I'll be Home for Christmas

Several days before Christmas, his daughter’s mother, and his ex, died.

The funeral was to happen in 48 hours. He scrambled to find the quickest way back to Minnesota from Bali, Indonesia.

He told his daughter to do the best she could with the funeral arrangements until he got there.

His new wife looked at his horrified face and looked frightened. “Please don’t leave me,” she pleaded.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I bought a round-trip ticket.”

He boarded the plane carrying his head like it was stowaway luggage. He had been gone from America for over three years.

He remained positive as much as he could after having another harpoon stuck in my heart.

He knew one day he would return to the States, willful or regretful, but this wasn’t what he imagined.

He stared out the airplane window again, trying to make sense of his journey.

He passed through American customs at the Minneapolis airport. Reverse culture shock put his brain in a specimen jar.

The things he learned to live without — the cleanliness of the bathroom caused him to pause and snap a selfie in front of a wash basin with hot water and soap.

The Minnesota December temperatures overwhelmed his skimpy tropical attire.

He waved down a taxi with a cold blue hand and jumped into the back seat.

He told the taxi driver to veer off course and swing through his old neighborhood.

He wanted to glimpse how things changed. When he reached his old home where he raised his daughter, he fell into the 23 years of memories left there.

His daughter moved out of her mom’s house a year ago, and after mom found a new boyfriend put the house up for sale.

“Please pull over here,” he asked the taxi driver. “I’m sorry, what is your name?”

“My name is Mohammad,” he said in a thick African accent.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Somalia, mon. I work to bring my family of six,” he nodded in a friendly way.

“I know how it feels to be separated from your home and family,” he replied. He pointed at the house. “I used to live here.”

“Nice house, mon,” Mohammad approved.

Visible from the outside, he could see the new remodeling through the window.

He was happy to see his ex had improved the property.

The 10 years as a stay-at-home dad, never forgotten.

He missed the little things like his riding lawn mower and the crop circles he made with it.

The smell of the wet leaves stuck in the gutters.

A mailbox stuffed with junk mail and his cat Boo Boo on his shoulder.

There was Salmon on the grill, cold beer in hand, a campfire, and his favorite songs going down with the sun.

The secret place he buried his pets and the tree where he pushed his baby girl in a swing.

The times he couldn’t fit the Christmas tree through the door and the times the cat pulled it down.

His daughter’s first under-the-tree present.

Up on the ladder to string the Christmas lights around the house.

The snowman and the shoveling — so deep it was over his head.

He stood in front of the house and asked the driver to take a photo of him.

The house was empty, but not from a lack of energy. His family’s soul would be there forever.

His neighborhood once loud with children, now grown up, and moved away, added to the void.

It was a lifetime, gone. One he loved and dreaded.

As the taxi moved on he watched his old house fade into the distance.

By the time he reached his daughter’s rented house, Mohammad and he were friends.

He gave the driver a good tip and wished him luck in getting a mission to sponsor his kin from a Somalian refugee camp.

He knocked on his daughter’s door.

A moment later, his little mermaid stood in the doorway in awe.

He gave her a big daddy hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you when mom passed. We’re a team again, okay?”

The task of preparing her mother’s funeral arrangements was overwhelming.

“I’m glad you’re finally here,” she cried. “Sorry, there isn’t more time. Tomorrow is the funeral!”

He nodded as best he could when kicked in the stomach by grief. “I’m here to help now. Do you have a bed for me?”

She picked up his backpack. “You’re freezing. Come in. Follow me, Dad.”

They headed into the basement. Her four male roommates upstairs.

“I’ll get you something to eat. I got you some warmer clothes too. I hope they fit,” she said.

He laid down.

“My head is still in Asia so please wake me if I am not up,” he said, dizzy.

“When I was your age, I moved with your mother into an apartment surrounded by drunken neighbors. It was in the bowels of the inner city,” he said.

“Mom was the waitress and I was the short-order cook at a local dive.”

“I would like to see where you lived,” she said.

“If there’s enough time, we can do a tour of mom and dad’s old haunts,” he nodded.

She wanted him to be close to her and he was happy to stay in her cold basement.

