Sean stared at Valo with wide eyes. “So, what happened after that?” he asked.

“Well,” Valo sighed, “the next morning, I awoke feeling… well, it’s hard for me to describe. Numb, I guess… that would be a good way to describe it. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. I pulled on my favorite Ozzy Osbourne shirt and some baggy black jeans. I brushed my teeth and pulled my hair back in a ponytail. I didn’t bother with makeup; didn’t feel up to it. And besides, if anyone had said anything to me, I probably would have screamed at them about what I was going through. I put one of my Ozzy cds into my player and plugged the earbuds into my ears. I sat in the classroom, waiting for everyone else to show up. I remember how I just kind of spaced out. One of my friends came in and took one look at me, and he asked what was wrong. I managed to choke out what had happened.”

“So, what happened after that?”

Valo sighed. “I spent the rest of the day in a daze, going through all of my tasks, but without my usual enthusiasm. I did my behavior coding assignments, sent in my final scores, and e-mailed the professor I worked under, politely asking for a reduction in my workload in the upcoming week. I honestly don’t remember much of the day. I do remember that I didn’t eat much; I wasn’t hungry. I do remember that around five in the afternoon that day, I realized that my head felt funny, that I needed to eat something. I guess I was in shock, sort of. I mean, this was my dad, the one person in my family I was really close to. I could tell him anything, ask for anything, and I knew that there’d be no negative consequences, that he would do his best to help me to get what I wanted.” Valo’s shoulders slumped.

“And then?”


“Well, the funeral came up soon enough. And I remember seeing my dad laying in that coffin, wearing a Saints shirt. I remember thinking that it just didn’t look like him. The corpse’s hair was too neat, and it was clean-shaven. My dad’s hair was always messy, and he always had a bit of stubble. By that point, I didn’t even have it in me to shed more than a few tears. I had done the worst of my crying already. I accepted the family condolences, but I wasn’t really there. And then, an extraordinary and infuriating thing happened. My mother showed up, and somehow, seeing her made me actually start crying, for real. But then, my mom started acting like she had lost someone important to her. You have to realize, my parents had been separated since I was about six and divorced officially since I was about ten, and it was all because my mother had been unfaithful to my father. All throughout my father’s struggle with illness all those years, she scarcely called him, much less visited him in the hospital his final month. She hadn’t offered to help him with paying for anything more than the barest of essentials for me. The bare minimum-- that’s what she gave me and what she did for him. And there she was, acting like she’d just lost her best friend and soul mate!”

“That’s pretty bad. I mean, she acted like she cared about him, but she wanted hardly anything to do with him? That’s not right!”

“And at the actual service, when they asked for pallbearers, another infuriating thing happened. We’d asked people my father had been close to, like his best friend for years, to do it. However, when they called for pallbearers, one of the relatives, who had never given a damn about my father, went up. This guy and his family was always doing stuff like that at baptisms and such, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘I bet if Dad’s looking down on us, he’s cursing that guy out!’ Well, after we saw him put into the mausoleum, my busybody great-aunt invited everyone back to our house. Never mind that the house was not built to hold so many people in it or that it was our house, not hers! And I was in no mood to be around people. I just wanted to be alone, preferably back in my dorm room. I ended up locking myself away in my room. Even when I expressed my desire to be back at the dorm, my mother did not offer to bring me, even though it wouldn’t have been any trouble.”

“Your mom sure hasn’t been very good to you.”


“You can say that again,” Valo muttered. “After that, I decided that this was my chance to do what I wanted to: move out of that damn house. I asked my mother to help me to pay for a cheap apartment near my college campus, but she said she would be unable to. This, from the woman driving a new car. This, from the woman who gave my little brother everything he wanted, so that at age eleven, he weighed about as much as I did at age twenty-one and had more gaming systems and games than anyone else I knew! She said she’d have to see how much she could spare. Never mind that each semester, I had to pay for textbooks out of pocket, and you’d better believe I told her so! Never mind that I was asking for help with essentials-- shelter, food, education-- instead of something foolish and unnecessary. But, that’s my mother for you. But my boyfriend at the time and I made plans. We would split the cost of the apartment. We priced furniture, we saved up money… and we eventually moved in. And I didn’t care one lick what anyone thought about me living with someone of the opposite sex. When my mother said something about it, all I said was, ‘Well, how else did you expect me to cover the costs? I needed a place to live near campus, and I couldn’t live in the dorm any longer.’ And I knew that where ever my dad was, he was smiling, pleased with what I’d done.”

Sean smiled happily. “I bet he’s still proud of you. You’ve done so much with your life,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Valo sighed. “And yet… I mean, I know I’m an adult, but all I really want is to have my dad here to see what I’ve done.”

“He’s watching you, you know.”

“Yeah, but it’s just not the same. I miss him so much.”


Valo sighed and bowed her head. “Dad,” she whispered. “You know, after you left, I cried myself to sleep most nights. I even wondered if maybe I would be better off dead, too. But I realized that you wouldn’t have wanted me to give up like that. You would have wanted me to live and achieve everything I wanted. I’ve always felt guilty. I didn’t offer my blood or marrow for transfusion, even though I would have been the closest match. I should have spent more time with you. I should have visited you more in the hospital. There’s so much I could have done differently. But worst of all, you spent all those years, suffering in pain, just because you didn’t want to leave until I was an adult. If it hadn’t been for me, you could have died early on and not dealt with all those treatments, all that pain, all that illness. I’m sorry. Wherever you are, I hope you can forgive me. And I hope that you and Grant are getting along.” She wiped a tear from her face, then crawled into her bed.

And though she could not hear it, a reply came: “Don’t feel guilty; I wouldn’t have missed a moment of it. Sooner or later, I was going to have to go, and I wasn’t going to ask you to experience physical pain simply to prolong it. You’ve done well, and I’m very proud of you. I‘ve always told you that you were the only good thing to come out of my marriage to your mother.”