Dear Dad,

Daytona Nielsen

The first time I asked about you was during Donuts with Dads in kindergarten. It felt like everyone in town had squeezed into our rural elementary school gym to have that special moment with their fathers. Some kids grabbed donuts that they knew their dads would like and some dads grabbed donuts they knew their kids would like. I sat at one of the collapsible tables next to the door with the music teacher who offered to fill in for kids without dads: just me. 

That was the first moment I realized something was missing. A piece to a puzzle that couldn’t ever be completed no matter how many times you’d look under the couch. The music teacher, Mr. Prompts, tried his best that day. He asked me about books, how classes were going, and if I wanted a donut. I didn’t want a fucking donut. I wanted a dad. My dad. Someone who wasn’t actively being paid to sit down with some lonely kid with no one else to stand beside him. 

So I did what any reasonably upset child would do in that situation: I ran outside and flung myself on the swings. With each swing, going higher and higher, I thought it was you pushing me. Our laughter eclipsing all the other laughter and smiles in the gym. Yet, the school called Mom to pick me up because they thought I “needed the day off.” She walked toward our swings and you left. Disappeared into the clouds and I was alone again. She stopped our swinging, and I knew that even in fantasy I wouldn’t be able to find you. 

“Go to the car and we’ll talk about this later. You do know that they woke me up to pick your ass up, right, Daytona?” I still wonder how you fell in love with her. Maybe it was your teenage hormones that did the trick or maybe she was kinder before she had a newborn at fifteen. Maybe, when you died, she did the only thing she knew how to do—use.

On the car ride back to the house I asked about you. My voice was meek but determined to hear anything about who you were. When your name, Justin, escaped my lips, she softened for a moment. It was like a realization hit her and she thought about actually being the mother any child would want. The edges came back just as quickly as they left. “Your dad was the love of my life. He was on the swim team and did a little bit of football. He loved collecting John Deere tractors. Before we  knew you were inside of me, he took his step-dad’s shotgun and blew his brains out against his bedroom walls. He was everything that you aren’t, Daytona.” The words erupted from her before she realized what she had said. Maybe when you met her she would apologize for things, but not anymore.

I didn’t say anything else on that thirty-minute car ride home. I didn’t ask her anything else about you. The information she had was locked behind a field of land mines that already blew up in my face. Your name, and everything about you, was a war that no soldier wanted to fight, including your son. Nothing was said between her and me that night. We ate dinner in separate rooms, and the noise from the televisions filled the growing space between us. 

When that weekend came around, I had asked if I could go out to Meemaw’s, and Mom gave me approval to do so. While there would be no information gathering about you at home, Meemaw might be different. She took care of me most of the time when Mom was on one of her benders or after she crashed. As we sat on the couch in the living room, watching whatever person was getting murdered on the ID channel, I brought you up. When she looked at me, tears flowed from her eyes. Maybe it was because she saw the ghost of a boy she once knew, or maybe that moment of truth was too much for her. “You look exactly like him” was all she said before getting up and heading to her room. I was proud of that for a very long time until I got a picture of you from a substitute teacher who knew you. 

I looked at the blue two-story house and could feel the sweat roll down my nape. The air filled with the smell of flowers and rot. A simple knock on the door and it swung. A friend had invited me over to do some homework together and have dinner. Ground beef took center stage followed by tortilla shells and then all the toppings. There I sat with parents and a child who actually wanted to be with each other. Who cared about one another and wanted the best for everyone at the table. The mother turned to me. She smelled of butterscotch and cinnamon, with lips painted a plump apple red. She smiled. “How are you so much better than the rest of your family?” The table stretched an infinite amount, and I was a great distance from them. Those words made me realize that I was dining with wolves dressed up in human disguises. 

It felt as though I were outside of my body while my lips moved in response. A hollow laughter filled the room, and I realized that it was coming from my mouth. Dad, do you think I’m better than them? That wasn’t the first time I’d heard those words ring out. Each time they did, the rift that separated me from others opened up more and more. Feeling as though I was on a pedestal compared to the other members of our family. 

The room filled with their snarls disguised by laughter. Looking out the window toward the trees filled with red flowers on their branches and the singular corpse of a sparrow on the ground, I thought I saw you, peeking through and staring at me. Then the branches swayed and you were gone.

That was when it really clicked, when I knew you were going to be the thing to haunt me. Avoiding you, though, was pretty easy to do. I just couldn’t look at any other people with their dads, go to another Donuts with Dads, or read anything that had a father figure in it. Pretty easy things, right? 

The rest of elementary school went by, and whatever ties that Mom and I had were cut when the state came in and swept me away. I thought about you every so often during those times, wishing that you were the one that was alive. Or maybe, if you both were alive, she would have been a better person. Yet, thinking all about those things was pointless, Dad. No matter how much wishing I did, you weren’t ever going to come back and rescue me. No matter how many times I prayed to God to perform some miracle, your body was still going to be in the ground rotting away. When the worms ate your brains, were they filled with thoughts of me? Probably not. You had the gift of not even knowing who I was while I’ve been cursed knowing only what everyone else knew about you. God didn’t pick up any of my calls about you so I simply stopped calling. Turning to old gods and goddesses that would understand my grief and tragedy. 

I’d like to think you and I were a lot alike in high school. You shot yourself, and I picked up cutting and two suicide attempts. Let’s also not forget the part where I had to deal with becoming older than you would ever be. Maybe I should have called God back at some point. Nonetheless, I was one of the very few people in our family to graduate from high school. I walked down that gym floor, with everyone else’s family watching me, and accepted that diploma. I saved a seat for you. Mom didn’t show up because at that point I had cut everyone out of my life except for you. Maybe that’s what you were doing, cutting people out of your life the only way you knew how.

