The Sound of Shattering Glass

My problems all started on the day that I found him dead.

My then-girlfriend and I came home from vacation. We were up with friends in northern Minnesota, drinking and smoking a weekend away. We arrived to find my father and three of his friends hanging out, having just finished their fantasy draft. We all exchanged pleasantries. Lady and I went to bring our things downstairs into my basement. I recall the last exchange my dad and I would ever have, him grousing about a computer mouse he felt I had misplaced. I snapped back about how I had been gone that whole weekend and wouldn't know where the fuck it is. Me being tired from a long weekend and my pop being drunk and baked himself, I gave the terse nature of the conversation no further thought, at least at the time.

Lady and I went downstairs to relax and unwind. Didn't think we would be bothered the rest of the evening.

I remember one of his friends calling for me downstairs. Said that he thought there was something wrong with my father. I could hear footsteps on the floor above me. I grew annoyed. Maybe he had just gotten sick or something. Wouldn't be the first time I cleaned up a "dead" body from that bathroom floor, I thought to myself as the girlfriend and I went upstairs to investigate.

I had no inkling.

No warning.

When I turned into the bathroom at the top of the stairs, they had already turned my father over. My eyes registered the information before me instantly, but my brain was painfully slow to process it.

There are some things in my life the past 7 years or so that are irrevocably burned into my retinas, and so much more pain was to spring from this fountain that began to flow on this early evening. The night that girlfriend and I split and her damaging words. Proof undeniable that the mother of my son was looking to replace me about a year after he was born. The deaths of three very treasured friends, all taken long before they should have been.

And, my father's face, blue as ocean water. The gurgling sound just barely audible, weakly emitting from his purple lips. His body limp and motionless, his eyes closed and expression blank and unknowing. He had already evacuated; his jeans told that tale readily. My dad, the one parent I identified with and was close to, lay on the floor before me, an empty and lifeless husk that would know and feel nothing more ever again. I knew upon sight that my father was dead.

Girlfriend went to start giving CPR. I frantically try to help her, searching in vain for a pulse, my own mind coming to a screeching halt then starting to accelerate into hyper drive. I quickly start to feel myself lose composure. I can't focus on helping her. His friends call 911. I am told to leave the room, as it had become clear the sight and situation had me unraveling.

I step out into the garage. I barely notice my feet carrying me out and up the driveway as I started frantically making calls. My brother and sister had to know. I would let them know what hospital we go to and when we arrive there, I tell each of them. They tell me they are coming anyway. The police and paramedics arrive and go to work. I am pacing at the end of the driveway, everything starting to crystallize in my mind before the news would actually be delivered. I tried desperately to wrap my mind around the situation.

My father might be dead.

No, he is dead.

I know he is.

I spend a good couple minutes drilling that into my head repeatedly. I needed it to sink in so *maybe* I can function.

There would be calls I needed to make. I start to make a mental list. His brother and sisters. My mother; though divorced, they were friendly by that time. Some of my close friends who had known him well. I try to marshal my brain into action; I remember the emergency cash stash at the secret spot it where it was kept. There would be arrangements that need to be made, of course. I have to take charge. I am the only one who can. I couldn't allow my autistic twin brother or my sister to shoulder this burden. It would be mine to bear, I decided.

I see the policeman walking up the driveway towards me. I steel myself, but it was futile. His words hit my eardrums and may as well as bounced off them into outer space for all they registered, save for his first words.

"I am sorry to tell you, Mr. Beconovich, but your father has passed away."

I take a ragged breath. I could feel my legs wobble. I thought for a second I might fall. My arms went numb and the world stopped.

Everything else that happened after that moment was a blur.

I thanked the paramedics, who seemed so defeated. The cops took witness reports from everyone present. They confiscated the dugout I had given my father for father's day earlier that summer, among a couple other related items, but they do not so much as issue a ticket otherwise. The medical examiner came and took his body. His friends would remain with me until then, then they dispersed as well, their long time compatriot now gone. My heart, the parts of it that weren't numb, ached for them as well. They knew him longer than I did even. I could not imagine their pain then, though I would learn in the years since. My uncle came and dispensed some words of wisdom, and we commiserated over our loss, then he left. Some friends filtered in and out through the evening. I can barely recall at this point who or what they said or did to try and comfort me.

There have been things that have happened since then that are more damaging. I will even detail some of them in this space. But you, the reader, need to understand this about me, that much of what has unfolded since then likely never would have if my father had managed to eject that piece of steak from his esophagus cleanly as opposed to it getting stuck in his airway.

I never would have remained with my girlfriend as long as I did had she not been there with me, and for me, in that moment of dire need.

I also would never have had the opportunity to bring to Minnesota the mother of my child. That relationship, and the dissolution thereof, is a tale best reserved for its own piece.

I may have missed out on fatherhood entirely; I certainly wouldn't have the wonderful son I have now.

And perhaps I would not now be in love with someone on the other side of the country. I may never have met her and, sequentially, come to realize what I have been missing all along, and what I would truly want, need, and deserve from a partner.

I have made decisions and seen, heard, and done things in the years since my father's passing that more directly impacted my life as it is currently constituted. But for all the heartache, and pain, and joy, that I have experienced since then, the wellspring was this moment.

Wounds like this can leave a scar. They ache deeply and never truly heal, not unlike the wound Frodo suffered at Weathertop (the ring-wraith's blade cuts deep indeed). I have suffered other similarly damaging events in my life since, but this was the first.

At 29 years old, the boy, unready as one could ever be, was forced to become not just a man, but The Man.

The glass shattered on my life when I found him. It wouldn't be the last time.