He smiled and went back to sleep.

The last time he saw me, we went to his favorite Mexican restaurant, the only one he probably ever went to. He got progressively drunk and tried to get me drunk, typical of Lyman, given that I wasn’t yet legal and he always tried to get me into trouble. He told me he was considering suicide. Between him and I that was a pretty reasonable proposition. We went home, watched a movie, and he fell asleep about half way through.

We had to wait to hold a funeral after September 11th. I took a flight back down to California the first day the airports opened. Got into a car accident on the way to the airport. And as I walked through the terminal I thought I didn’t really give a fuck if anyone blew up the plane. Did anyone flying to a funeral that day care?