As all of my classmates and I stood outside taking a last photo together, a breeze picked up. The grass twirled upwards, and I could feel the wind gently hug me. I’d like to think that you were there to reassure me. Or maybe it was just a breezy day. Standing there with my peers, hearing them talk about how much they were going to miss all of the high school memories, I felt prideful that I didn’t feel anything toward it. Growing up in the shadow of grief makes everything else more bearable, or maybe it made me more apathetic. We had our pictures taken and they spread through Facebook, and I simply went home. 

Going to college was hard, Dad. I wanted someone to tell me how amazing I was and how proud I made them. As we drove by those painted greens and browns to the left of us, you would tell me how much I meant to you. That you gave me everything you never got and more. Instead, I arrived at college with a foster mom and moved into the dorms. Now she and I barely talk.

Sometimes I don’t think about you at all. I go about classes and work, and you’re nothing more than a piece of information I store in the back of my head. Other times, your shadow weighs so heavily on me that the only thing I can do is wrap the blankets around this body and pretend it’s all the hugs and emotional support that you would have given me if you were still here. Letting the day slip by and falling into my own grave, I feel connected to you. Even the cutting made me feel connected to you. That somehow, wherever you are, you can feel the pain that I’m feeling. 

During winter breaks, in college, I’ll stay on campus. I don’t really have anywhere else to go during these times. When the snow falls ever so gently, like dancers about to do their swan song before retiring, the grief I have for you consumes me. Sitting there alone in the cold breath of Montana, a thought will swarm my mind. We’re all a lot like snowflakes, falling to our inevitable end, though in our brief moments some of us become happy moments and others turn to ice. Yet, we all still melt in the end. I think of you. Of all the people and moments that you were a part of and how I didn’t get to be a part of any of those. Instead, I crawl out of bed and the tears blur my vision. My breathing becomes hitched. My body collapses onto the ground. And all I can think about is you. My Dad. My Shadow. My Story. My Grief. And I am becoming your nothing.

Reaching out my hands to grab a hold of the bars of the bed, hoping that if I weren’t touching the ground—the Earth—that you walked upon, I would be able to escape you. Sometimes it would work and sleep would finally catch me. Or, the other outcome would be that I was simply just crying in the bed instead of on the floor. How I wish you would be there to comfort me, but your hands were as ghostly as the memories I had of you.

The other three seasons are when your grasp slips away. The grief is there, but it’s more bearable. Sometimes it feels like I’m Demeter and you’re Persephone. I like to believe that Demeter understands this overwhelming grief that I bear for you. During those warmer seasons I’m able to focus on the other things in life. Things that aren’t you. 

Do you know how it felt to realize that each year that passes is another year that I manage to become older than you? I walk into a room and see everyone else enjoying the passage of time with their family. Your family hasn’t even reached out to me. They didn’t offer me anything about who you were. What would it be like to ask you about what twenty-one feels like? What hopes come to you at thirty then proceed to die at forty? But, you can’t answer these questions. I thought about buying a Ouija board to try to talk to you. Maybe you’d come tell me about some hidden treasure that would help pay for college, or maybe you’d simply say, “I’m proud of you, Daytona.” 

I used to think whenever a jet would go by and make that loud rumbling sound that it was you bowling with God and you somehow managed to get a strike. With enough of them, you’d be able to cash in a wish and that would be to come visit me. Looks like you still need a couple more strikes and a kid who still believes in God. Another thing I would do is wait for you to visit me in a dream. Everything you say in it would be exactly what I wanted to hear, and we would get to live out moments we never had: playing catch, cooking together, talking about puberty, me coming out to you, fighting about how the world has gone to shit—we would have it all. When Mom told me you came to her in a dream, I kind of expected you’d do the same for me. You let me down once again, and I hate that I still expect it to happen every October when that veil between life and death is at its thinnest. 

I’m glad I moved away from Wyoming. Here I don’t have to hear about you, and when I mention your name, nobody looks at me with a knowing sadness in their eyes. Here I’ve carved out a little place for myself where nobody knows how your ghostly hands hold my heart ever so gently and squeeze at just the right moments. I am the only person who knows you here. You have no power over the way that people treat me here. 

Sometimes it feels great to know you’re my shadow; sometimes I hate it. In those moments I want the hooks you have buried in my heart to dig deeper. Maybe then you could pull yourself out of wherever you are and have the air fill your lungs again. The pain and the hurt is like a silent little prayer that I can make to you. I want it to hurt because that means that you’re still here.

Did you hate yourself like I do, Dad? That feeling that something behind your ribs is hollow. That the piece that makes us human is missing. Is that why you killed yourself? Because looking at everyone else reminds you of how incomplete you are. I feel like a painting that holds no value. Why’d you sculpt me like this?

Like those people of the past who made offerings in exchange for blessings. Those mothers and fathers who gave up their crafts to gods to protect their children, and children who gave up toys to ask for aid against their parents’ abuse, I’m giving you up in hopes I’ll be blessed to forget you. My shadow will be my own. Let this be the moment in time where we part. I did a lot to get where I am today. Complete high school, cut the cord that tied me to Mom, go to  counseling to understand why I feel that missing part of myself. And finally, I’m putting you to rest. This is my final goodbye. I’ve grown tired of all this pain that I feel. No more of you haunting me and no more of me allowing it. Goodbye, Justin.

Sincerely,

Daytona

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