His makeshift crash zone in the basement was complete with hanging blankets on the walls. The air mattress looked like a scene out of his teenage hippie-era rock n’ roll lifestyle.

“See you in the morning,” he hugged her again.

“Goodnight Dad. I’m so glad you’re here,” she exhaled.

He lay there staring off into space and pulled the electric heater closer — trying to hang on to his sanity.

He was too tired to think and before he knew the time the sun lit the basement windows.

His daughter loaded up the car in silence with things needed for the ceremony.

The emotional weight and the fact he forgot how to drive a car made it the longest twenty-minute drive of his life.

The shock of where they were going turned their faces speechless — tombstone white.

He stood washed out by jet lag next to her in church. She leaned on him through tears as she gave her mother’s eulogy.

He wanted to say something to relatives and neighbors. But since the ex’s fiancée was there, he felt it best to let him speak.

Together they finally got a moment to share their grief.

They went through the many boxes of her mother’s belongings.

She found the old photo albums.

Our wedding, her baby photos, the trips, the friends, the holidays, the lifetime of one family’s time on this Earth.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like I lost everything, the house where I grew up, and you living halfway around the world,” she expressed grievously.

“Me too, hon,” he choked.

Back in Bali, he had been the philosopher dad. Now any wisdom was overtaken by mourning. He remembered how he felt when he lost his brother and parents.

To leave his daughter, the inescapable sense of falling.

The next day a copy of her mother’s death certificate arrived in the mail. He opened the letter and read the cause of death out loud to her, “Complications due to alcoholism.”

If time could be a physical object, the paper of proof was too heavy to hold. An official document that said her mother no longer existed sucked the air from their lungs.

His daughter tried to touch the certificate. “After you left, Dad, mom got bad with the drinking.”

“Her boyfriend drank with her,” she revealed.

“Forgiveness,” he swallowed a big chunk of sadness. “It’s all there is.”

“What should I do with Mom’s ashes?” She gazed, lost.

“I leave that up to you. Let your soul guide you,” he urged. “There’s no rush so give it some time.”

She groaned.

“We will make new memories,” he said to change the mood. “It will be hard without mom, but we can do it.”

The days flew by as he did the dad things like making sure her mother’s car worked, legal stuff, and assembling a Walmart grill for their Christmas dinner.

His daughter lamented that he was leaving too soon. It seemed he was always leaving too soon.

He should have stayed longer and he regretted it. It was his bad for not taking her on a healing tour to the places where her mom and he lived and hung out before she was born.

“Is my cat Boo Boo, okay?” he asked.

“He is happy in his new home, Dad,” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened to the murdered woman in your Bali villa. I’m also sorry to hear that 52 died, too. What an awful thing to happen.”

“Experiences, which left a scar,” he admitted.

He assembled the grill and started cooking in the backyard snow. His thoughts wandered as he stared at the glowing coal.

He went back to the Gun Flint Trail where his daughter and he had camped out.

He hiked down to the shoreline of Lake Superior and huffed over his fate. Had things only gone differently for him?

The land of the loon was worthy to call home.

He sat there on the rocks lotus style as he had done at the Bali airport. He stared into the water that washed over the rocks.

He was caught between the pages of a passport.

He could never call this his home again. It was a sacrifice he paid for the blessing of loving people in another place.

As much as he wanted to stay, his new wife was waiting for him.

The moment reminded him of a Zen koan he called “contraposition dislocation.”

He didn’t fit in where he is nor fit in where he was.

His old thoughts headed for the sky in a cloud of cooking smoke.

The grill was finished and he brought their meal to the living room.

Absent a table they sat on the floor and lit a candle. The roommates had gone home.

He wrapped his arms around her tense body and massaged her with tenderness.

“Dig in!” he said.

“I always loved being with you on Christmas,” she said.

Not sure there was a good time he didn’t bring up the subject of her mom’s ashes.

“You were the best stay-at-home dad any child could ask for and that’s what counts. As sad as this is it’s the best Christmas I ever had. You coming back is the best present ever.”

“Don’t worry I will be back,” he smiled. “When you were born it was my Christmas everyday.”

“Here’s to us, then.” She lifted a glass of wine to toast. “To daddy and daughter, together again, amen.”

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