Going: Three Views
Allen
Dad is going to wake up. He’ll wake up soon and it will be a big joke he pulled on everyone. My dad loves to be funny and play jokes.
My brother and sister and my mom are all crying and hugging each other and I keep telling them that Dad is not dead, he can’t be dead.
“He can’t be really gone because he didn’t say good-bye.”
The lady that comes, the doctor lady, she tells us all that we can come into the living room and say good-bye to Dad before the paramedic people take him away. But I don’t want to. Mom says it is okay if I just sit in the chair next to Dad’s bed. She shuts the door between the room Dad slept in and the living room.
I stick my fingers in my ears so I do not hear what my brother and sister and mother are saying. I want to find a way to tell them that Dad is not really gone. That he can’t be really gone because he didn’t say good-bye.
That means he is coming back.
I close my eyes so I do not see the flashing lights of the ambulance and I count my breaths: in and out, in and out.
People aren’t supposed to leave unless they say good-bye. It’s a rule. It’s a good rule.
But there is something sort of mixed-up going on inside my head, something I can’t think about right now.
Something about Dad’s voice.
