The Last Time I Saw Your Father

by Hannah Dow

He was workshopping a bit about the ellipsis that materializes when someone is drafting you an iMessage. The joke had something to do with knowing someone is thinking about you on the other end, and the anxiety of wondering what they’ll say, if anything at all. I don’t know if he ever finished the joke, but that night he kept laughing and repeating three dots! in his goofy, deadpan voice, and that alone was enough to make us laugh too.

The first time I saw your father, we played “Jeopardy!” It’s not what you think, you warned. He records every show and pauses after each question until someone in the room comes up with a satisfactory answer. I didn’t mind playing the game his way—pausing, digging through the complex root systems of memory. What is a father, if not the hope suspended within a pause before an answer?

We had been friends for just two months when you invited me to spend Thanksgiving with you, your father, and his mother. He’d ordered a large spread from Bristol Farms, the kind of grocery store that suggests which of its wines to pair with which of its cheeses. Your grandmother mashed potatoes and microwaved the rest. Just before dinner, your father peeled himself off the couch and retreated to his bedroom, emerging minutes later in a button-down shirt half-tucked into khaki pants. He poured red Powerade into a wine glass. I don’t remember if we prayed or said what we were thankful for, only that as soon as your father finished eating, he changed back into his sweatpants uniform and turned the volume way up on the football game.

Sometime before the last time I saw your father, he fell asleep on the floor, cradling my sneaker like it was a small rabbit. You and I laughed about it, and it was a story I planned to tell for years to come.

Our friendship was brief, but intense, and I wonder, if we hadn’t tried to become more than friends, when I would’ve learned about your father’s illness. You hid it well, though now everything makes sense: the kitchen’s precarious heaps of dirty dishes, why you lived at home at twenty-six and commuted over an hour each way to work, waking well before dawn to beat traffic. I’d tease you about the 5-Hour Energy drinks you pulled from the deep recesses of your gym shorts and drank instead of water. You complained often of a lack of sleep—your father kept you up late every night, questioning the merits or shortcomings of abortion and the existence of God. Just tell him you need to go to bed, I’d say, back when I didn’t know. But a dying person deserves to know the answers to these and every question.

I’m 32 and already half of my exes have lost a parent. I guess your father makes the count rise just above half, although I’ve never called you an ex because I never called you a boyfriend. I was always too aware, too afraid of our inevitable ending, which came more abruptly than either of us expected and without the possibility of friendship or cordiality or eye contact. It’s strange to learn when an ex’s parent has died. How can you lose someone you’ve already lost? I’m not sure what to call you now, so I don’t.

When I heard about your father, I texted you. My phone had no memory of ever having texted you. Only emptiness and apologies in the space below your name.

Sometimes, I like to imagine your father and Alex Trebek passing the eternal time by taking turns hosting “Jeopardy!”, teasing the clouds into questions on the big royal blue backdrop of sky. They talk smack, but it’s pointless because they both know all the answers, and this has nothing to do with any knowledge gleaned in the afterlife. 

Now, whenever I see an ellipsis, I think about the last time I saw your father. I think about everything left unsaid in the spaces between those three little dots. It doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. I’m not sure it ever did.

After Sejal Shah

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