The last thing I remember about my Father was the look in his eyes. They were like my eyes, a deep brown, but that last time I saw him as he lay in the Medical Telemetry Ward they seemed to lose all color. He was disappointed in me. He didn’t say it, but I knew it was the last thing passing through his mind, so I got up and walked out. He passed away before I came back the next day. I never really figured out what the exact cause was, but we knew he would pass eventually, his health had been deteriorating for years. In and out of the hospital for years, demanding more and more of me until I couldn’t take it, and I still always come back to take care of him. I left my job, stopped going to college, and just took care of him, but no matter what I did it was never enough for him. He’d complain that I was doing things wrong, that I was trying to kill him, or that I didn’t care. I don’t know why I put up with it, but I couldn’t leave him when things were getting so bad for him despite how fucked up he was to me. So, I just dealt with it the only way I knew how; by putting space between us and letting myself cool off.

               The days leading up to the burial felt like forever, but when I think back on them I can’t remember a single day aside from the constant prayers. As if that was enough for someone as fucked as he was or enough for someone as fucked up as I was either. All those years since I was a child that I wished he was dead so he would stop hurting me, then the years he spent dying and I wished he would die so I could live my life. I know I’m not a good person, and that my end isn’t going to be a good one, but I hope that I’ll never turn into even half the monster that my father was.

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               He’d beat me for the slightest mistake, break everything I treasured for not doing his tasks perfectly, punish me for refusing to do something he says no matter how embarrassing or unreasonable it was. I’ve had so many pieces of furniture broken on my back, electrical cables slicing into my skin, and metal coat hangers digging into me than I can remember. I’ve been forced to stand in the front yard naked, lay in a pile of filth, and eat disgusting things that I’d rather not remember. For all of this, I’d like to think that I turned out pretty alright, but I know I didn’t, but that’s okay. It’s okay that I’m not completely there as my father was pushed into the cold concrete structure that would hold his cold dead husk. It’s okay that I didn’t shed a single tear for the man who I had lost the last ten years to.

It’s okay.

After all, he did leave something behind, and I'm not sure if I would have accepted it if he hadn’t been so fucked up to me.