Mama – Day 77

There was a time I felt only excitement when I got something published. But it’s hard to feel completely excited when the content of my story is Dad’s death. Clare Morris published my essay “When Daddy Died” in the Writer Life section of The Blue Nib. (You can read it here: https://thebluenib.com/when-daddy-died/). The essay is a modified version of Mama – Day 31 from these Pandemic Diaries. It recounts the day after Dad died, the day I was reunited with my son after my own bout with Covid-19.

My son is still sleeping. It’s 11:30. He never sleeps this late. Maybe being tired is a contributing factor to his crankiness. He hasn’t been sleeping right since the pandemic shut everything down, since Dad got sick and then died. I can’t blame him. I haven’t been sleeping either. 

I spoke to Mom this afternoon. My brother left yesterday to return to Nashville and Mom is feeling lonely and sad. I miss Dad terribly. I can only imagine how much harder it is on her. While my brother was with her, he helped her a great deal. He sorted out her benefits and other paperwork that I would have struggled with. Finance is not something I understand as well as I should. 

On the phone, Mom told me that Daddy died at 4:14 pm. That means he died at 4:14 on 4/14. When I was child, I considered 4 to be my lucky number. I wore number 4 for years playing both softball and basketball. One year, during college, I wanted number four for one of my summer leagues, but my friend beat me to it. Since it was a summer league, a league to play in just for fun, they let me be -4. I played shortstop. My friend played second. Standing together, we were 0 which won us many laughs. But then I moved to Korea, where I learned 4 was the unluckiest number of all. In Asia, they regard number 4 the way we regard 13. Four is unlucky because the pronunciation of the number is similar to the pronunciation of ‘death’ in Chinese. When a Korean friend first explained this to me, I laughed. It seemed so silly. But now, well, what else could 4 possibly represent. Daddy died on the fourth hour in the afternoon of the fourth month. 

We bought chocolate croissants at Costco. My spouse saw them and suggested we get them since our son loves them. I was concerned they wouldn’t taste good. Most packaged croissants don’t. But my spouse suggested they might not be so bad if we put them in the toaster oven. She was right. The crispy flakey bread and the melted chocolate — they weren’t bad. When my son tried it he said, “They’re good, but not as good as the chocolate croissants Grandpa got us in Disney.” I laughed. Every time my son eats a chocolate croissant he thinks of Grandpa and the first one he ever ate down in Florida when he was four. I think of Dad, also, every time I eat one, because my introduction to them was in Quebec the year we went there for summer vacation. We ate croissants every day. The chocolate were my favorite, but Dad’s favorite were the almond ones.

In an attempt to keep himself from getting bored, my son has been collecting big rocks and painting them. Some of them have come out pretty good. The drippy rainbow one is my favorite.