HotmailTwo brothers, 12 months, a filmmaking dream
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The Vow
We drove north all night and arrived in Fairfax at dawn. We needed to go tell Grandma her son was dead. We went over to her apartment and sat down with her and held her hand. She reacted the way any mother would.
We stayed there for several hours. We did what we could for her and then it was time to go.
It was getting colder and darker and we needed to say goodbye to our father.
On December 19, he was released from the Sonoma County Jail, took the bus out of that county, found a liquor store, got drunk, and was picked up by the police and thrown back in the Marin County Jail eight hours after being released from Sonoma. He spent Christmas in jail, and we didn’t visit because we were pissed at him.
They said they needed to conduct an autopsy. We told them our father wouldn’t want that, asked them to let him be and not cut him open. He always told us he never wanted to be gutted like a fish. They said they had to.
When someone dies in jail, they’re still not free. The deceased is only free once the authorities say so. The body remains property of the state until the state is done. Various procedures need to be performed to determine if foul play or negligence was involved. Basically, the government needs to cover its ass.
The coroner called after the autopsy and told us our father was being held at a local mortuary. We drove over there. We had dreamed about making enough money to get him a little apartment where he could be warm and watch TV, eat a hot meal, away from the cold and rain, where he could sleep and not worry, where he could wake up and not shiver, where he could be proud. But the dream was over now. We had failed our father. If we had been more successful, more involved with him, been around more — if we had been more than we were maybe he’d still be alive.
We pushed through the glass doors and were greeted by the mortician. We sat in his office and discussed the financial realities of death. He started by saying that the county classified our dad as an “indigent” and as such, would pay for the services. We declined their generosity. It was our duty and we would pay for it. He wasn’t an indigent to us. He was a wartime veteran, and the government would send us a flag in honor of his service.
“We’d like to see our father now . . .”
The mortician wheeled out a cardboard coffin and removed the top. We hoped to see someone other than our father, hoped he was still alive and that the jail had made a mistake. But the man in the cardboard coffin was our father. His torso was cut open, covered with blue paper towels. There was blood smeared on his right forearm and neck where they had tried to clean him up.
Even with the blood, there was a peacefulness about him that gave him back ten years of his life. His bloated skin had smoothed away the wrinkles and rejuvenated his weathered features. His hair was combed. But there was a yellow tinge to his face and the cold of his body was death. He was gone forever. The pain swelled and was then unleashed. We held his hand, crying, told him we loved him, told him we were proud of him . . . told him we were sorry.
We thought about the last time we saw him, on that cold day in November, and what he told us in the car just before we dropped him off.
“I wish I could’ve been better to you boys growing up ... I’m sorry that I wasn’t. I’ve never been able to be there for you one hundred percent ... And I know I never will be ... Thanks for never giving up on me . . .”
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“I know ... I know.”
Then we remembered a few months before that, the last time we visited him in jail. He lifted up his orange shirt, revealing his lean stomach, and hit his abs with his fist. “This is where you come to get fit ... When are you gonna make our movie?”
“Soon, Dad ... Soon.”
“Who’s gonna play me? He’s gotta be good-looking.”
“Ed Harris.”
He always reminded us of our dad.
“Yeah, he’s good. I’ll give him permission to be me ... The sheriff will negotiate on my behalf.”
We all laughed. It was a jailhouse dream, an impossible dream, something to be accomplished in another lifetime when you could start over and make all the right decisions. Ed Harris was light-years from our moment.
Our dad knew how hard we were working to break into the business. He wished he could help us and felt worthless that he could not. Years earlier, his heart was broken when we failed to realize our baseball dreams, not because he had wanted it for himself, but because he knew how much it meant to us. His heart was broken because our hearts were broken. And now ours were broken again.
We always thought we could save him. And now we had to accept that we could not.
As we continued holding his cold hand and caressing his cold head, telling him that we loved him and that we were sorry, our sadness and guilt grew into frustration and defiance.
We wanted to prove that his life was important, that he was loved, that his final chapter was not the shameful end on a jail cell floor—that his life had been worth living.
We squeezed his hand for the last time and made a vow. “When are we making our movie, Pops? ... This year ... this year …”
In death, our father gave us what he was unable to give us in life. From now on we’d be riding with the full force of his spirit. Nothing could stop us, not fear, not money, nothing. Only God could decide otherwise, and we hoped he was on our side.
From then on, either you were in, or you were in the way.
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